Women's Health

New Brazilian Law Guarantees Protocol for Rape Victims

By Fabiana Frayssinet
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff signed a law guaranteeing treatment - including emergency contraception - for rape victims in public hospitals, in spite of strong opposition from religious conservatives who believe it will lead to the decriminalisation of abortion.

Groups Call for U.S. to Fight Harder Against Child Marriages

By Cydney Hargis
Advocacy groups are urging for partnerships between governmental organisations and private sector businesses to better prevent child marriage and combat the economic, development and health problems it causes.

Most Brides in Niger Are Children

By Souleymane Maâzou
For El Hadji Souley Moussa, a 60-year-old retired bank employee in Niger, “marrying off a daughter when she is young is a source of great pride. This way, she is protected from pregnancy outside of marriage.”

Support for FGM Slowly Eroding, Global Report Finds

By Lucy Westcott
The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF released a report Monday that gives the most complete picture of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) ever published.

Running Away from TB Treatment

By Athar Parvaiz
Twenty-three-year-old Haleema (not her real name) was not the first female patient at Srinagar’s Chest Diseases Hospital in the Indian state of Kashmir to try to run away.

WHO’s Iraq Birth Defect Study Omits Causation

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
A long-awaited study on congenital birth defects by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Iraq is expected to be very extensive in nature.

Stronger Laws to Deter Acid Attacks on Women

By Ranjita Biswas
Preeti Rathi was just 25 years old when she passed away in a Mumbai hospital exactly a month after a man threw acid on her while she stood waiting on a railway platform.

Turkish Women Push Back Against Patriarchy

By Ariam Frezghi
Among the many issues bringing protestors together at Gezi Park, the now-iconic site of struggle in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, is the demand for women’s liberation.

Curbs on Abortion Spread Across East Europe

By Pavol Stracansky
A “virus” of restrictive abortion legislation is spreading from Eastern Europe, health experts and rights campaigners have said, amid Church pressure and misguided government attempts to stop falling birth rates.

When Children Give Birth to Children

By Mallika Aryal
Radhika Thapa was just 16 years old when she married a 21-year-old boy three years ago. Now, she is expecting a baby and is well into the last months of her pregnancy. This is not the first time she has been with child – her first two pregnancies ended in miscarriages.

Q&A: “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights”

By Joan Erakit
On Thursday, the international community recognises World Population Day, a time of assessment, discussion and projections for the future that necessarily gives great weight to the rights of women and girls and particularly their sexual and reproductive health.

Kenya’s Mothers Shun Free Maternity Health Care

By Miriam Gathigah
It has been a month since the Kenyan government waived the maternity fee at public health facilities, but Millicent Awino is still one of the many expectant mothers in favour of a home birth.

Girls Fight Back Against Child Marriage

By Naimul Haq
Shirin Aktar was just 13 years old when her parents decided it was time for her to get married.

OP-ED: Moving Forward to End Violence Against Women

By Lakshmi Puri
Last year, as rebels captured the main towns in Northern Mali, UN Women registered a sudden and dramatic increase of rapes in the first week of the takeover of Gao and Kidal, in places where most women never report this violence to anyone, not even health practitioners.

Working to Save Malawi’s Mothers

By Mabvuto Banda
Charity Salima, 54, has helped to deliver over 4,000 babies in her maternity clinic in Area 23 – one of Malawi’s poorest and most populous townships – and has yet to record a single pregnancy-related death.

Q&A: How One Woman Demands Answers and an End to FGM

By Lucy Westcott
Bogaletch Gebre knows exactly what women in her Ethiopian community are going through. Along with her sisters, the women's rights activist was a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM) when she was a child in a part of Ethiopia where the practise was carried out on every girl.

Q&A: Empower Indigenous Women to Assert Their Rights

By Silvia Romanelli
Women around the world are exposed to domestic violence, sexual and economic exploitation, gender-based violence, female genital mutilation and child marriage. For indigenous women and girls, however, the risk of being victims of such issues is especially high.

Young Yemen Multiplies Without Growth

By Rebecca Murray
Yemen’s population is increasing at a rapid rate, straining the country’s dwindling natural resources and setting up its youth for a grim future, with few jobs and scant means to get by.

Biofortification May Hold Keys to “Hidden Hunger”

By Thalif Deen
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which works to end malnutrition among more than two billion people worldwide, is expressing strong support  for enriching the micronutrient content of plants.

Somalia’s ‘Cultural Shift’ Means Less-Severe Form of FGM

By Abdurrahman Warsameh
Seven-year-old Istar Mumin lies on a bed, motionless, in one of the rooms of her family home in Mogadishu’s Hamarweyne district. She has just gone through the horrifying ritual of “the cut,” which was carried out by a local Somali nurse.

‘Happy Prostitutes’ AIDS Campaign Sparks Debate

By Fabiana Frayssinet
Happiness, the subject of endless philosophical discussions, has now become the focus of controversy in an HIV/AIDS prevention campaign aimed at prostitutes in Brazil. The campaign chief has been booted out and a further question has been raised: What are the limits of popular participation in the definition of public policies?
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