Stop Stoning Forever Campaign: an Unfinished Story

Shadi Sadr is a human rights lawyer, journalist, co-founder of Raahi Women’s Legal Centre in Iran, and winner of the Lech Wasela Prize.

Only one year after the appointment of a fundamentalist government in Iran, in spring of 2006, rumors spread that two people, a man and a woman, were stoned in Mash'had. In the beginning, no one would believe it. Although stoning exists as a punitive act in the rules and regulations of Iran, governmental authorities announced that the Judiciary had stayed the enforcement of the “stoning” execution as a death penalty while in Human Rights negotiations with the European Union in 2002.

Abstract: Islamic legal tradition treats any sexual contact outside a legal marriage as a crime. The main category of such crimes is zina, defined as any act of illicit sexual intercourse between a man and woman. In the late twentieth century, the resurgence of Islam as a political and spiritual force led to the revival of zina laws and the creation of new offences that criminalize consensual sexual activity and authorize violence against women. Activists have campaigned against these new laws on human rights grounds.

Addressing Gender-specific Violations in Afghanistan

Afghanistan Program
International Center for Transitional Justice

I. Introduction

For the field of transitional justice, which seeks mechanisms and processes to reestablish peace and encourage accountability for past crimes and reconciliation within conflict-ridden communities,questions of violations that women suffer during conflicts are especially pertinent. Decoding the gendered nature of conflict and violations committed during such an event is complicated by the fact that women are often overlooked as actors and victims. Furthermore the crimes against women during such circumstances are seldom specific to outbreaks of war; the conflict merely accentuates discrimination and violations that women suffer during peace.

A successful campaign to halt sharia laws in South Sulawesi

Context
Although most Indonesians are Muslims, Indonesia is a secular, multi-cultural state, which claims to uphold human rights, including the rights of the women citizens. However, WEMC research in the district of Bulukumba, Makassar, S. Sulawesi, shows that religion is being politicised with Islamists seeking to subvert the secular state through regulations and legislations, on the basis of their interpretations of Islam.

Policy advocacy and partnerships for children's rights
Legislative Reform Initiative

Harmonizing National Legislation with International Human Rights Instruments

While virtually every country in the world has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), children's rights are frequently not realised. One important aspect of creating an environment within which children's rights will be realised is the creation of an appropriate legislative framework which enshrines their rights. While this is not sufficient to guarantee their rights, and implementation of the law remains a major challenge around the world, getting laws and the mechanisms and institutions for their implementation right is one of the most essential steps to realising children's rights.

Overview and abstracts from UNESCO's upoming publication:

Introduction

The HIV and AIDS pandemic is both fuelling and being fuelled by inequalities across gender, race, ethnicity, class and age. e patterns of impact vary across different settings and regions of the world and are also shaped by demographic crises, armed conflicts, natural disasters, environmental degradation, state incapacities, famine and poverty. e pandemic’s refractory impacts on women and girls – and humanity writ large – are nothing short of catastrophic. In the third decade of the HIV pandemic, women and particularly young women and girls have become a growing proportion of those affected and infected. Nearly half of the 40.3 million people living with HIV are women between the ages of 15-49.1 Gender disparities in HIV prevalence are more extreme among young women between the ages of 15-24, globally 1.6 times more likely to be living with HIV and AIDS than young men. And in sub-Saharan Africa overall, young women between 15 and 24 years old are at least three times more likely to be HIV-positive than young men.

Inter Press Service (IPS) Africa has launched a new handbook for reporters to support sustained media coverage of gender-based violence beyond 16 Days of No Violence Against Women and Children.

Reporting Gender-based Violence was officially launched during a conference in Rome on Millennium Development Goal Three (MDG3) and the role of the media. MDG3 is to “Promote gender equality and empower women”.

The Gender Trap: Women, Violence, and Poverty

Most of the people living in poverty in the world are women – more than 70 per cent, according to UN estimates. Why is it that more than two thirds of the world’s poor are women, although women are only half of the world’s population?

Polygyny & Women's Health in Sub-Sahara Africa

ABSTRACT

In this paper we review the literature on the association between polygyny and women’s health in sub-Saharan Africa. We argue that polygyny is an example of "co-operative conflict" within households, with likely implications for the vulnerability of polygynous women to illness, and for their access to treatment.