Marriage and Divorce
Solutions to End Child Marriage: What Evidence Shows
Child marriage is increasingly recognized as a serious problem, both as a violation of girls' human rights and as a hindrance to key development outcomes. As more resources and action are committed to addressing this problem, it becomes important to examine past efforts and how well they have worked. ICRW summarizes a systematic review of child marriage prevention programs that have documented evaluations. Based on this synthesis of evaluated programs, the authors offer an analysis of the broader implications for viable solutions to child marriage.
Egypt: The unclear future of women
CAIRO, September 13, 2011‑Egyptian women currently face numerous threats that will not only destroy the goals of equality, freedom and change voiced in the January revolution, but the advances women have made over the last century.
Because Mrs. Mubarak was extremely active in women’s issues, including the advancement of women’s rights, many Egyptians, especially men, equate women’s rights with the former corrupt dictatorship of Hosni Mubara.
As a result of Mr. Mubarek’s fall, there is a move to reject the advances Egyptian women have made over the last several years.
China: Marriage law interpretation could leave many divorced women homeless
BEIJING — Millions of Chinese women, and some men, woke on Aug. 13 to discover their spouse had, in effect, become their landlord.
On that day, the Supreme Court’s new interpretation of the 1980 Marriage Law came into force, stipulating that property bought before marriage, either outright or on mortgage, reverted to the buyer on divorce. Previously, the family home had been considered joint property. Experts agree the change would mostly affect women, since men traditionally provide the family home.
Nepal Looks Set To Officially Recognize Third Gender
FRIDAY FILE: Almost four years after Nepal’s Supreme Court recognized the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people, the South Asian country may get a new constitution that secures their rights.[i] By Kathambi Kinoti
The first public wedding between two women in Nepal in June 2011 in a town a few kilometres south of the capital Kathmandu. Nepal was constitutionally a Hindu state until 2006 when Parliament amended the constitution to make it secular. The majority of Nepalese are Hindu and the second most prominent religion is Buddhism.
Iraq: Fight for Women’s Rights Begins All Over Again
BAGHDAD, Sep 13, 2011 (IPS) - When a middle-aged mother took a taxi alone from Baghdad to Nasiriyah, about 300 kilometres south earlier this year, her 20-year-old driver stopped on the way, pulled her to the side of the road and raped her. And that began a telling legal struggle.
"She is not a simple case," says Hanaa Edwar, head of the Iraqi rights-based Al-Amal Association, established in Baghdad after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
India: UNICEF report uncovers high prevalence of child marriage in West Bengal
Every second girl in the high prevalence child marriage districts of West Bengal were married off before they reach 18, the legal age for girls to get wedded, a UNICEF report said.
Murshidabad (61.04%), Birbhum (58.03%), Malda (56.07%) and Purulia (54.03%) are the districts having such dubious distinction, the report said quoting latest figures.
Though only these four districts have reported over 50 per cent child marriage cases, they are enough to pull the state figure of child marriage to a staggering 53.9 per cent.
Indonesia: Sharia police in Aceh dissolve lesbian marriage
Islamic police in the Indonesian province of Aceh have forced two women to have their marriage annulled and sign an agreement to separate.
The women had been legally married for a few months after one of them passed as a man in front of an Islamic cleric who presided over their wedding.
But suspicious neighbours confronted the couple and reported them to police.
Jordan: Child Bride in Jordan Puts Daughters on Same Path
What kind of mothers subject their daughters to drudgery, deny them education and threaten them with early marriage and other human rights abuses? The answer, one family's story suggests, are women who've gone through just that themselves.
AMMAN, Jordan (WOMENSENEWS)--Fawzeya, a 70-year-old Palestinian-Jordanian woman living in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, raised her two daughters--now 53 and 47--with an iron hand.
Half Widow, Half Wife? Responding to Gendered Violence in Kashmir
.thumbnail.gif "Half Widow, Half Wife? Responding to Gendered Violence in Kashmir (July 2011)")
This report is the result of discussions with ‘half widows,’ widows, and married and unmarried women in Kashmir. It also draws upon conversations with Kashmiri men and women, including academics, students, homemakers, tailors, farmers, doctors, lawyers, and teachers. No consultations were made with any politicians in or outside Kashmir.
It is authored by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), a member organization of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS).
Link to full report:
In Afghanistan, Rage at Young Lovers
HERAT, Afghanistan — The two teenagers met inside an ice cream factory through darting glances before roll call, murmured hellos as supervisors looked away and, finally, a phone number folded up and tossed discreetly onto the workroom floor.
A car burned by a crowd during a riot that took place after the police rescued two teenagers from a group of men who had demanded that they be hanged or stoned for their relationship.
It was the beginning of an Afghan love story that flouted dominant traditions of arranged marriages and close family scrutiny, a romance between two teenagers of different ethnicities that tested a village’s tolerance for more modern whims of the heart. The results were delivered with brutal speed.