Jessica Buchleitner, WNN Correspondent to the United Nations – WNN features (WNN) New York, New York, NORTH AMERICA –Coined the ‘busiest week for gender and women’s issues at the United Nations’ by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, delegates, diplomats, heads of states and civil society NGO leaders convened from March 14-24 at U.N. headquarters to examine […]
Mary Wandia, FGM Program Manager, Equality Now – WNN Soapbox (WNN) Nairobi, Kenya, EAST AFRICA – Kenya is about to mark the international day of zero tolerance for female genital mutilation (FGM), at a time when the country has taken many steps forwards. While overall rates of FGM in Kenya are declining, the prevalence of medicalization […]
Esohe Aghatise – WNN SOAPBOX (WNN/Equality Now) Turin, ITALY, WESTERN EUROPE: Despite the fact that the legalization of pimping and brothel-keeping has proven to be a failed experiment in Germany and the Netherlands, the Italian parliament is now seriously considering new legislation, which seeks to follow their lead. Legal proposals, including Bill No. 1201 the so-called ‘Spilabotte Bill’, would not only […]
Emma Batha with Thomson Reuters Foundation for WNN Breaking (WNN/TRF) London, U.K., WESTERN EUROPE: British courts should give victims of female genital mutilation the same anonymity as rape victims, and Britain needs an immediate plan to tackle an FGM crisis which is “a national scandal”, the head of a parliamentary committee said on Thursday. A […]
Kimberly M. Brown for Equality Now – WNN SOAPBOX (WNN/EN) Busia, KENYA, EASTERN AFRICA: In late June 2013, the world was outraged by the story of Liz who was brutally gang-raped in western Kenya while walking home from a funeral, left to die in a pit latrine, and suffered an obstetric fistula as a result of the attack. […]
Nina Strochlic – Daily Beast – Thursday, 12 June 2014 (originally 11 Jun) As a one-week-old baby, Jaha Dukureh was circumcised—just as women in her family had been for generations in their home country of Gambia. Fifteen years later, when she was brought to the United States for an arranged marriage, she was taken to […]
Kimberly M. Brown for Equality Now – WNN Justice commentary (WNN/EN) Nairobi, KENYA, EASTERN AFRICA: Last August, while house hunting in Omdurman, Sudan, a 19-year-old pregnant and divorced Ethiopian woman was lured to an empty property and brutally gang-raped by a group of seven young men. Immediately after the attack, a police officer found the […]
Maria Caspini for Thomson Reuters Foundation – WNN Justice (WNN/TRF) London, UNITED KINGDOM, WESTERN EUROPE: Human trafficking has many faces and forms. There’s the pimp enslaving and exploiting young girls in cities across the United States – where an estimated 100,000 girls are trafficked at present. There are the men who buy young boys in […]
Efua Dorkenoo for Equality Now – WNN Breaking (WNN/EN) London, UNITED KINGDOM, WESTERN EUROPE: As Metropolitan Police in the UK gave “sufficient evidence” to the Office of The Crown Prosecutors a medical doctor inside the UK has now been charged with performing an illegal FGM – Female Genital Mutilation procedure. This is the very first […]
Lauren Hersh with Katie Cappiello – WNN SOAPBOX (WNN/EN) New York, UNITED STATES, AMERICAS: It’s dark outside, 20 degrees, and we’ve taken to Super Bowl Boulevard in NYC with a team of teen girls who are passionate about ending modern day slavery. They’ve traded their usual homework-filled Thursday night for hours of in-the-trenches advocacy. Bundled […]