Worldcrunch
-Analysis- Months of impassioned public debate, colorful protests and determined counter-demonstrations are coming to a head today in Argentina, where the Senate is set for an historic vote on whether or not to legalize abortion. The high-drama session comes nearly two months after the country’s lower house opted narrowly — following a marathon, 22-hour debate […]
A dozen dead and mutilated seals, together with a few porpoises, have recently been found on Polish beaches in the Baltic Sea. How did it get to this?
Pakistani activist for female education, who survived a brutal Taliban attack, Malala Yousazfai became the youngest person to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize. Now she’s celebrating a special all-grown-up birthday on July 12! [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/ijRSJpmSYNw expand=1] Happy Birthday Malala — OneShot OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot:
On the coast of Senegal, fish stocks have fallen 80% in the past year alone. The women fish processors of the region have been hit hardest, with consequences across society.
Women’s bodies have become proxy battlegrounds for prejudice and intolerance, a brutal means of imposing power over a community or caste.
This bio-friendly cattle rancher doesn’t win many friends among either vegetarians or traditional ranchers. But those who eat his ‘no-stress’ beef can taste the difference.
Israel’s sexist family law is bent to demands of the country’s Orthodox community, including divorce requiring the man’s consent. But what if the husband is violent?
Libération, Sept. 19, 2017 Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday broke her silence on the violence in her Buddhist-majority country that has forced hundreds of thousands of minority Muslim Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. French newspaper Libération featured a picture of her with the headline “A Nobel and a massacre” splashed on […]
As more men are migrating into cities in search of a living, women are left with all the weight of the farming and family. That is not a sustainable model.
NEW DELHI — Wearing orange dresses with matching turbans, a group of folk musicians play tunes on their pungi, also known as been, a traditional flute made from gourd fruit. The audience at Surajkund Craft Fair on the outskirts of the Indian capital is enthralled. Many break into dance. But the musicians themselves don’t look very enthusiastic. “This is not what we want to do; it’s been thrust upon us,” says Badri Nath, 75, who heads the troupe. “But since our original work has been banned, this is all we can do. Whether we are happy or not doesn’t matter.” […]
-Analysis- Battles over sexism are being waged all over the world. In India, Muslim women have brought the “triple talaq” law, which allows men to cut off their wives by repeating “divorce” three times, to the country’s Supreme Court. In the Republic of Congo, widows are suing over a tradition that forces them to give […]
LUCKNOW — It’s Friday afternoon at the Ambar mosque in the northern Indian city of Lucknow. The call to prayer, or Azan, rings out in the afternoon heat. Women start to gather. They wash their hands, face and feet as part of a ritual purification. In India, women aren’t typically encouraged at mosques. But Ambar mosque is doing quite the opposite — the second floor of the mosque is reserved for women to offer Namaaz or prayer. Rabia, a local resident, says she visits the mosque most Fridays. For her, the Ambar mosque is more than a place to pray. […]
The promise of the Tahrir Square protests has been largely unfulfilled. Yet there is some progress in how Egypt faces harassment against women.
Women held in Syria’s government prisons report psychological abuse, sexual assault and torture. But for many, the suffering they experience after their release is even worse.
CAIRO — When one woman was sexually harassed this month in Cairo, she made an unusual move: she came to an informal agreement with her attacker’s family and juvenile prosecutors to drop charges on condition that the boy get therapy and do community service. Having caught the boy who groped her hard from behind, after […]
‘Baad’ is a tribal tradition through which a woman is offered as compensation if her relative commits a crime.
The numbers are impressive, terrifying, bone-chilling. At least 20,000 people have fled their homes in Aleppo this week alone, according to the International Red Cross, as the Syrian army and its allies make significant, and perhaps crucial, gains in the eastern part of the city, controlled mostly by jihadist fighters. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for […]
LAHORE — Over the past few months, the prestigious Al-Hamra Theater in this Pakistani city has been staging a first-of-its-kind play, one that very much pushes cultural boundaries in the conservative Muslim society. The play, called Teesri Dhun, focuses on the discrimination transgender people endure in Pakistan, where they are often shunned by families, schools and employers. Not only that, but the actors themselves are members of the transgender community. “The play highlights the problems transgender people face here,” says Neeli Rana, 40, who plays the lead role in Lahore. It’s a story line that resonates with Rana. “In 2006 […]
Neighbors don’t always need good fences. The weekly Jeune Afrique reports some encouraging findings in a wide-ranging study on tolerance for diversity taken in 33 African countries. Overall, the results indicated growing levels of tolerance for ethnic and religious diversity, though this was contrasted with lingering prejudice against homosexuals. Research firm Afrobarometer conducted the poll […]
A new study finds that fathers who take more than two months of parental leave for the birth of a child see a sharp decrease in promotion opportunities and are often asked to go part-time, a scenario all too familiar to women.
BOGOTA — It is no easy task trying to talk about the errors of Pope Francis. The achievements of Argentina’s Jorge Bergoglio, both in words and deeds, have been frankly quite startling. Acts of humility by the Supreme Pontiff have had a tremendous public impact, like kneeling to wash and kiss the feet of prisoners, […]
Though the law says otherwise, citizenship is typically not granted to the children of Nepalese women if they don’t give proof that the father is also from Nepal.
Rights groups say that cops in Herat are cracking down on “adulterers,” stopping couples on the street,even brothers and sisters, and demanding proof of marriage.
As a Colombian gay marriage debate illustrates, Western societies have historically despised male homosexuality more than lesbianism. Why is that?
Images are spreading of extreme cruelty to animals at the corralejas, a version of bullfighting in remote areas of Colombia. Social media can be both enemy and friend for animal rights activists.
The U.S. offers the weakest worker protections, Brazilian employees are entitled to serious severance, the UK’s mandatory notice period is the longest. A quick tour of the global pink slip.
A heartwrenching court case in France poses thorny questions as the very meaning of family evolves more quickly than the legal system, or even the experts, can keep up with.
BUENOS AIRES — The right to protection from arbitrary detention, known as Habeas Corpus, is one of humanity’s greatest achievements, the fruit of England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688. Now, a group of animal-rights activists in Argentina is demanding its application for an orangutan, which they say is being “illegally deprived of its liberty” inside the […]
Polygamy is rampant, women are woefully underrepresented in politics and without the same land rights of men. But some Kenyan males have launched a surprising protest to any threats to their privileges.
JAKARTA — In a suburban part of Jakarta, we’re walking down a dirt road up to a very small pink house at the end of an alley. There are chickens running around, and children playing. It’s here that Indonesia’s first retirement home for transsexual and transgender people — known as waria in Indonesia — is being built. In the doorway, two elderly transgenders whose teeth are missing call out “good morning.” Inside, Yulianus Rettoblaut peers into a mirror while a friend goes about the daily ritual of applying her heavy makeup — thick white foundation, fake eyelashes, bright red lipstick […]
Argentina is the patriarchal latecomer after moves by several Latin Americans to adopt norms to outlaw any physical violence inflicted on children.
BEIJING — Three years after his imprisonment, still deprived of his passport and shut off in a bubble of official Chinese silence, Ai Weiwei, 57, neverthless appears ubiquitous everywhere else on the planet. The Martin-Gropius-Bau exhibition hall in Berlin devoted a huge retrospective entitled “Evidences” from April to July. His last documentary, Ai Weiwei’s Appeal […]
After a prospective police candidate was banned for a tattoo, Germany debates workplace appearance rules as the number of young employees with tattoos is exploding.
Because of outdated tradition and economics, 14% of Yemeni girls are married off before their 15th birthday. But since the Arab spring, a movement is growing to stop this.
SAUDI GAZETTE, BBC, LE MONDE (France) Worldcrunch RIYADH – For the first time in Saudi Arabia, a new law has been passed that prohibits all forms of physical and sexual abuse, a measure hailed by human rights groups as a breakthrough in protecting women and children. Sources at the Ministry of Social Affairs told the […]
Though the country spends less per pupil than many other developed nations, students here consistently test better than nearly all their global counterparts. Here’s why.
It’s her eyes that are so arresting. Big brown eyes looking at the camera. Nada Al-Ahdal holds that serious, penetrating, almost unwavering look the whole time – just under three minutes – she addresses viewers. Nada is 11 years old. If her parents had had their way, she would be married by now — married […]
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court has delivered a landmark victory for gay rights, by striking down the California law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. This ruling forces authorities to recognize same-sex weddings in states where it is authorized already, though it stops short of forcing the remaining 30 […]
MOSCOW – June marks the end of Russia’s smoking free-for-all. A new law forbids smoking in offices and hospitals, on beaches, in public transport, on train stations, and on the stairways in apartment buildings. Even advertisements for tobacco products are now illegal, and in one year’s time cigarettes also will be banned in cafes and […]
Lilian Soto is a longshot to win Sunday’s election, but she may have already changed the last South American country to have female voting rights.