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Category: Violence against women

  • Defamation Campaign against Syrian woman rights defender Hiba Ezzideen Al- Hajji

    On 23 April 2025 Front Line Defenders expressed its serious concern for Syrian woman human right defender Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajji, as well as her family and the ‘Equity and Empowerment’ organisation, who are being targeted by a defamation campaign on Facebook which seeks to incite violence against them. The online campaign, initiated both by individuals known to support the new government and unknown users, has targeted Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajii for a Facebook post she made on 20 April 2025, in which she advocated against forced marriages. This bombardment of defamatory messages has included calls for violence, including death threats, constituting a clear case of harassment.

    Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajji is a Syrian feminist and woman human rights defender. She is the CEO of the Equity and Empowerment organisation and the Chairperson of the Board of Directors in Shan network for peace building. Equity and Empowerment is a women-led organisation which works on gender equality, focusing on digital security, economic and political empowerment. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/08/10/syrian-woman-human-rights-defender-hiba-ezzideen-al-hajji-threatened/]

    Since 20 April 2025, Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajii’s Facebook account, through which she posted about women’s rights, has been used to start a defamation campaign and incite violence against her, as well as her family and the Equity and Empowerment organisation, both based in Idlib, Syria. The online campaign has led to Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajii receiving numerous death threats on the social media platform, both through private messages and through a flood of posts on her own account, as well as on Equity and Empowerment’s page. The online mob, formed by unknown users, have urged followers to post defamatory content against her online and called for physical violence, inciting people to burn down the center of Equity and Empowerment in Idlib, with the objective of killing Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajii and harming her family. They have distorted the meaning of an old video, in which she stated that it is unnecessary to use the veil in the centers of Equity and Empowerment where there are only women, to falsely accuse her of insulting the Hijab and Islam. The online mob have also attempted to distort her Facebook post in which she urged authorities to investigate cases of women’s abduction, in order to allow for accountability.

    Several public figures have taken advantage of this defamation campaign in order to falsely accuse the woman rights defender of being an agent to Assad security branches, despite her clear stands against the Assad regime and extensive record of human rights activism against it. Subsequently, on 22 April, the police in Idlib closed down the center of Equity and Empowerment. Furthermore, the governor of Idlib announced via Facebook that he has requested the public prosecutor to file a lawsuit against Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajii for insulting the hijab. The woman human rights defender has expressed a profound concern for her personal safety and well-being. She has reported fearing for her life, as well as the lives of her family and team at Equity and Empowerment.

    Front Line Defenders condemns the defamation and online campaign seeking to incite violence, as well as subsequent acts of intimidation against woman human rights defender Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajii, her family and her organisation Equity and Empowerment. Front Line Defenders believes that the defamation campaign and online harassment is directly related to Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajji’s work in the defence of human rights, particularly her work towards the promotion of women’s rights in Syria.

    Front Line Defenders also expresses concern with the recurrent use of Facebook as a tool to incite violence against woman human rights defenders in Syria. The organisation urges Meta to immediately take down all Facebook posts against woman human rights defender Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajii and her organisation Equity and Empowerment, suspend any groups, pages and profiles used to defame her or organise attacks and incite violence against her and her organisation, while also storing data that is relevant for future investigations and accountability. Meta must fulfill their responsibility to protect human rights, in accordance with international human rights standards. They must take the necessary steps to guarantee the safety of human rights defenders online, ensuring their platforms do not contribute to violent and dangerous campaigns, or allow users to incite targeted violence against defenders, particularly woman human rights defenders, which puts their lives at serious risk. Front Line Defenders stands ready to assist Meta with identifying the defamatory and violent content in question and the accounts on which they are hosted or shared.

    https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/statement-report/syria-defamation-campaign-against-woman-rights-defender-hiba-ezzideen-al-hajji

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Report Accuses Israel Of Gender-Based, Sexual Violence Against Palestinians

    “Our brave Warfighters are right now carrying out aerial attacks on the terrorists’ bases, leaders, and missile defenses to protect American shipping, air, and naval assets and to restore Navigational Freedom,” US President Donald Trump said in a social media post following the attacks.

    The post Report Accuses Israel Of Gender-Based, Sexual Violence Against Palestinians appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women : Statement from Odhikar

    24 November 2024

    Patria Mirabal, Minerva Mirabal, and Maria Teresa Mirabal were sisters and staunch opponents of Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. On 25 November 1960, they were brutalized and killed while on their way to visit their incarcerated husbands, who had also suffered greatly during Trujillo’s regime. Their assassination and noteworthy opposition to the violent dictatorship paved the way for the Mirabal sisters to be memorialized forever as icons of feminist, anti-regime resistance.

    In 1990, the United Nations declared the date of the Mirabal sisters’ murders as the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women. Tomorrow marks 25 years of the UN’s commemoration of the occasion. According to a report on femicide by UN Women and UNODC to be published tomorrow, at least one woman was killed globally every ten minutes in 2023.

    Violence against women remains a constant and widespread issue in Bangladesh, and can be attributed to many factors, including the lack of law enforcement and implementation, a deeply ingrained patriarchal mindset, and a general lack of awareness regarding women’s issues. Social stigma in the region further contributes to low rates of reporting (and therefore accountability in) instances of violence to law enforcement agencies, as women are often blamed in these situations. Gender-based violence continues to affect women in Bangladesh with regards to dowry, acid attacks, child marriage, stalking, rape, and sexual harassment of women and children. It is more widespread among those who are low-income, undocumented, working in the informal sector, and/or homeless. According to a UN report published in 2021, it was found that “93% of women in Bangladesh reported having experienced or knowing another woman who has experienced violence against women and girls.”

    Contributions of female activists during the July-August 2024 student-led mass uprising in Bangladesh can neither be overlooked nor trivialized. The authoritarian Awami League regime could not have been toppled without women at the forefront of the movement, who much like the Mirabal sisters, endured extreme state-sanctioned violence and yet continued their fight against oppressive forces. Odhikar remains vigilant in reporting and documenting violence against women in Bangladesh, and continues its enduring commitment to the struggle for justice.

  • Enough is enough. Australia is in a crisis of violence against women

    This post was originally published on IndigenousX.

  • Bangladesh needs a democratic system and a robust judiciary to protect the rights of women and girls, must withdraw CEDAW reservations

    A Joint Statement by the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Maayer Daak, and Odhikar on International Women’s Day 2024

    In Bangladesh, the prevalence of violence and discrimination against women and girls is alarmingly widespread. Domestic violence, dowry-related abuse, rape, and sexual harassment still persist. Women and girls face discrimination and hardship. The families left behind by victims of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings endure significant financial hardships due to disappearances of the breadwinners and face threats from law enforcement agencies and government agents.

    The country’s judicial system remains hostile towards women. Women and girls often encounter obstacles in seeking justice, including intimidation from perpetrators and corrupt judicial officers. Lengthy legal procedures that are often subjected to political interference commonly dissuade women from going to the courts.

    ‘s Day 2024

    This post was originally published on News – Odhikar.

  • Bangladesh needs a democratic system and a robust judiciary to protect the rights of women and girls, must withdraw CEDAW reservations

    A Joint Statement by the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Maayer Daak, and Odhikar on International Women’s Day 2024

    In Bangladesh, the prevalence of violence and discrimination against women and girls is alarmingly widespread. Domestic violence, dowry-related abuse, rape, and sexual harassment still persist. Women and girls face discrimination and hardship. The families left behind by victims of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings endure significant financial hardships due to disappearances of the breadwinners and face threats from law enforcement agencies and government agents.

    The country’s judicial system remains hostile towards women. Women and girls often encounter obstacles in seeking justice, including intimidation from perpetrators and corrupt judicial officers. Lengthy legal procedures that are often subjected to political interference commonly dissuade women from going to the courts.

    ‘s Day 2024

    This post was originally published on News – Odhikar.

  • This International Women’s Day, Iranian Feminists Are at the Front Lines

    On International Women’s Day, the world is at a turning point. On the one hand, we are facing the global rise of authoritarianism and fascism. On the other hand, popular uprisings for a democratic existence against authoritarianism and imperialism have been emerging in various parts of the world, with popular resistance persisting from Myanmar to Sudan and from Ukraine to Iran.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • If you think society is less misogynist in 2023, think again

    Content warning: discussion of sexual violence

    8 March is International Women’s Day. Women and allies around the world are joining together in celebration of our strength, and we’ll be commemorating all of us who have died at the hands of men.

    We are, of course, gathering in solidarity against against sexism and misogyny. Over the past few months, I have spoken to a number of people who feel that misogyny isn’t as bad as it used to be; that somehow our UK society is learning to be better. They cite the fact that sexual consent and boundaries are now practiced in many relationships. But let’s face it, a man checking whether his sexual partner consents is the bare minimum of what he should be doing anyway. It’s disturbing that it’s taken us until 2023 to get this far. The bar is very, very low when it comes to how we expect cis men to act.

    If you think this shows that men are somehow better these days, you’d be wrong. The number of women who are being spiked on a night out is alarming, and in 2023, it’s now normal for notices in club toilets to suggest politely that men “stop spiking”.

    On top of this, violence against women during consensual sex is now completely normalised. We are often labelled and shamed as being ‘vanilla’ if we don’t want to be strangled, or if we don’t want to consent to a man’s kink. Strangling during sex is highly gendered, and is now the norm, rather than the exception. Men often strangle us without our permission. In 2019, the BBC wrote:

    more than a third of UK women under the age of 40 have experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during consensual sex…”

    Four years later, I would argue that not much has changed.

    Are rough sex laws really protecting us?

    The ‘rough sex’ defence has been consistently used by violent men who have murdered women. In 2021, the Domestic Abuse Act did, in theory, rule out this defence. The new law states that:

    Consent to serious harm for sexual gratification [is] not a defence.

    But campaign group We Can’t Consent To This has pointed out that the new laws aren’t working. The group said:

    in November 2021, the Court of Appeal decided Sam Pybus’s sentence of 4 years 8 months should not be increased, after he strangled Sophie Moss until she was dead, and claimed that she had encouraged him to do it. We think there could be no clearer sign the law is not yet working.

    The lead appeal judge argued that Sophie had consented to being strangled; quite how the misogynist judge could know this is a mystery. And how exactly could she consent to being strangled until she was murdered? Pybus had a history of violence against women, and had strangled his previous partner, too. But, of course, Sophie was held accountable, even in her death, because Pybus’s actions were apparently consensual.

    In England and Wales, it has now also become an offence for someone to inflict harm through non-fatal strangulation. But We Can’t Consent To This said:

    With the introduction of a 5 year sentence for Non Fatal Strangulation, shockingly, it’s possible to kill a sexual partner and get a shorter sentence than you would have for not killing her. These short sentences for manslaughter are common – in each case the violence used is shockingly severe.

    Misogyny as the norm

    Of course, misogyny doesn’t just rear its ugly head during sex. It’s so normalised in our society that we don’t even see it for what it is. An obvious example of this is the treatment of famous women when they dare to challenge famous misogynist men. In 2022, the world witnessed Amber Heard and Johnny Depp in court. I felt sick when I heard how Depp had treated Heard. But I felt even more sick when I realised that the world was defending him; that it didn’t matter how disgusting he was towards women – nothing could pull him off his pedestal.

    The misogynist backlash Heard received – surprisingly from all genders – was absolutely sickening. As Canary guest writer Annie Stevens wrote at the time:

    Any man that uses terms like “idiot cow”, “withering cunt”, “worthless hooker”, “slippery whore” or “waste of a cum guzzler” (Depp’s words) to describe women is clearly a misogynist.

    And yet, despairingly, the world still stood by Depp, hero-worshipping him as a cis man who could do no wrong, even when his vile misogyny was shown to the world, plain as day. This case is a prime example of how society excuses and emboldens men to act however they want. Stevens wrote:

    there is no question that it will impact survivors here who have seen friends, family and colleagues back Johnny and claim that Amber is a liar.

    Women have already been pulling out of cases due to the fear of going through what Amber did. Not only that, this case has also emboldened abusive men.

    Prioritising feelings of men

    Since then, the case of another cis man, footballer Benjamin Mendy, has been in the public spotlight. He, along with his friend Louis Saha Matturie, was accused of multiple sexual offences, including rape, by 13 different women. It will, no doubt, have taken the women all of the courage they could muster to be involved in this prosecution, particularly after they witnessed how Heard was treated by the world.

    Unsurprisingly, the majority-male jury found Mendy not guilty of six counts of rape and one count of sexual assault. A retrial is due to take place after the jury couldn’t reach a verdict about one count of rape and one of attempted rape.

    Instead of focusing on whether a majority-male jury should even be allowed in such cases, the mainstream media commented on how Mendy’s life had been shaken up by the accusations. Rather than talking about how the women will have been traumatised by such a man, the BBC wrote that:

    The allegations and trial had been “absolute hell” for Mr Mendy.

    ‘Not all men’

    Of course, you might be a man reading this, thinking to yourself that “not all men” are misogynists, “not all men” are predators, and that “not all men” are sexist. But this is a tiresome argument, used by many of you around the world to excuse yourselves from doing any work on your own patriarchal behaviour. By saying “not all men”, you’re refusing to self-reflect. And this refusal is insulting to the very women who you claim to care about, and who you say you would never harm.

    The “not all men” argument is useless to us. It doesn’t make me or my friends any safer in our homes. It doesn’t prevent us from being harassed, or spiked in a club, or murdered by people who claim to love us. 1,425 women have been killed by men in the UK over a decade, between 2009 and 2018. 62% of women are killed by their current or former partner. Others are murdered by relatives. In 92% of the cases, the women knew their killer.

    Men, it’s time that you step up

    I have previously written about how UK society likes to victim-blame women for the misogyny we encounter. I said:

    As women, we are sick and tired of being told to moderate our behaviour. “Follow the rules”, they say. “Don’t walk alone in the dark”. “Don’t be drunk”. “Don’t dress a certain way”. How, exactly, does moderating our behaviour in any way address the root issue: the misogyny entrenched in our society?

    It is not, in any way, a woman’s responsibility to change how we act. The time has come for men to step up. Look at yourselves, your own behaviour, and the behaviour of your male friends. Look at how patriarchy is entrenched in all of you, and how you all need to do the work to unpick it. Call out your friends who have misogynist or sexist opinions, and challenge them. Don’t shy away from difficult conversations.

    And if women call you out for being sexist, don’t get defensive, and don’t let your male fragility rear its ugly head. Instead, take the time to reflect. When you want to open your mouth and protest, “but not all men”, think twice. After all, you can never, ever know what it’s like to live in a misogynist world.

    We need your understanding. But more than that, we need you to be actively willing to fight sexism and misogyny within yourselves and in society, wherever it manifests.

    Featured image via Eliza Egret

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Zara Aleena’s family is holding a vigil to ‘walk her home’ this weekend

    On Sunday 26 June, a man murdered Zara Aleena as she walked home in Ilford, East London. Jordan McSweeney appeared at Thames Magistrates’ Court on 29 June. He was charged with her murder, as well as robbery and attempted rape.

    Aleena’s devastated family shared a moving tribute ahead of a vigil to ‘walk her home’ on Saturday.

    Solidarity and condolences

    A man attacked Aleena near her home in Ilford, East London at 2am as she was on her way home from a night out.

    In a moving tribute to their slain loved one, Aleena’s family shared:

    She walked everywhere. She put her party shoes in a bag and donned her trainers. She walked. Zara believed that a woman should be able to walk home. Now, her dreams of a family are shattered, her future brutally taken.

    Many took to Twitter to share their solidarity and condolences. Deborah Coles – the director of INQUEST, a charity that works to support bereaved families impacted by state violence –  tweeted:

    Zarah Sultana, Labour MP for Coventry South, shared:

    And writer Taj Ali said:

    Not an isolated incident

    In their statement, Aleena’s family said:

    In a savage, sickening, act she was murdered by a stranger. She’s not the only woman who has lost her life like this. In the moment of this tragedy, we extend our deepest sympathy and love to the families of Bibaa Henry; Nicole Smallman; Sarah Everard; Sabina Nessa; Ashling Murphy and many more women.

    They added:

    We must PREVENT and STOP violence against women and girls.

    As The Canary‘s Eliza Egret highlighted following the murder of Sabrina Nessa in September 2021, women are even more at risk of experiencing misogynistic violence in their own homes.

    Reflecting this, feminist campaign group Level Up shared:

    Stop the victim blaming

    Responding to a victim blaming response to Aleena’s murder, journalist Lorraine King shared:

    Underlining that it isn’t women’s responsibility to moderate their behaviour in the face of misogynistic violence, another Twitter user shared:

    Indeed, male violence is the issue here. This systemic issue demands a systemic response. This means a total transformation of our culture and society. Every man has a role to play in this.

    Vigil to ‘walk Zara home’

    Aleena’s family plans to hold a vigil in her memory on Saturday 2 July at 1:30pm to “walk her home”.

    The End Violence Against Women Coalition campaign group tweeted:

    Aleena’s family is inviting members of the public to join them and help to ‘walk her home’. They have asked attendees to wear white, and to maintain a “silent and sombre” atmosphere for the vigil.

    Featured image via Mike Ralph/Unsplash resized 770 x 403px

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Sabina Nessa killer jailed for at least 36 years for sexually motivated attack

    Warning: this article contains graphic description of assault

    A sexual predator has been jailed for at least 36 years for the murder of primary school teacher Sabina Nessa.

    Koci Selamaj, 36, travelled to London from the south coast to carry out the premeditated attack on September 17 last year.

    The garage worker targeted 28-year-old Ms Nessa as she walked through Cator Park in Kidbrooke, south-east London, to meet a friend at 8.34pm.

    CCTV footage captured the moment Selamaj ran up behind her and hit her over the head 34 times with a 2ft-long metal traffic triangle. He carried her unconscious body up a grassy bank and out of view. He then pulled up her clothes, removed her tights and underwear, and strangled her before covering her body in grass.

    Ms Nessa, who taught a year one class at Rushey Green Primary School in Catford, was found nearly 24 hours later near a community centre in the park.

    Days later, Selamaj, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, was arrested in the seaside town and pleaded guilty to murder in February.

    Jailed for life

    On Friday, Selamaj refused to come to the Old Bailey and was jailed for life in his absence. Mr Justice Sweeney set a minimum term of 36 years for the “savage” sexually motivated attack.

    He said Ms Nessa was the

    wholly blameless victim of an absolutely appalling murder which was entirely the fault of the defendant.

    Her death added to “the sense of insecurity” particularly felt by woman walking through the city at night.

    He said:

    She had every right, as her family said, to be walking through the park all glammed up and out to enjoy herself after a long week at work…

    The defendant robbed her and them of her life.

    No remorse

    The judge noted the defendant’s guilty plea and lack of previous convictions. But he added:

    It is a striking feature of the defendant’s case that, clearly deliberately, it is not suggested by him that he had any remorse for what he did to Sabina Nessa.

    The judge said it was “cowardly” of the Albanian national to refuse to attend his sentencing but said he had no power to force him.

    Earlier, prosecutor Alison Morgan QC said Selamaj had been violent towards his ex-partner in the past, including throttling her a number of times.

    Three days before the attack on Ms Nessa, the defendant booked a room at the five-star Grand Hotel in Eastbourne, East Sussex, just five minutes from his home.

    At about 2.20pm on September 17, hotel staff alerted police via 101 after Selamaj checked in to his £325-a-night room. Police said they had been concerned about his demeanour and the fact he lived close by. Selamaj went on to contact his former partner in a failed bid to persuade her to have sex with him. She said in a statement that he appeared “very agitated” when they met in his car near the hotel.

    The defendant then drove his Nissan Micra to Brighton and on to Kidbrooke in south London. He used his bank card at Sainsbury’s to buy a rolling pin, chilli flakes and an energy drink. He rejected the rolling pin as a weapon in favour of the traffic triangle, which he was to use to attack Ms Nessa.

    Sabina Nessa death
    CCTV  of Koci Selamaj in Sainsbury’s buying a rolling pin before the murder (Met Police/PA)

    Ferocious attack

    He entered Cator Park shortly after 8pm and lay in wait for half-an-hour before Ms Nessa arrived en route to The Depot bar where she was due to meet a friend.

    Ms Morgan said Ms Nessa had expressed concern about being in the park after dark but decided to use the cut through that night because she was running late.

    In grainy footage played in court, Selamaj was seen running up behind Ms Nessa and launching a ferocious attack with the 2ft long traffic triangle. As he carried her up a grassy hill, they went out of shot for 20 minutes.

    Before leaving the park, he picked up pieces of the warning triangle and used wet wipes to clean a park bench near to where he launched his initial attack.

    En route back to the south coast, Selamaj dumped the warning triangle in the River Teise in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

    Police said Selamaj appeared to be “calm and collected” on his arrest.

    On being cautioned through a translator, Selamaj said:

    What will happen if I open up now and say everything?

    In mitigation, Lewis Power QC had said Selamaj had provided no explanation for why he killed Ms Nessa, adding:

    He simply accepts that he did it.

    ‘You are not a human being, you are an animal’

    Addressing her absent killer on Thursday, Ms Nessa’s parents Abdur Rouf and Azibun Nessa said in a statement:

    You had no right to take her away from us in such a cruel way.

    The moment the police officer came to our house and told her she was found dead our world shattered into pieces.

    How could you do such a thing to an innocent girl walking by, minding her own business.

    You are not a human being, you are an animal.

    Ms Nessa’s family hugged supporters as they left court.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Sarah Everard vigil organisers win High Court challenge against Met Police

    The Metropolitan Police breached the rights of organisers of a vigil for Sarah Everard with its handling of the planned event, High Court judges have ruled. Reclaim These Streets (RTS) proposed a socially-distanced vigil for the 33-year-old, who was murdered by former Met officer Wayne Couzens, near to where she went missing in Clapham, south London, in March last year.

    The four women who founded RTS and planned the vigil brought a legal challenge against the force over its handling of the event, which was also intended to be a protest about violence against women. They withdrew from organising the vigil after being told by the force they would face fines of £10,000 each and possible prosecution if the event went ahead, and a spontaneous vigil and protest took place instead.

    Wayne Couzens court case
    Sarah Everard (Family handout)

    Breach of human rights

    Jessica Leigh, Anna Birley, Henna Shah and Jamie Klingler argued that decisions made by the force in advance of the planned vigil amounted to a breach of their human rights to freedom of speech and assembly, and said the force did not assess the potential risk to public health.

    In a ruling on Friday, two senior judges upheld their claim, finding that the Met’s decisions in the run up to the event were “not in accordance with the law”.

    In a summary of the ruling, Lord Justice Warby said:

    The relevant decisions of the (Met) were to make statements at meetings, in letters, and in a press statement, to the effect that the Covid-19 regulations in force at the time meant that holding the vigil would be unlawful.

    Those statements interfered with the claimants’ rights because each had a ‘chilling effect’ and made at least some causal contribution to the decision to cancel the vigil.

    None of the (force’s) decisions was in accordance with the law; the evidence showed that the (force) failed to perform its legal duty to consider whether the claimants might have a reasonable excuse for holding the gathering, or to conduct the fact-specific proportionality assessment required in order to perform that duty.

    A “threat” to police reputation?

    Lawyers representing the four told the court at a hearing in January that notes of a Met gold command meeting the day before the proposed event included a statement that “we are seen as the bad guys at the moment and we don’t want to aggravate this”.

    Sarah Everard death
    A woman holds up a placard at the bandstand in Clapham Common (Victoria Jones/PA)

    Tom Hickman QC, representing the four, said in written arguments:

    The most significant ‘threat’ identified was not public health but the perceived reputational risk to the (force), including in the event they were perceived to be permitting or facilitating the vigil.

    The Met defended the claim brought by Reclaim These Streets and argued there was no exception for protest in the coronavirus rules at the time, and that it had “no obligation” to assess the public health risk. RTS took urgent legal action the day before the planned event, seeking a High Court declaration that any ban on outdoor gatherings under the coronavirus regulations at the time was “subject to the right to protest”.

    But their request was refused and the court also refused to make a declaration that an alleged force policy of “prohibiting all protests, irrespective of the specific circumstances” was unlawful.

    Police handcuffed women on the ground

    Couzens, 49, was given a whole life sentence, from which he will never be released, at the Old Bailey in September after admitting her murder. The policing of the spontaneous vigil that took place drew criticism from across the political spectrum after women were handcuffed on the ground and led away by officers.

    A report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services concluded the police “acted appropriately” when dealing with the event. But it also found it was a “public relations disaster” and described some statements made by members of the force as “tone deaf”.

    By The Canary

  • Questions To The Head Of UN Women On International Women’s Day

    Questions To The Head Of UN Women On International Women's Day

    Image: moderndiplomacyeu/@tibettruth

    On this International Women’s Day we have posted two questions to the current Executive Director of @UN_Women, Ms Sima Bahous. These were presented to her predecessor who not only found it difficult to answer, but blocked our Twitter account to avoid them! We have not gone away, nor has the justification and importance of these inquiries.

    This post was originally published on TIBET, ACTIVISM AND INFORMATION.

  • The Met police starts 2022 showing exactly why they shouldn’t be given more powers

    2022 has begun with yet another ridiculous claim from the Metropolitan police that it’s “supporting women’s safety“. There’s been uproar from the public since the Met tweeted a video on 2 January of its Taskforce Officers swabbing people’s hands for evidence of drug usage on the streets of Shoreditch. Embarrassingly for the Met, just one person – a woman – was arrested in the very operation that claimed to protect women.

    It’s exhausting to hear the same rhetoric parroted again and again, both by the police and by the government, claiming that they care about women’s lives. The government is doing nothing to tackle the systemic sexism and misogyny in society and in the police. Instead, it’s passing new laws that actually make women less safe, and is giving some of the country’s most violent men – police officers – inexhaustible new powers through both the police bill and the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Act, which was passed in 2021. The state has even provided further funding for Stasi-style undercover cops to lurk around in nightclubs (in the name of women’s safety, of course).

    Police are a danger to women

    While the police continue to claim that they’re making women safer, let’s remind ourselves of the fact that Sarah Everard was murdered by a Metropolitan police officer, and that the women who gathered to remember her were physically assaulted by the Met.

    And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Everard’s murderer was not just one ‘bad apple’. A document called #194andcounting shows that at least 194 women have been murdered by the police and prison system in England and Wales, either in state custody or in prison, since the 1970s. And let’s also remind ourselves of the disgusting Metropolitan police officers who took selfies of themselves next to the bodies of murdered women Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.

    The police aren’t just a menace to women on the streets. They’re also dangerous in their own homes. Back in May 2021, Channel 4 News reported that 129 women had come forward in the last two years to report that their police officer partner was abusing either them or their children. Channel 4 said:

    At least 129 women have approached the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) since 2019 with claims of being raped, beaten and coerced by their police officer spouses and partners.

    One former police commander described officer perpetrated domestic abuse as an “epidemic” within the force.

    Feminist group Sisters Uncut argues that while the police have power those who identify as women can never feel safe:

    In November 2021, Sisters Uncut stated that it was ‘withdrawing its consent to police power’. The group argued:

    The police claim Wayne Couzens was one bad apple, a lone monster, but we know 15 officers have killed women since 2009. We know colleagues referred to Couzens as ‘the rapist’. They did nothing. We know he exposed himself not once, but multiple times. They did nothing. We know he sent vile misogynistic racist and homophobic messages to colleagues on WhatsApp. They did nothing. We know that even after Couzens pled guilty, colleagues attended court to provide positive character references for him.

    It continued:

    We know the police treated the family of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman with utter contempt: officers took photos of their dead bodies and turned the horrific violence they’d experienced into a joke. Women in Black, immigrant, disabled and working class communities bear the brunt of complicity in this corruption.

    You are not obliged to cooperate with the police

    Of course, when hassling people on the streets, the police count on the fact that many of us don’t actually know our rights. If an officer questions us, or demands to search us, we feel obliged to comply with them. But if the police are going to continue randomly swabbing people’s hands for drugs, it’s important to know that we can walk away. The police’s stop and search powers do not extend to random drugs tests as Green and Black Cross makes clear:

    So while the police continue to rely on the public’s naivety as it hassles people on nights out, remember that we all have the right to resist rather than comply.

    There’s still time to stop the policing bill

    We can see that the police do not make our streets any safer for women, nor will random drugs tests or stop and searches make any difference. The problem is the ingrained misogyny of men in our society, and of those who have the monopoly of violence against us.

    The police already abuse the powers they have – so giving them even more powers is terrifying. The police bill, with its frightening new amendments, is currently in the House of Lords and could soon become law. Now is our last chance to resist these sweeping police powers. A national day of action has been called on 15 January. Let’s take to the streets again and kill the bill before it’s too late.

    Featured image via screengrab

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • TODAY: International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women,

    Women and girls everywhere continue to be subjected to multiple forms of gender-based violence, including femicide, online violence and domestic violence, UN and regional experts (for impressive list see below) said today. They call on States to exercise due diligence and to fight pushbacks on gender equality.

    On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, they issue the following statement: [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/11/19/16-days-of-activism-against-gender-based-violence-start-on-25-november-2019/]

    “Although they represent more than half the world’s population, women and girls the world over are still at risk of being killed and subject to violence, intimidation and harassment when they speak out – for the simple fact of being women and girls. Violence against women and girls is the result of intersectional forms of social, political, economic, racial, caste and cultural discrimination perpetrated daily against women and girls in all of their diversity, including in the context of armed conflict, and States and the international community have the obligation mandated by international human rights law and standards to address this violence. Together, these forms of discrimination not only aggravate the intensity and frequency of violence but also sharpen the impunity that exists against it and increase societal and individual readiness to allow it.

    Of particular concern is the fact that not only women and girls continue to be subjected to multiple manifestations of violence but that the spaces where this violence takes place have also multiplied. Nowhere is this more apparent than within online spaces, including social media. Governments, private companies and others may seek to hide their responsibilities behind the seemingly “borderless” nature of the internet. But human rights are universal and, as such, there is one human rights regime that protects the rights of women and girls offline as well as online, and that demands zero tolerance for violence against women and girls in the digital space. Violence against women and girls flourishes because those who seek to silence women and girls and facilitate their exploitation, abuse, maiming and killing are not firmly prevented from and held accountable for their actions.

    It is unacceptable that in today’s world where humanity and life on this planet faces the existential threats of climate change and toxic pollution amidst a proliferation of conflict; the COVID-19 pandemic has killed at least 5 million people and infected at least 250 million worldwide in less than two years, also causing an increase in domestic violence against women, that women and girls are unable to participate fully in responding to these threats or in the search for solutions because they are discriminated, abused and continue to suffer violence, including sexual violence, exploitation and death on the basis of their sex, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity. These global crises interact with and further deepen pre-existing inequalities as well as legal, institutional and policy gaps to eliminate gender-based violence against women and girls, which in many cases, worsen them. Indigenous women, internally displaced women, women with disabilities, lesbian and transgender women and women belonging to other vulnerable or marginalized groups are particularly affected by the failure of these policies to prevent such violence, as well as protect and assist survivors.

    While a number of States, non-state actors and other stakeholders have stepped up their interventions and resource allocations to prevent and respond to gender-based violence against women and girls, more effort in terms of both financial and non-financial interventions is needed to make these approaches truly transformative, particularly with regards to prevention, to avoid that policies remain ‘gender blind’, ‘gender exploitative’ or ‘race neutral’. Many of these policies do not disaggregate data based on social and racial constructs which discriminate, marginalize, exclude, and violate women and girls. These policies need to transform the prevailing social, economic and political systems that produce, nurture, and maintain gender inequality and drive violence against women and girls everywhere, through increased investment in their education and skills development, access to information, social services and financial resources, and support for positive representation and images in public discourse and social media. Collectively, they need to do more to challenge the patriarchal social norms and constructs of masculinity, femininity, racism and casteism that are based on extremely harmful stereotypes and which can cause psychological, physical, emotional and economical harm, including for women of colour, including those of African descent. These stereotypes pervade state institutions as evidenced by the lack of accountability for many cases before law enforcement and justice systems. States must also ensure access to comprehensive physical and mental care for survivors of gender-based violence, as part of the full range of quality sexual and reproductive health care that must be available for all.

    Collective effort is required to stop the reversal of progress made in ending violence against women across the world and to counter the backlash against gender equality and the tenets of human rights-based legislation and governance. Those responsible for these regressive steps often begin by attempts to co-opt the justice system, change or issue new legislation and curtail fundamental rights and freedoms for women and girls, such as their freedom of thought, expression and association, their right to peaceful assembly, freedom of association, freedom of thought and, in particular, their sexual and reproductive rights. All human rights are inalienable, interdependent and exist without a hierarchy, despite the efforts of some actors to sacrifice some of these rights at the expense of others, often in the name of their own cultural or religious norms and their particular perception of societal harmony.

    Women and girls around the world need to be heard; their voices should not be silenced nor their experiences go unnoticed. Women will never gain their dignity until their human rights are protected. Women’s rights are human rights. Women and girls’ agency and participation in all processes that affect their rights and lives need to be promoted and protected at all costs. States should ensure and create an enabling environment for women to exercise their fundamental freedoms of expression, association, peaceful assembly and public participation free from intimidation and attacks. States must exercise their due diligence obligation and protect women human rights defenders, activists and women’s organizations who are regularly harassed, intimidated and subjected to violence for defending their rights and promoting equality. The level and frequency of violence against them should raise alarm bells everywhere. It is, and should be, a public policy and a human rights priority.

    If we want to gauge the underlying health, security and prosperity of a society, we all need to address our duty to play a part in the respect and furtherance of women and girls’ rights. There will be no prosperity without ending violence against women and girls in the public as well as in the private sphere.

    There will be no ending of violence against women and girls if we don’t recognize and protect the dignity, rights and security of women and girls everywhere and at all times.” ENDS

    *The experts:

    Platform of independent expert mechanisms on the elimination of discrimination and violence against women (EDVAW Platform): Reem Alsalem*, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences; ****Melissa Upreti ****(Chair), **Dorothy Estrada Tanck **(Vice-Chair), Elizabeth Broderick, Ivana Radačić, and **Meskerem Geset Techane, ***Working Group on discrimination against women and girls*; ****Gladys Acosta Vargas, ***Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women;* Margarette May Macaulay******, ****Rapporteur on the Rights of Women of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights**; Iris Luarasi, President of the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence of the Council of Europe; Tatiana Rein Venegas**, President of the* Committee of Experts of the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention*; Maria Teresa Manuela, Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa.*

    Obiora Okafor*, Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity; Javaid Rehman, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran; Fabian Salvioli, Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence; Marcos A. Orellana, Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes; Francisco Cali Tzay, Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples; Vitit Muntarbhorn,*Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia*; Mama Fatima Singhateh, Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children; Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; **Victor Madrigal-Borloz, ***Independent Expert on Protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity*; ****Alioune Tine****, Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Mali; **Sorcha MacLeod (Chair-Rapporteur), Jelena Aparac, Ravindran Daniel, Chris Kwaja, ***Working Group on the use of mercenaries*; Gerard Quinn****, ****Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities*; Livingstone Sewanyana*, Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order; ****Fionnuala Ní Aoláin****, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism; Cecilia Jimenez-Damary, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons;** Saad Alfarargi, Special Rapporteur on the right to development; **Tomoya Obokata, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences; Fernand de Varennes****, Special Rapporteur on minority issues; Yao Agbetse, Independent Expert on the situation of Human Rights in the Central African Republic; **Nils Melzer, ***Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment*; Felipe González Morales, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants; Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing; Tlaleng Mofokeng, Special Rapporteur on the right to health; Attiya Waris, Independent Expert on debt, other international financial obligations and human rights; Pedro Arrojo Agudo, Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation;****Elina Steinerte**** (Chair-Rapporteur), ****Ms. Miriam Estrada-Castillo**** (Vice-Chair), ****Ms. Leigh Toomey****, ****Mr. Mumba Malila****, ****Ms. Priya Gopalan****, Working Group on arbitrary detention;** Michael Fakhri, Special Rapporteur on the right to food; Ahmed Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief; Muluka Anne Miti-Drummond,Independent Expert on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism; Siobhán Mullally, Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children; Clément Nyaletsossi Voule, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association**; **Isha Dyfan, ***Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Somalia* ; ****Luciano Hazan (****Chair-Rapporteur),**** Aua Balde ****(Vice-Chair),**** Gabriella Citroni, Henrikas Mickevicius**** and ****Tae-Ung Baik, ***Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances*; ****Alexandra Xanthaki, ***Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights;* **Morris Tidball-Binz ***Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions*; Anais Marin, Special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus; Surya Deva (Chairperson), Elżbieta Karska (Vice-Chairperson), Githu Muigai, Fernanda Hopenhaym, and Anita Ramasastry, Working Group on Business and Human Rights; David Boyd, Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment; Ms. Dominique Day (Chair), Ms. **Catherine S. Namakula (Vice-Chair), Ms. Miriam Ekiudoko,** Mr. Sushil Raj, Ms. Barbara G. Reynolds Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent; **Irene Khan, ***Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

    https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27851&LangID=E

    See also:

    https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/combating-violence-against-women-in-a-digital-age-utilising-the-istanbul-convention-grevio-general-recommendation-no-1-on-the-digital-dimension-of-vio

    https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2021/11/619e0ae14/refugee-women-lead-combating-gender-based-violence.html

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Stop violence and discrimination against women

    A Joint Statement by Mayer Daak and Odhikar on the Occasion of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, 2021

    Dhaka, 24 November 2021: Women in Bangladesh are facing lots of hurdles and challenges in personal and public lives. Along with patriarchy, the repressive nature of the authoritarian government in Bangladesh is causing many women and girls to be victimized by law enforcement agencies, pro-government political agents etc. It is hard for general people to get justice due to a dysfunctional criminal justice system and it has become harder for women to get justice.

    Due to enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, many female victim-family members suddenly find themselves having to take the role of breadwinners as well as fight for justice. They often face intimidation and harassment from security agents and almost all of them are facing severe financial crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic situation only makes the situation worse.

    ‘A UN Women report, based on survey data from 13 countries including Bangladesh shows that COVID-19 has taken away women’s feelings of safety, both at home and in public space, with significant negative impacts on their mental and emotional well-being.’ Due to COVID-19, the schools in Bangladesh closed for 18 months, which is considered as the world’s longest shutdown of schools during the pandemic. Last year there was a 13% increase in child marriages. The main reasons for the surge in child marriages were that girls dropped out of schools (due to their closure) and parents’ loss of income during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Rape, sexual harassment, dowry related violence, domestic violence and over all discrimination against women – have been pervasive in Bangladesh from even before the pandemic. During the pandemic, the situation worsened.

    25 November is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. To overcome the violence and discrimination against women – Odhikar believes that due to the absence of a democratic system, the representation of people, including women, are missing from all spheres of the social structure. A democratic system is very important to ensure women’s voices are heard and women receive justice. A strong, independent criminal justice system is very important in order to get redress of victims and to set an example in the society that no one can be spared by committing violence against women. Moreover, gender equality should be addressed in the curriculum of educational institutions everywhere. The vulnerable families who experience poverty and violence should be brought under a social safety net. Last but not least – the reservations to Articles 2 and 16 (1) (c) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) needs to be withdrawn and subsequent laws in Bangladesh needs to be revised to ensure women rights everywhere.
    ———
    Mayer Daak (“Mother’s Call”) is a platform of the families of victims of enforced disappearances in Bangladesh with the common goal of seeking the whereabouts of their loved ones and advocating for justice for the victims.

    Odhikar is a registered human rights organisation based in Dhaka, Bangladesh established on 10 October 1994 by a group of human rights defenders, to monitor human rights violations and create wider awareness. It holds special consultative status with the ECOSOC of the United Nations. www.odhikar.org

    Joint Statement_IDEVAW_Mayer Daak_Odhikar  (full text in English, PDF)

    This post was originally published on News – Odhikar.

  • “We Will Stop Femicide” winner of gender equality award 2021

    On 23 November, 2021 urdupoint.com reported that the Turkish human rights Platform “We Will Stop Femicide” has received the international prize for gender equality (IGEP), the Finnish Cabinet said on Monday. For more on this and similar awards, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/ef066ac0-e59c-11e7-8845-81361f38ae62

    We Will Stop Femicide was founded in 2010 to provide legal help to Turkish women facing abuse at home. It has been chosen as the winner out of about 400 applicants.

    “We are proud to announce the winner of the #IGEP 2021, WE WILL STOP FEMICIDE PLATFORM, a non-governmental organization that does groundbreaking work combating violence against women in Turkey and whose work has a global relevance. Congratulations!” the award’s organizers posted on Twitter.

    The prize was awarded in the Finnish city of Tampere to the founder of the organization, Gulsum Onal, by Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin.

    “The work of the We Will Stop Femicide Platform includes decision meetings, educational activities, informative seminars, mass protests, and a variety of correspondence meetings. The association seeks to work with provincial and district assemblies to ensure gender equality nationwide in Turkey,” Marin said.

    She further stressed the importance of a global effort to end violence against women and called on the international community to ensure protection of women‘s rights in all countries.

    Nobel Peace Laureate Nadia Murad also attended the ceremony.

    https://www.urdupoint.com/en/world/turkish-human-rights-activists-awarded-finnis-1407890.html

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Don’t be fooled by the Met’s ‘anger’ and ‘devastation’ at Sarah Everard’s murder. The institution is complicit.

    Content warning: the article below contains material some readers may find distressing

    On 30 September, Lord Justice Fulford handed down a whole life sentence to Wayne Couzens for the “devastating, tragic and wholly brutal” murder of Sarah Everard. Couzens was a serving Metropolitan Police officer when he kidnapped, raped and murdered Everard. He remained an officer after police arrested him in March. The force eventually sacked him in July, over a month after Couzens pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and rape of Everard, and a week after he pleaded guilty to her murder. Although the Met Police has attempted to distance itself from Couzens’ actions, campaigners have been quick to highlight that the institution is wholly complicit in Everard’s murder.

    Another death in police custody

    On 29 September, Couzens appeared at the Old Bailey for his sentencing in the kidnap, rape and murder of Everard. The court heard that Couzens – who was a serving Met Police officer at the time – handcuffed and falsely arrested Everard on 3 March in Clapham. Couzens showed Everard his warrant card before restraining her. Someone witnessed the off-duty officer handcuffing Everard and leading her to his car. They assumed that the young woman “must have done something wrong”. After kidnapping her, Couzens raped and murdered Everard, and left her body in the countryside.

    Reflecting on the devastating details of Everard’s murder, Roxy Legane tweeted:

    Jason Okundaye shared:

    In court, it emerged that Couzens may have may have used coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown regulations to stop Everard, who was on her way home. Underlining the injustices of the unprecedented restrictions and new police powers that the government introduced in the wake of the pandemic, Moya Lothian-McLean tweeted:

    Sarah Everard’s horrifying death drew widespread attention. But people from Black and other racially minoritised groups are overrepresented in the number of deaths following police contact. Urging people to critically assess officers’ conduct on the streets, Kojo Coram shared:

    Not just ‘one bad apple’

    Scotland Yard issued a statement ahead of Couzens’ sentencing, saying: 

    Georgia Lewis responded:

    Pre-empting the force’s attempts to distance itself from Couzens’ heinous crimes, feminist direct action group Sisters Uncut tweeted:

    Otegha Uwagba also shared:

    Sharing this sentiment, Black Lives Matter UK shared:

    Underlining the toxic culture and lack of accountability inherent in the country’s police forces, Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome shared:

    Feminist campaign group Level Up added:

    Calling for institutional accountability, senior researcher at the Center for Countering Digital Hate Sophie Wilkinson tweeted:

    No more police powers

    Highlighting the devastating impact of the government’s ‘law and order’ response to Everard’s murder, one Twitter user shared:

    Expanded police powers will hit people from already overpoliced and underprotected communities hardest – working class communities, communities of colour, disabled people, queer folks, and people from marginalised genders. Urging people to resist the inevitable expansion of police powers in response to Everard’s case, Ilyas Nagdee tweeted:

    Shahed Ezaydi explains carceral feminism as “feminism that pushes for increased policing, surveillance, and harsher laws and policies when dealing with gendered violence”. This is based on the flawed assumption that these systems and institutions are fundamentally just, supportive and benevolent to all victims and survivors. Seeking abolitionist alternatives to carceral feminist solutions to gendered violence, Sisters Uncut has launched a Copwatch Police Intervention project:

    Anyone looking to get involved in the Sisters Uncut’s new programme can sign up via the organisation’s online form. The horrifying details of Couzens’ conduct, and the lack of institutional accountability regarding the case show us just how vital it is that we maintain momentum in resisting the state’s increasingly authoritarian agenda.

    Featured image via Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona/Unsplash

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Why ‘she was just walking home’ feeds a victim-blaming narrative

    The murder of Sabina Nessa as she walked through a London park has, rightly, shaken women across the country yet again. It seems like only days ago we were reading similar headlines about Sarah Everard, Bibaa Henry, and Nicole Smallman.

    As women, we are sick and tired of being told to moderate our behaviour. “Follow the rules”, they say. “Don’t walk alone in the dark”. “Don’t be drunk”. “Don’t dress a certain way”. How, exactly, does moderating our behaviour in any way address the root issue: the misogyny entrenched in our society? As women, it’s not our responsibility to make sure we are safe. It’s our most basic right to be safe. If you’re a man reading this, it’s your responsibility to tackle misogyny within our society. Please don’t respond with, “but not all men”. Please don’t ignore the fact that this is a systemic failing that you’re a part of.

    The majority of women aren’t actually murdered on the street

    According to Counting Dead Women, at least 108 women have been killed by men, (or where a man is the principal suspect), in 2021 so far. On average, this year, a man has killed a woman every 2.5 days. Think about this. Every 2.5 days. This figure is far greater than the stories covered by news headlines. Usually, it’s young women, murdered while walking on our streets who are deemed worthy of mainstream media attention. “She was just walking home,” we now hear all the time.

    But the majority of women aren’t killed while walking down a city street. The Femicide Census names all of the 1,425 women killed by men in the UK over a decade, between 2009 and 2018. It has found that 62% of women are killed by their current or former partner. Others are murdered by relatives. In 92% of the cases, the women knew their killer. Many of the women had lived for years in abusive relationships, subjected to coercive control. In fact, the researchers argue that coercive control in a relationship is key to understanding whether a woman is in danger of being murdered.

    The ages of the 108 women killed by men this year vary greatly: 71-year-old Christina Arnold was killed by her husband of fifty years. 85-year-old Loretta Herman’s son was charged with her murder. And as I write this, the ex-partner of 26-year-old Bethany Vincent has stood up in court and denied her murder. Vincent was stabbed to death in a house, along with her nine-year-old son.

    Don’t ignore domestic abuse victims

    By giving the greatest headlines to those who were “just walking home”, or who were attacked on the street by strangers, are we somehow victim-blaming the women who were murdered by people they know, inside their homes? Are those killed by their husbands seen as less innocent? As a society, do we see them as complicit in their abuse because they weren’t murdered by a stranger, or because they didn’t walk away from their abuser?

    The Canary spoke to Alice Chambers, who works with survivors of domestic abuse. She said:

    We know that when women are killed it is usually by someone they know – two women are killed a week by a partner or ex-partner in England and Wales. Yet it is often when the perpetrator is a stranger that the story hits the headlines and protests ensue. What does this tell us about our views of domestic abuse victims?

    Chambers continued:

    Women are often blamed for the harm perpetrated against them by men. It seems this is even more so when women are attacked by their partners or ex-partners, with common responses being that she must have driven him to it or that she should have left him. Women killed by their partners and ex-partners are just as worthy of our compassion and rage as those killed by strangers and they are in no way responsible for what happened to them. We must get educated about domestic abuse and challenge these harmful myths.

    State failings

    Independent magazine Hate Zine, summaries our society nicely when it says:

    [Women’s] behaviour is constantly scrutinised, dissected and micromanaged by a society which is somehow still able to ignore the entrenched misogyny within.

    I have already written about how the state should be held accountable for the murder of women. Back in December 2020 I wrote:

    Under UK law, a perpetrator receives a minimum sentence of 15 years for murder if the weapon he used was already in the home where he committed the crime. But if the perpetrator takes a weapon to different location and kills someone, he is sentenced for a minimum of 25 years. It’s a travesty that the murder of someone in a home can be seen as a less serious murder than one on the street. And because most women are killed in their homes, this law can be seen as systemically sexist.

    And in April 2021 I wrote about how the government rejected amendments to the Domestic Abuse Bill: amendments that might have protected women more.

    The issue is men

    By focusing only on the victims who are attacked on the streets, it’s easy for the government and the police to come up with half-hearted solutions, like lighting our streets better, or giving us suggestions not to walk alone. And by ignoring all those domestic abuse victims murdered by men, the state don’t have to face the actual issue at hand. And that is male violence.

    The issue isn’t about whether we are safe alone at night. We aren’t even safe in our own homes, surrounded by those who are supposed to love us the most. So while we grieve Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard, remember, too, 85-year-old Loretta Herman, 71-year-old Christina Arnold and more than one hundred more women in 2021 who have barely made news headlines. Let’s continue to shout all of their names in rage as we fight against entrenched misogyny.

    Featured image via a Bristol activist. Used with permission

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • A Prison Guard Raped Me and Threatened My Life. Now I Fight for Others’ Lives.

    A person at a protest displays a sign reading "JUSTICE FOR WOMEN BEHIND BARS"

    I am a queer, Blackfoot mother of four kids, three dogs, two ferrets and one nonprofit organization. Once, I had an amazing career as a costume designer in the Atlanta entertainment and burlesque industry. But in 2013, I was arrested and sentenced to 12 months in prison. Theoretically, that’s nothing. Everyone told me I could do my time, come home and get back to my life as if it never happened. Before I left for prison, my brother said, “It’s a cake-walk deployment, Sis. You’ve survived worse.”

    I was shipped to a prison in south Georgia. A few months in, I was attacked by another woman in our dorm. She slammed my head into the concrete floor multiple times. She kicked me repeatedly, giving me several prison-issue combat boot bruises before my dormmates pulled her off. I was knocked unconscious and bleeding on the floor. I awoke to find a security officer standing over me, smacking me in the face and yelling, “Get your ass up to medical or we’ll drag you to lockdown.”

    In the medical office, the doctor said I had a concussion and bruised ribs but refused x-rays. He gave me two Advil and sent me limping back to my dorm. The following year, that doctor was fired after being linked to the deaths of at least nine women, and it was revealed that he had previously been sanctioned for medical negligence in another state.

    Later, a prison’s special investigator took my statement. I told him that I wanted to press charges against my attacker. He said “Nope, sorry. We don’t do outside charges here. What happens in prison, stays in prison.”

    I got up on a rainy morning, put on my browns (most people don’t actually wear orange in prison), and went to the gym with my dorm. I was walking laps with a couple of girls when the male officer approached us. He pulled me aside and said he needed to speak with me. Everyone knows that one-on-one interactions are not allowed between officers and inmates of the opposite sex. He said, “This will just take a second.” He grabbed the sleeve of my shirt and led me down the hall.

    He said that he had seen another inmate pass something to me and he had to collect it. I told him that I had nothing. Chills ran down my neck as he eyed my body from top to bottom and said: “I’m going to check you out anyway” with a smirk. I knew what was about to happen to me. I kept my eyes down and refused to look at him.

    The officer opened the door to a storage room. I remember the smell… sports equipment and a utility table. He pushed me into the room and shut the door behind him. I was terrified, I kept my back to him and my eyes on the floor ’cause I was not going to have this man’s face burned into my memory for the rest of my life. That’s when I began silently counting.

    I was shaking when he started groping me over my clothes in a twisted version of what he called a “pat-down search.” He got to the waistband of my pants and pulled them down to my ankles, then started rubbing up my legs with his bare hands. By this time, I was crying… “Please don’t.”

    He grabbed me by the throat and shoved my head onto the table, pressing his thumb into my voicebox, making it impossible for me to make a sound. He knew where to push and the exact pressure it took to keep me silent without cutting off air or leaving a bruise. He seemed to have done this before, many times. I heard him unbuckle his pants. I felt him spit on my ass and rub his penis in it before penetrating me. It was so forceful that he damaged my urethra and I was peeing blood for days after.

    While he was raping me, he said, “If you say anything, you will never see your kids again. I will kill you. We know how to make accidents happen here.”

    It was over in 7 minutes and 34 seconds.

    When he was done, I silently stood, crying, and tried to fix myself. He said, “Wipe your face off, girl. Next time you see me, you’re gonna beg me to do it again.” I was desperate to get out of his presence and determined to report him to security. Then my mind flashed back to what the prison’s special investigator said, “What happens in prison, stays in prison.” I knew there was no point in reporting. I told no one.

    After that, I did not leave my dorm unless it was mandatory. I went home in November 2014.

    I’m also a survivor of childhood sexual assault. In 7 minutes and 34 seconds, the barriers that held back my childhood trauma for 25 years were crushed. Instead of just the trauma of my prison rape, I now have nightmares of being assaulted as a 6-year-old as well.

    What happens in prison does not stay in prison. Within two weeks of coming home, I had to move out of the bedroom I had shared with my partner for 13 years. My children couldn’t hug me without feeling me flinch. To this day, I am terrified of most men and never stand too close.

    I watched the #MeToo movement unfold before my eyes. I realized that the #MeToo movement cannot exist in prison, because speaking out could cost you your life. Then I thought about the people I had left behind in hell, people that I love. Trans people suffer some of the worst abuses. I heard the head of security tell a trans man that he got raped cause he needed to be reminded that he was “born with a pussy…. that’s what pussies are for.” Officers often encourage trans prisoners to commit suicide — they might slide a razor under a trans woman’s cell door, or drop a bag of pills into a trans man’s property. This is followed by relentlessly telling the prisoner to kill themselves.

    Here in Georgia we lost 11 transgender and gender-nonconforming lives in one year. Officers seem intent on increasing this number by adding deaths in prison. Officers will leave a trans woman’s cell unlocked, so other inmates could have easy access to her, betting on if the woman would still be alive in the morning. These women face my 7 minutes and 34 seconds 20 times a day. I poured my heart into purpose and by 2016 I had started an organization that fights for the safety and medical care of trans prisoners.

    This essay is one of the very few times I have ever described my own experience in prison, and I am unlikely to do it again. The officer who assaulted me was sent to work in another facility and eventually fired because another woman he assaulted was brave enough to speak up. I still feel shameful about not protecting the women who came after me and shameful about not having the courage to report him.

    Now, I have a secret habit of throwing my activities into spaces of 7 minutes and 34 seconds. I try to fill that time with positive things that give life instead of taking it. In 7 minutes and 34 seconds, I can send a supportive letter to a prisoner. In 7 minutes and 34 seconds, I can read a bedtime story to my grandson. In 7 minutes and 34 seconds, I can write the most amazing hate mail for Department of Corrections administrators and even the governor.

    I have helped save and affirm lives in those 7 minutes, over and over again. What can you do to give life in that time?

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Dems Blast McCarthy Over Joke About Violence Toward Pelosi With Speaker’s Gavel

    House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) is facing criticism for joking about hitting the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) with the Speaker’s gavel if Republicans win the House in the 2022 midterm elections.

    During a GOP fundraiser Saturday, Republican members of the Tennessee congressional delegation presented McCarthy with an oversized gavel, symbolic of the one Pelosi uses in her role as Speaker. The Republican leader responded by inviting those in attendance to come to Washington, D.C., in 2023, should the GOP win control of the House next year.

    “I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel,” McCarthy said. “It will be hard not to hit her with it.”

    A spokesperson for Pelosi said that McCarthy’s comments were out of line, especially in light of the threats on the Speaker’s life during the attack on the Capitol building on January 6, when a mob in support of former President Donald Trump threatened to upend the certification of the 2020 election results.

    “A threat of violence to someone who was a target of a #January6th assassination attempt from your fellow Trump supporters is irresponsible and disgusting,” tweeted Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff Drew Hammill.

    Democrats have demanded an apology from McCarthy.

    “America has suffered enough violence around politics. @GOPLeader McCarthy is now a would-be assailant of @SpeakerPelosi,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-California) said. “He needs to resign.”

    “There’s nothing funny about hitting Speaker Pelosi or any woman,” agreed Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pennsylvania). “Leader McCarthy is a failed leader. He continues to reminds [sic] us that nothing will get in the way of his ambitions — including joking about hitting a woman to excite his small base.”

    “It’s no wonder Kevin McCarthy can’t control his caucus,” opined Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Massachusetts). “He can’t even control his own misogyny. His language about assaulting @SpeakerPelosi is despicable and certainly undeserving of a gavel.”

    Notably, federal law makes it a crime to “knowingly and willfully” make threats to any individual who is part of the line of succession to the office of the president. Pelosi, as Speaker of the House, is second in line. McCarthy is unlikely to face severe repercussions for his comments over the weekend, but his words will likely inflame the far right base of supporters, which the Republican Party has done little to quell in the months since the attacks on January 6.

    Tensions between Pelosi and McCarthy have escalated in recent weeks over the January 6 commission. McCarthy sought to name individuals to that commission that had spread false narratives of what happened on that day (including wrongly placing blame on the Speaker for the violence that occurred), prompting Pelosi to reject those picks. In response, McCarthy withdrew all of his nominations in protest, forcing Pelosi to name Republicans to serve on it.

    Republicans are hopeful that McCarthy can lead his party to take control of the House in the 2022 midterm races next year. Typically, the opposition party to a new president performs well in the first midterms, but polling suggests it could be difficult this time around for the Republican leader to become the next Speaker of the House.

    An Economist/YouGov poll conducted in late July found that both political parties are under water when it comes to their approval ratings among the American electorate. However, whereas Democrats have a net rating of -8 points, Republicans’ net rating is far worse, at -22 points, the poll found.

    A poll from Quinnipiac University suggests that these viewpoints could translate into an upset win for Democrats in 2022, if the trends hold true between now and then. Asked who they preferred to win the House next year, 49 percent of respondents in that poll, conducted in late May, said they wanted Democrats to stay in power, while only 40 percent said they hoped Republicans would win.

    In spite of those odds, it’s possible Republicans could wrest control of the House from Democrats without even needing to court more voters than they did in 2020. An analysis from a Democratic-aligned data firm called TargetSmart last week found that Republicans could pick up between six to 13 seats by gerrymandering political maps in four southern states alone.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Police forces ignored sexual harassment allegations against Sarah Everard’s killer

    The Metropolitan Police force is under pressure to investigate how Sarah Everard’s killer was able to continue serving as an officer despite several sexual harassment allegations.

    Serving constable Wayne Couzens had been accused of indecent exposure three times before he abducted Everard in Clapham, south London, on 3 March.

    He pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to the murder of the 33-year-old marketing executive on Friday 9 July. He had previously admitted to her kidnap and rape.

    ‘Epidemic of male violence’

    Harriet Wistrich is director of the Centre for Women’s Justice. She’s among those calling for a full public inquiry into “police failures and misconduct and the wider culture of misogyny” following Couzens’ guilty plea.

    Everard’s murder sparked protests by women fearing for their own safety earlier in 2021.

    Wistrich said:

    As protesters made clear, women do not feel safe and it is incumbent on the Government and all criminal justice agencies to now take action over the epidemic of male violence which is the other public health crisis of our day.

    Sarah Everard death
    Wayne Couzens (Met Police)

    Failures

    Nick Thomas Symonds, the shadow home secretary, has also urged police to review their vetting process.

    The Labour MP said:

    Society puts huge trust in the police to keep us safe…

    It is absolutely vital that everything possible is done to ensure this can never happen again.

    The Metropolitan Police and wider policing must look at vetting processes and their own safeguarding systems to ensure people who pose a threat to the public are not able to hold such vital positions of trust.

    An indecent exposure allegation against Couzens dates back to 2015. The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has launched an investigation into alleged failures by Kent Police to investigate the allegation.

    An IOPC probe is also ongoing into alleged failures by the Met police. That’s in relation to allegations of indecent exposure linked to Couzens in London in February 2021. Two officers are under investigation for possible breaches of professional standards.

    The watchdog said a total of 12 gross misconduct or misconduct notices have so far been served on police officers from several forces relating to the Couzens case.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Three-month Human Rights Monitoring Report on Bangladesh : April-June 2021

    This report has been prepared on the human rights situation in Bangladesh from April to June 2021. The Awami League-led government, which came to power by depriving the people of their right to vote, has systematically turned various important state institutions into subservient ones through partisanship; and introduced an authoritarian regime. As a result, the human rights situation in the country has not improved in any way during this reporting period. The report reviews cases of violations of civil and political rights, including state repression, deprivation of the right to life and other human rights violations.

    HR-Report_April-June_2021 (full text in English, PDF)

    This post was originally published on News – Odhikar.

  • ত্রৈমাসিক মানবাধিকার প্রতিবেদন : এপ্রিল-জুন ২০২১

    ২০২১ সালের এপ্রিল থেকে জুন পর্যন্ত সময়ে বাংলাদেশের মানবাধিকার পরিস্থিতি নিয়ে এই প্রতিবেদনটি প্রস্তুত করা হয়েছে। জনগণের ভোটের অধিকার কেড়ে নিযে ক্ষমতায় আসা আওয়ামী লীগ সরকার পরিকল্পিতভাবে দেশের বিভিন্ন গুরুত্বপূর্ণ রাষ্ট্রীয় প্রতিষ্ঠানগুলোকে দলীয়করণের মাধ্যমে তাদের আজ্ঞাবহ প্রতিষ্ঠানে পরিণত করেছে এবং এক কর্তৃত্ববাদী শাসনব্যবস্থা চালু করেছে। ফলে এই সময় পর্যন্ত দেশের মানবাধিকার পরিস্থিতির কোন উন্নতি হয়নি। এই প্রতিবেদনটিতে নাগরিক ও রাজনৈতিক অধিকার লঙ্ঘনসহ রাষ্ট্রীয় নিপীড়ন, জীবনের অধিকার থেকে জনগণকে বঞ্চিত করাসহ অন্যান্য গুরুত্বপূর্ণ মানবাধিকার লঙ্ঘনের ঘটনাগুলো পর্যালোচনা করা হয়েছে।

    এখানে এখানে ক্লিক করলে সম্পূর্ণ প্রতিবেদন বাংলায় দেখতে পাবেন।

    This post was originally published on News – Odhikar.

  • Honoring Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE): A 2021 Recipient of the Don & Arvonne Fraser Human Rights Award

    At the heart of human rights work lies a strong commitment to justice and an ability collaborate with community partners – two qualities which Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE) champions. WAVE has been a long-time partner of The Advocates for Human Rights. A network based in Vienna, Austria, WAVE is dedicated to uplifting and protecting the rights of women and children. Together, the two organizations have worked on global initiatives to protect women’s rights. Stephanie Futter-Orel – Executive Manager of the WAVE Network and expert on the prevention of gender-based violence – and Marcella Pirrone –WAVE President and women’s rights lawyer – are two staunch women’s rights defenders from WAVE who have been integral to the partnership between WAVE and The Advocates. Earlier this month, I was lucky enough to speak with these two women and learn more about their collaboration with The Advocates and impact that their work at WAVE has had on the state of women’s rights in Europe.

    WAVE is a feminist network comprised of 160 member organizations in 46 different European countries. WAVE works to tackle and prevent violence against women and children through advocating for better legislation and providing their partner organizations with the resources to do the same. Futter-Orel notes, “[t] here is a lot of good theory out there, but the practice is often the problem…Our member organizations learn about good practices from other countries.” WAVE members include non-governmental organization networks, survivors, and academics – all of whom work together to protect the human rights of women and children. The organizations within the WAVE network provide a combination of counseling and legal support. Futter-Orel describes the impact of WAVE’s work:

    [WAVE] provides holistic support. All of our members provide very targeted and specialized support to women. [This] in effect, leads to [these] women being able to exit either a violent relationship or other forms of violence … up to eight times quicker than if they just engaged with a generic victim support service or state agency. A lot of the women that our members work with would not approach government services like the police or social services.

    WAVE Project Highlights

    Every two years, WAVE publishes a Country Report, which provides an overview and assessment of specialist support services for women in four key areas: women’s shelters, national helplines, women’s centers, and specialist support services for survivors of sexualized violence. The data collected through the Country Report identifies the gaps in resources and serves as a tool to increase awareness and lobby for increased services. The most recent WAVE Country Report is from 2019, and WAVE’s next report will be finished by the end of 2021. This country report is particularly important with respect to countries that have signed and or ratified the Istanbul Convention. The Istanbul Convention, also known as the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, is an international treaty dedicated to preventing violence against women. WAVE President Marcella Pirrone noted during a conference in Berlin, celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Istanbul Convention, that the “Istanbul Convention is an important instrument to defend women’s human rights, which sets gold standards in preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.” Futter-Orel contends that “[t]he problem is … particularly for those countries where the Istanbul Convention has been signed and ratified, their governments say that they have great services and great funding … [but, in reality,] that is often not the case.” The WAVE Country Report provides a grass roots perspective on the progress of the services in these countries. Futter-Orel further notes, “during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, women’s specialist services were often the ones who continued their service provision, and even expanded it to providing food and other basic supplies, where many government organisations were unable to provide any services or only to a very reduced degree. These women’s organisations did this, without any additional funding and even with less funding than prior to the pandemic, often relying on volunteers.”

                Another WAVE initiative is CYBERSAFE – a partnership project that developed and promote an innovative experiential educational prevention programme – the CYBERSAFE Toolkit – that includes playful online tools to address the issue of online violence against women and girls among young people (13–16 years old) in a classroom setting. CYBERSAFE promotes healthy relationships and gender equality online.

    Partnership between WAVE and The Advocates

    Pirrone and Futter-Orel proudly spoke of the joint mission and passion between WAVE and The Advocates. “Meeting The Advocates was very inspiring because I could immediately recognize [their] commitment and strong motivations. I could recognize this sisterhood base which we can build on in terms of having the same goals and passions about women’s human rights,” Pirrone noted. “There is also an enriching perspective to have a dedicated human rights network that comes from a different context outside of Europe but works with us in Europe and has expertise in Europe” Futter-Orel added. Pirrone and Futter-Orel spoke highly of the impact that The Advocates’ research has had on WAVE’s advocacy work. “Rarely is research so targeted to our sector as theirs. The Advocates for Human Rights fill a very crucial gap in research… They provide tailor made support” Futter-Orel noted. They attribute this successful research to The Advocates’ ability to have such strong support from pro bono lawyers and researchers. The remarkable WAVE representatives spoke fondly of the way that The Advocates were able to bring different, yet informed, perspectives to human rights conflicts, calling it a “rich exchange between different cultures and political situations.” Futter-Orel remarked on the power of the partnership between WAVE and The Advocates:

    Increasingly the world is becoming more interconnected and violence against women cannot be [solely addressed through] resources on local or even regional levels. But it needs a global collaboration. We can learn as regions from one another. Every region has some strong practices – good and promising practices ¬¬– which could be replicated in other regions. We should not be constantly re-inventing the wheel. We can really strengthen each other.

    Women’s Program Director Rosalyn Park spoke warmly about WAVE and the partnership, as well: “WAVE is a unique network that unites women’s human rights organizations from across multiple countries that are facing different challenges. Yet, thanks to WAVE’s work, these women’s human rights defenders come together, stronger together. The impact of WAVE is tremendous – they build capacity of human rights activists, increase public awareness of violence against women, and disseminate cutting-edge information on women’s human rights. I regularly use WAVE’s resources as a source of reliable, up-to-date information in our work. I’m so grateful for our partnership over the years.”

    WAVE’s enthusiasm and passion for justice is infectious and has been a source of inspiration for The Advocates. Thank you, WAVE, for all the tremendous work that you do. It is with great honor that The Advocates presents to you the 2021 Don & Arvonne Fraser Human Rights Award.

    Please join us on Thursday, June 24 for the Human Rights Awards Dinner to Celebrate WAVE and all of our 2021 award recipients. RSVP on our website to receive access information. 

    By Jenna Schulman, Advocates for Human Rights intern and student at the University of Pennsylvania 

    This post was originally published on The Advocates Post.

  • Rally against violence against women draws hundreds

    The Blue Mountains Women’s Health and Resource Centre rally against violence against women brought hundreds of sex and gender diverse community members together. Rachel Evans reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Advocates Contributes to Special Rapporteur Thematic Report on Rape

    UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré
    Dubravka Šimonović, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, one of the experts making the call. 

    U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women (VAW) Dubravka Šimonovic has released her thematic report on rape as a grave and systematic violation of human rights and gender-based violence against women.  The Advocates contributed a detailed written response to the Special Rapporteur’s initial request for submissions about local laws on rape and sexual violence. The Advocates also joined the Expert Group Meeting on May 27, 2020 to discuss a wide variety of issues about rape laws and implementation. The Special Rapporteur invited The Advocates’ Women’s Program director Rosalyn Park to that meeting of worldwide experts and cited to The Advocates’ comments in the Expert Group Meeting’s report. 

    Based on input from dozens of organizations and states, the Special Rapporteur on VAW issued numerous conclusions and recommendations. Some notable recommendations for states’ legal framework addressing rape are: 

    • The law should protect all persons, regardless of gender expression or sexual orientation 
    • Spousal rape should be criminalized, and states should abolish provisions mitigating consequences if the rapist marries the victim 
    • Rape by a spouse should be an aggravating, rather than a mitigating, or nullifying, factor 
    • Non-consent should be the central focus of rape statutes, without requiring proof of force 
    • Force, injury, use of a weapon, exploitation of intoxication, and multiple perpetrators should be among the aggravating factors for rape, beyond the basic nonconsensual offense 
    • The victim’s testimony should not need further corroboration to be considered as evidence of rape 
    • The law should include rape shield provisions, to exclude from evidence the victim’s previous sexual history 
    • There should be no statute of limitations for rape, or at most, prolonged limitations periods permitting victims time to heal and for children to reach adulthood before initiating rape proceedings 
    • States should collect data on prosecution, sentencing, and the attrition of reported rape cases 

    This report should help leaders craft statutes and response strategies to improve accountability for rape. 

    The Advocates for Human Rights thanks the U.N. Special Rapporteur Dubravka Šimonovic for her six years’ tenure as the special rapporteur on violence against women. Throughout the course of her appointment, she carried out numerous country visits to assess the situation of violence against women in countries including Georgia, Bulgaria, Ecuador, and Nepal. She issued several thematic reports on issues that spanned COVID-19 and domestic violence, mistreatment and violence against women in childbirth, violence against women in politics, online violence against women, and shelters and protection orders. The Advocates expresses its gratitude and congratulations to the U.N. Special Rapporteur Dubravka Šimonovic for her longstanding commitment and service to women’s human rights.

    The Advocates for Human Rights is a nonprofit organization dedicated to implementing international human rights standards to promote civil society and reinforce the rule of law.

    Curious about volunteering? Please reach out. The Advocates for Human Rights has an opportunity for you.

    Eager to see change? Give to our mission, our vision, our work. Your gift matters.

    This post was originally published on The Advocates Post.

  • The government has voted against protecting women

    The Tory government’s rejection of key amendments to the Domestic Abuse Bill has, once again, shown its misogyny and racism. On Thursday 15 April, the government voted against vital House of Lords amendments which would have given women more safety and would have monitored perpetrators of domestic abuse.

    Voting against a national register of serial abusers and stalkers

    In the UK, a woman is murdered by a man every three days. Of these women, 62% are murdered by men who are currently, or have previously been, in an intimate relationship with them. Women are most likely to be murdered in their own homes, showing that a home is most definitely not a safe haven. Meanwhile, “almost one in five women” will be stalked in their lifetime.

    Despite these facts, 350 Conservative MPs – including Boris Johnson and Priti Patel – voted against putting serial domestic abusers and stalkers on a national register. Just two Tories voted in favour. The amendment would have been key to protecting women from violence, something that Patel claimed she was “determined” to tackle in the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder. In fact, Patel previously said:

    there is something about perpetrators and their serial offending that has to be addressed, there is no question about that at all.

    The Canary spoke to Annie Stevens, who works with domestic abuse survivors. Stevens said:

    We know that one of the clearest predictors of abuse is a history of abusive behaviour. Tories showed their total disregard for women’s safety by voting against a register for domestic abuse perpetrators which would have included a strategy for monitoring perpetrators and prevention of further abuse. We have to ask, whose interests are they protecting?

    Voting against protecting migrant women

    It’s perhaps less surprising that the Tories also voted against giving migrant women equal protection against perpetrators. Migrant victims of abuse have no recourse to public funds and can’t access women’s refuges. They can’t report domestic abuse to the police for fear of their data being shared with immigration enforcement. The amendments argued for what Step Up Migrant Women UK called:

    the inclusion of safe reporting mechanisms into the Bill to ensure migrant survivors can report abuse to the police and access support without the fear of any immigration enforcement.

    When the amendments were rejected, Southall Black Sisters released a statement, saying:

    Had these amendments been accepted, they would have put a decisive end to the two-tier discriminatory system of support that exists for victims of abuse in the UK; a system which determines whether or not a woman deserves safety and security based on her immigration status. Had these amendments been accepted, they would have also ended the climate of impunity that exists for perpetrators who harm women without consequence, precisely because of their insecure immigration status.

    Voting against judges being specially trained in domestic abuse cases

    The same politicians united together to vote against yet another amendment which might have led to more perpetrators being found guilty of abusing women. The amendment would have ensured that judges and magistrates were provided with specialist training “concerning rape, sexual and domestic abuse and coercive control”, including being trained in survivors’ trauma, as well as being educated in the risks that survivors face when giving evidence against perpetrators.

    Stevens told The Canary:

    We continually see family court judges making bad decisions due to their ignorance around domestic abuse, often falling for the manipulations of the perpetrator and putting women and children in dangerous situations. How an amendment to educate people who have such power over other people’s lives could be voted down is unfathomable.

    Don’t fall for Tory lies

    These rejections of amendments to the Domestic Abuse Bill are yet another example of the complete disregard that the Tories have towards both women in general and migrant women in particular. They are, evidently, very intent on upholding their hostile environment. This government can only be trusted to look out for its own, and that certainly doesn’t include Women of Colour.

    Stevens argues that we need radical change, tackling the structural and societal reasons for domestic abuse and educating young people on patriarchy and misogyny:

    What we desperately need is more work to change societal values. We live in a society that raises men to believe they must dominate women and that it’s acceptable to abuse them to maintain control. Misogynistic attitudes and outdated gender norms must be challenged wherever they arise and we must educate children and young people before these beliefs can get a hold.

    At the same time, we need to fight against institutional racism and build a radically different society where migrant women’s lives matter. We also need to tackle the root causes of poverty, since domestic abuse intersects with homelessness too. It’s clear these radical changes needed won’t come from our government. It’s down to us.

    Featured image via Marc Nozell – Flickr

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Sexual Assault Bill Moves Through Minnesota Senate: Needs Your Support

    On March 24, 2021, many Minnesotans were shocked to learn that state law does not punish the sexual violation of a victim who became intoxicated by drinking voluntarily. The Minnesota Supreme Court, in State v. Khalil, determined that the criminal-sexual-conduct statute applies only if the intoxicant was administered without the victim’s agreement. They overturned Mr. Khalil’s conviction and started a firestorm among members of the public and the media. 

    But this result was no surprise to many who work within criminal legal systems. It confirmed what survivors, advocates, and prosecutors have complained about for a long time: the statute leaves a gap for those victims who used an intoxicating substance intentionally to the point of extreme intoxication, but not to the point of being all but unconscious – “physically helpless” – by legal definition. This gap and many others were the subject of an 18-month effort by numerous stakeholders, resulting in two legislative bills currently on the table. The Advocates’ staff attorney, Kaarin Long, was among those stakeholders. 

    Among the many important provisions in these bills are these: 

    ·        A “voluntarily intoxicated” provision to punish those who knew or should have known that the other person was too intoxicated to give consent to sexual conduct 

    ·        A sexual extortion provision to punish using blackmail-like threats to compel unwanted sexual conduct – such as threats to the victim’s housing or employment, to share private sexual images, or to report the victim to immigration authorities 

    ·        A provision to clarify that educators and their staff are prohibited by their professional jobs from sexual conduct with high-school students, even if they are not directly in a position of authority over the student, as provided in current statute 

    ·        A low-level felony offense for sexual penetration without consent, even absent proof of force or intoxication, to emphasize that sexual penetration requires affirmative consent 

    ·        A provision protecting thirteen-year-olds as the children that they are instead of grouping them with older teenagers under the law regarding sexual conduct 

    ·        A provision that caps at five years the age-range within which a person can claim they made a “mistake of age” regarding sexual conduct with a 14- or 15-year-old, replacing the current ten-year cap on the “mistake of age” defense 

    These provisions are based on the experiences of survivors and those who wished to seek justice for them, but could not do so based on current law. 

    The House Bill (HF707) has passed its House committees, and the Senate Bill (SF1683), is proceeding through Senate committees now. Although the language in the bills has been vetted by a wide and diverse array of professionals and survivors, there is no guarantee that the Senate will pass the language so that it can become law. Our call to action: please contact your senator and ask that they encourage GOP Senate leadership to pass the entire bill, not solely the intoxication provision. Let’s not wait any longer to create accountability for the harm of sexual violence. 

    The Advocates for Human Rights is a nonprofit organization dedicated to implementing international human rights standards to promote civil society and reinforce the rule of law.

    Curious about volunteering? Please reach out. The Advocates for Human Rights has an opportunity for you.

    Eager to see change? Give to our mission, our vision, our work. Your gift matters.

    This post was originally published on The Advocates Post.

  • Migrant Worker Women Submit First Petition Against The US Under USMCA

    Maritza Perez and Adareli Ponce have filed the first-ever petition against the U.S. under the USMCA in a pivotal moment for the fight to end gender discrimination against migrant worker women on temporary labor migration programs. The petition was signed by a binational coalition of allies led by CDM.

    Migrant worker women are denied jobs, channeled into lower-paying roles and exposed to gender-based violence at their workplace. They’ve fought for justice, demanding the U.S. government put in place enforcement measures that ensure equity and dignity for migrant worker women.

    The post Migrant Worker Women Submit First Petition Against The US Under USMCA appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Racism and Sexism in the Atlanta shootings: Must It Be An Either/Or?

    The recent shootings in Atlanta reveal what happens when racism and misogyny converge in tragedy. We often see only one issue (racism) while ignoring the other (misogyny). Yet the murder of women because they are women, known as femicides, is rampant. Every hour, six women are murdered by a man somewhere in the world. In the United States, an estimated 1,840 women were murdered by men and boys in 2018. And in Georgia, 74 women were killed by men during that same year. Despite the sky-high numbers, we don’t read about these femicides in the everyday news. Yet, it was the killing of eight individuals, seven of them women, that grabbed national headlines on Tuesday. The defining feature of the Atlanta spa shootings was that six of the victims were Asian women, and in the wake of harassment of Asian Americans nationwide, the murders seized national attention and condemnation.  

    The shootings come at a time when we are seeing a wave of attacks against Asian Americans. Earlier statements by President Trump blaming China for COVID-19, calling it the “Kung Flu” and “China Virus,” fueled anti-Asian sentiment. Such racism was not something borne out of the pandemic and its misattributions to the Asian community but has been long embedded throughout history. Discrimination against Asian Americans range from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 restricting migration of Chinese workers to the Japanese internment camps during WWII. Throughout time, we have also seen private actors exerting their own violence and discrimination through deeds and words. In some cases, we see community members themselves inflicting acts of violence upon members of the Asian community. During the 1871 Chinese massacre, rioters murdered 10 percent of Los Angeles’ Chinese population. Today, we see a tragic repeat of that violence directed at Asian women in the Atlanta shootings at the spas.  

    News coverage has consistently pointed out the suspect’s denials of racial motivation. While the media highlights his addiction to sex as the motivation, it redirects readers’ attention to the spas as illicit massage parlors found on erotic review websites. In doing so, the media skims through the glaring point that the shootings are, quite simply, an act of violence against women. It does not matter where they work or what they do for a living. We are in the midst of a global pandemic, but we also have another worldwide epidemic on our hands and one that underpins the Atlanta shootings: violence against women. Violence against women is a worldwide, public health problem that, like COVID-19, affects every country. The World Health Organization estimates that one in three women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime, most often by an intimate partner.  

    In this case, the suspect proclaimed his need to eliminate the sexual “temptations” created by the Asian women. His statements not only reinforce the sexualized and submissive stereotypes that Asian women endure, but they also diminish his accountability when positioned alongside the illicit—and possibly commercial sex trade—massage parlors. Such talk of temptations, in turn, stirs up the age-old practice of blaming women for men’s bad behavior. We see this excuse repeated over and over again: she was flirting with another man, so he beat her; she drank too much, so he raped her, and in this case, the women were a temptation to him, so he killed them.  

    While the shootings have been framed as attacks against Asian-Americans, Georgia state representative Nguyen aptly described the shootings as an “intersection of gender-based violence, misogyny and xenophobia.” The mass shootings in Atlanta are more than just another horrific story of gun violence. The shootings are more than attacks against a racial group. They are a manifestation of both a long history of discrimination and misogyny endemic to our culture. Put simply, they are an attack against a particular racial group because they are women. Until we realize this is both an attack on Asian-Americans and women, we fail to see the full picture of intersectional violence. And until we can do so, we will only be addressing one piece of the problem.  

    Rosalyn Park is the Director of the Women’s Human Rights Program at The Advocates for Human Rights

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    This post was originally published on The Advocates Post.