FGM
- Ivana Ramirez
- • February 5, 2021
A coup staged in Myanmar; the UN’s first unofficial feminist dies; Aleksei Navalny’s sentencing. You are reading This Week @UN, a summary of the most pressing issues facing the organization. The information is gathered from the UN spokesperson’s press…
- Rhona Scullion
- • August 11, 2020
Just four months ago, Sudan took the monumental step to ban female genital mutilation, a painful, unnecessary and dangerous procedure that leaves lasting scars. Generally carried out on girls before they reach puberty, genital mutilation is now punishable in…
- Categories: Africa, Covid-19, Gender Violence, SDGs
- Rhona Scullion
- • October 3, 2016
NOTTINGHAM, England — Female genital mutilation has been illegal in England and Wales since 1985. Scotland has similar but separate legislation. Much more comprehensive laws forbidding the practice were introduced in 2003 and again in 2015, creating additional safeguards…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Women
- Johanna Higgs
- • July 9, 2016
ERBIL, Iraq — Despite the war crimes being committed against women and girls in northern Iraq since the extremist group ISIS invaded two years ago, rejection of entrenched violence and discrimination against females may be taking root among pockets…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Middle East, Terrorism, Women
- Lori Silberman Brauner
- • February 15, 2016
It is not often that the word “clitoris” is uttered in public forums of the United Nations. Yet participants in the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation at UN headquarters recently heard that word repeatedly, along with…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • August 11, 2015
Almost 20 years have passed since the genital mutilation of girls has been outlawed in the United States, but the traditional practice has continued to grow ever faster in recent years with increased immigration from parts of Africa where…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Human Rights, Women
- Dulcie Leimbach
- • November 20, 2014
BAMAKO, Mali — In the primarily Francophone and Anglophone region of West Africa, Mali is said to have one of the highest rates of female genital mutilation, with about 91 percent of girls and women having undergone the circumcision…
- Categories: Africa, Gender Violence, Health and Population, Human Rights, Middle East, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • June 18, 2014
Putting a new focus on maternal health and obstetric fistula in particular, which devastates the lives of women and girls in many poor countries, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), has given its 2014 UN Population Award to an…
- Categories: UN Agencies, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • August 26, 2013
Throughout the media coverage in recent months of the tumultuous events in Egypt, little attention has been paid to Egyptian women, who may have the most to gain or to lose in any new political order that emerges in…
- Categories: Human Rights, Middle East, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • July 1, 2013
In the global annals of women’s rights defenders over the last half century, Nafis Sadik’s name will always rank high, though little may be known about her among the broad American public, focused as it usually is on Western…
- Categories: Health and Population, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • March 27, 2013
The 57th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women ended in mid-March more with a sigh of relief than with jubilation. The commission, comprising 45 national delegations, managed to reach a final agreement (which it…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Special Report, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • January 22, 2013
The New Year began with a big step for Saudi women when King Abdullah appointed 30 of them to the kingdom’s traditionally all-male Shura Council, an advisory body that serves as a pale imitation of a legislature in the…
- Categories: Middle East, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • December 23, 2012
Only four days before Christmas, when many minds were fixated on the year-end holidays, two important steps were taken almost unnoticed to combat female genital mutilation globally, raising hopes that millions of girls might be spared the excruciatingly painful…
- Categories: Africa, General Assembly, Health and Population, Human Rights, Middle East, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • November 1, 2012
Overshadowed by daily reports from a horrific war in Syria, lingering violence in Libya and sporadic protests in Egypt and other regional nations, a struggle to salvage and advance the rights of women caught up in the revolutions of…
- Categories: Middle East, Women
- Amy Lieberman
- • October 12, 2012
A growing movement within the United Nations to ban female genital mutilation globally has led to the first resolution to be written on the issue in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which will vote on the matter this…
- Categories: Africa, General Assembly, Women
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