Author: Isabel Marler

The Islamic Republic’s War on Women

The election of Hassan Rouhani gave new momentum to Iran’s devout Muslim feminists — but the mullahs aren’t having it

By Ziba Mir-Hosseini

The phone calls started about six weeks ago. Men who didn’t introduce themselves, working for Iran’s security agencies, rang the country’s most prominent women’s rights activists and demanded they show up for interrogations.

All the activists were told the same thing: “Don’t tell anyone we’ve called you here. Don’t speak to the media, don’t breathe a word to anyone.” But word seeped out, first in Tehran’s feminist circles and then among political activists, who traded accounts of interrogations and lines of questioning.

The Iranian government’s crackdown on feminists, one of the Islamic Republic’s periodic intimidation campaigns against women’s rights activists, is still underway. But the present iteration isn’t just a push-and-pull struggle between the government and civil society, or between the censors and the country’s most prominent women’s magazine — it’s a proxy battle between the president and the country’s hard-liners.

Iran’s women’s rights activists, both religious and secular, seized the space offered by President Hassan Rouhani’s 2013 election to emerge from the underground and engage again in public life. The Revolutionary Guards and the clerical establishment have responded by charging a vast international “feminist conspiracy” to undermine the Islamic Republic, funded by wealthy Western donors, intellectually articulated by feminist academics based abroad, and conducted by foot soldiers inside Iran — and even inside the president’s cabinet.

Read the rest of the article from Foreign Policy.

Indian court gives women entry to inner sanctum of famous Mumbai mosque

NEW DELHI, Aug 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Women in India have the right to fully access a famous mosque in the city of Mumbai, a top court ruled on Friday, bolstering a nationwide campaign aimed at securing women their religious rights and allowing them entry into all places of worship.

Ruling on a petition filed by Muslim women’s rights activists who demanded entry to the men-only inner sanctum of the Haji Ali Dargah, a Mumbai High Court bench said the restriction violated women’s fundamental right to equality.

“Today the court is ruled in our favour and I am very thankful. It has been a hard fight over many years and we lost momentum as many women were concerned of what society would think of us,” Bibi Khatoon from the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, or Indian Muslim Women’s Movement, told reporters.

To read the full story, visit the Thomson Reuters Foundation News.

Outrage in Russia after religious leaders back female genital mutilation

Two prominent religious leaders in Russia have provoked outrage after suggesting female genital mutilation could help reduce sexual promiscuity.

The scandal erupted on Wednesday when Vsevolod Chaplin, a former spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, rushed to the defence of Ismail Berdiyev, a senior Muslim cleric from Dagestan who said “all women” should be subjected to the practice to eliminate sexual depravity.

Mr Berdiyev, chairman of the Coordination Centre of North Caucasus Muslims, made the controversial comments when asked to comment on a report into the practice published earlier this week.

…The United Nations estimates 200 million women and girls across 30 countries where the practice is concentrated are victims of female genital mutilation.

The practice can cause severe pain and long term health problems and is internationally recognized as a violation of human rights.

Read the rest of the article from The Telegraph.

Africa: Challenges of Culture and Conscience

In Biblical times, the Prophet Hosea lamented, “[M]y people die for lack of knowledge.” In the 21st century, African women are dying for lack of knowledge, but also in the name of religion.

In my life as an African woman, a physician and former minister of health in Ghana—and more recently in my work as an advocate for sexual and reproductive rights—I have seen too many African women die a senseless and painful death because they were unable to realize their reproductive rights.

Thousands of African women die every year from preventable pregnancy-related causes because religious leaders prevent politicians and policymakers from passing laws and implementing services needed to save them. The African Union’s latest Maternal Newborn and Child Health Status Report shows that most countries in Africa have seen reductions in maternal mortality, although the average rate remains exceedingly high at more than 500 deaths per 100,000 live births, amounting to 56 percent of total global maternal mortality.

Read the full article, by Eunice Brookman-Amissah (former minister of health in Ghana and former president of Ipas), at Conscience.

Child marriage shows it takes a village to achieve a goal

The aim of the sustainable development goals is to create sustainable social, economic and environmental change. In our view they need to be met by approaches that are holistic and integrated.

Last month experts from the Copenhagen Consensus Centre argued that cherrypicking 19 of the UN’s SDGs could produce the greatest returns – effectively doubling or quadrupling the aid budget.

However, our experience shows us that it’s not helpful to cherrypick certain issues, to separate human development from the environment, or good governance. Each goal and target in the framework cannot be isolated from the others.

One powerful example of this is gender equality. We know that it cannot be achieved in a vacuum. Take child marriage – a form of violence against girls that means 15 million girls each year lose out on their childhood. It happens most in societies where women and girls face gender-based discrimination, inequality and harmful social norms that mean they are not valued equally to boys and men. And women and girls don’t experience this violence in isolation. If they marry too young they are much more likely to experience other forms of violence in their lifetimes, such as domestic violence. They are also more likely to drop out of school, face complications in childbirth and continue the cycle of poverty.

To end this practice by 2030, we need to recognise it is linked to a wide range of issues, including education, poverty, governance, other forms of violence against girls and attitudes to girls’ rights. Child marriage will not end without communities and societies that support gender equality.

Read the rest of the article at The Guardian.

Tanzanian Pastoralist Women: HIV and Health Rights

Pastoralist women in many parts of Africa, including Northeast Africa and Nigeria, face many cultural practices which increase their vulnerability to HIV.

At the current International AIDS Conference in Durban, despite it taking place on the same continent, there are no sessions or abstracts listed in relation to pastoralists at all. I would love to be there to raise awareness of pastoralist women’s rights myself, but with no funds available to travel, register or stay there, I am glad to be able to write about some of the issues they face here.

These cultural practices, gender inequalities and inadequate knowledge for most women – and men – about sexual and reproductive health (SRH) issues and HIV transmission limit their decision-making abilities regarding when to have sex, whether or not to use a condom or other contraceptive methods, whether or not to get pregnant, and whether or not to get tested for HIV or other STIs.

Deprived of rights to access basic needs such as healthcare, or a balanced diet, women are also particularly vulnerable to domestic violence, as their fragile socio-economic systems worsen. Furthermore, men and women face different challenges in living with HIV and AIDS, in access to health and support services, and with regard to stigma attached to the epidemic. Women have much less time and much less opportunity than men to access services.

Read the rest of the article at OpenDemocracy.

Sri Lanka: Challenging ‘Gender Norms’ Brings Abuse

Transgender people and others who do not conform to social expectations about gender face discrimination and abuse in Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 63-page report, “‘All Five Fingers Are Not the Same’: Discrimination on Grounds of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation in Sri Lanka,” finds that people who don’t conform to gender norms face arbitrary detention, mistreatment, and discrimination accessing employment, housing, and health care. The government should protect the rights of transgender people and others who face similar discrimination, Human Rights Watch said.

“All Sri Lankans, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation, should be able to exercise their rights without discrimination or abuse,” said Yuvraj Joshi, Gruber fellow in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights program at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “While the government has begun to address these issues, it should urgently seek to eliminate laws and practices that discriminate on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”

Read the rest of the article at Human Rights Watch.

Improper Use of Conscientious Objection in Bogotá, Colombia, Presents a Barrier to Safe, Legal Abortion Care

Health care providers who invoke conscientious objection to providing or participating in abortion care in Bogotá, Colombia, can be categorized along a spectrum of objection—extreme, moderate and partial—finds a new study published in International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

The study, “‘The Fetus Is My Patient, Too’: Attitudes Toward Abortion and Referral Among Physician Conscientious Objectors in Bogotá, Colombia,” by Lauren Fink of Emory University, et al., seeks to understand conscientious objection from the perspective of objectors themselves in order to help identify potential interventions to ease the burden of conscientious objection as a barrier to care.

When the Colombian Constitutional Court partially decriminalized abortion in 2006, the Court established a right to abortion in three circumstances: when the life or health (including mental well-being) of the mother is at risk; when a fetal anomaly is incompatible with life; and when the pregnancy is the result of rape, incest or forced insemination.

The Court also outlined guidelines for health care providers who wish to invoke conscientious objection. Individuals can object, but institutions cannot; objecting physicians have a duty to refer patients to another provider; and conscientious objection “may not involve disregard for the rights of women.” Nevertheless, improperly exercised conscientious objection is not uncommon in Colombia, leading many women to seek clandestine abortions, which are often unsafe.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 13 key informants and 15 Colombian physicians who self-identified as conscientious objectors to better understand how conscientious objection is exercised.

Read the full article at the Guttmacher Institute.

Iran: Women’s rights activists treated as ‘enemies of the state’ in crackdown

Iranian authorities have intensified their repression of women’s rights activists in the country in the first half of this year, carrying out a series of harsh interrogations and increasingly likening any collective initiative relating to women’s rights to criminal activity, Amnesty International said today.

The organization’s research reveals that since January 2016 more than a dozen women’s rights activists in Tehran have been summoned for long, intensive interrogations by the Revolutionary Guards, and threatened with imprisonment on national security-related charges.

Many had been involved in a campaign launched in October 2015, which advocated for increased representation of women in Iran’s February 2016 parliamentary election.

“It is utterly shameful that the Iranian authorities are treating peaceful activists who seek women’s equal participation in decision-making bodies as enemies of the state. Speaking up for women’s equality is not a crime. We are calling for an immediate end to this heightened harassment and intimidation, which is yet another blow for women’s rights in Iran,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Interim Deputy Middle East and North Africa Programme Director at Amnesty International.

“Rather than addressing Iran’s disturbing record on women’s rights the Iranian authorities have once again opted for repression, accusing women’s rights activists of collusion in western-orchestrated plots in a bid to maintain their discriminatory practices towards women.”

Read the full article at Amnesty International.

Anti-LGBT Movement in Indonesia Attempts to Criminalize Same-Sex Relations

With negative public sentiment toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) reaching an all-time high, the anti-LGBT movement in the country is seeking to criminalize same-sex relationships.

A group of academics and activists have requested that the Constitutional Court annul a number of articles in the Criminal Code (KUHP) to make it illegal for homosexuals to engage in sexual activities.

The court, which has affirmed that the plaintiffs have constitutional grounds to present their case, has held five hearings in which expert witnesses, presented by the petitioners, told the court that homosexuality was “contagious” and that it “could trigger a spike in HIV infections”.

One of the plaintiffs, Rita Hendrawaty, who is also chairwoman of an organization called the Family Love Alliance, claimed she did not intend to put LGBT people in prison.

“The government asked us [why we are trying to criminalize LGBT people], saying that if we do so, then prisons will be full. But we are merely trying to take preventive measures, so that Indonesia has clearer norms and regulations stipulating that anyone having casual sex is committing adultery,” she told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

…The various attempts to criminalize homosexuality have alarmed advocates of LGBT rights.

“This is dangerous for our LGBT friends. No one should be allowed to criminalize a minority group in Indonesia. Furthermore, the government shouldn’t be that nosy, trying to manage people’s lives in bed,” Arus Pelangi secretary Ryan Korbarri told the Post.

Ryan said the allegation that the LGBT community was trying to spread homosexuality was baseless, as the community in Indonesia was only trying to fight to have the same rights as other Indonesian citizens.

Read the full article from The Jakarta Post.