Canadian Politics
- Abousfian Abdelrazik, the Canadian barred from returning home from Sudan because Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon has refused to grant him a passport, asked the minister this week to reveal the reasons behind his continued exclusion from Canada. Amnesty International has joined the call for his swift return to Canada along with all opposition parties.
- Cmdr. Josée Kurtz has officially taken charge of the warship HMCS Halifax, the first time that a Canadian woman has led a major warship.
American Politics
- President Obama has made his final appointments to his controversial council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Pro-choice advocates are concerned that Obama has given far more seats on his council to religious leaders who are anti-choice than to ones who are openly pro-choice.
- A teen in Washington State has been handed a two-week suspension for taking her birth control pill at school. In the high school, which has a zero-tolerance policy on drugs, taking her prescribed birth-control pill on campus drew the same punishment as bringing a gun to school would have.
Gendered Violence
- UNIFEM in Gaza, local Palestinian NGOs and mental health professionals are reporting increased incidents of domestic violence and sexual assault against women in Gaza during and after the 23-day war which ended on 18 January.
- Massachusetts is currently considering banning discrimination because of transgender status. The bill would add “gender identity and expression” to Massachusetts’ discrimination and hate crimes laws, preventing discrimination against transpeople in housing, work and other areas.
- A Pittsburgh woman had her case against police for false imprisonment dismissed this week. The woman was working as a service station clerk in 2004 when a man sexually assaulted her at gunpoint. She reported the assault to the police, who did not believe her and charged her with making false reports to police, although the man was eventually convicted of her assault.
Aboriginal Women
- In a unanimous decision, the B.C. Court of Appeal has endorsed a lower court decision striking down as discriminatory sections of the Indian Act that define who is a native, and has given Ottawa a year to amend the law. The law is such that some people are unable to transmit Indian status to their children only because their mothers, rather than their fathers, are entitled to status as Indians. This important case that has taken two decades to wend its way through the system.
Health
- Melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer, is now the most common cancer in British women in their 20s, the country’s leading cancer organization said this week.
International
- Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced this weekend that the Afghan government will review a new Shia family law he signed sometime last month that would severely restrict women’s rights in Afghanistan. A petition signed by dozens of Afghan ministers, lawmakers and officials this week states that the law is unconstitutional and leads toward the “Talibanization” of Afghanistan’s legal system.
- The effects of the expulsion of 13 international and three Sudanese aid agencies from Darfur in March are being felt by women and children in the region, who make up more than 60 percent of the 2.7 million people driven from their homes in the 6-year-old war. The expulsion interrupted nutritional programs for malnourished children and pregnant and nursing mothers and shut down many programs to train midwives, promote hygiene and help women suffering from violence.
- The women’s movement in Iran is turning to new Bluetooth technology to evade government censors and spread their message to the public. Bluetooth technology is almost impossible to track and control, so it provides a relatively safe and private sphere in which activists can communicate to the public about women’s rights.
- The first Global Symposium on Engaging Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality took place this week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Over four hundred fifty participants from around the world shared their work in applied research, policy, and program development as well as producing a Declaration and Call to Action.
- At least 90 women have been raped and 180 villagers killed over the past two months by rebels as well as government forces in volatile eastern Congo, a Human Rights Watch said in a report Thursday.
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