Tag: Gender

Nigerian Women Challenge ‘Colonialist’ Patriarchy — Global Issues

Bukes Saliu, a forklift driver, is a Nigerian woman who challenging stereotypes. Credit: Promise Eze/IPS
  • by Promise Eze (lagos)
  • Inter Press Service

LAGOS, Sep 28 (IPS) – Bukes Saliu wakes up very early every workday to beat the gruesome Lagos traffic to head to a job quite unusual for a woman to engage in Nigeria. She is a forklift operator in one of the busy depots in the coastal city, a task traditionally meant for men in the West African country.

In a country where women are seen as second-class citizens and whose roles are expected to be confined to the kitchen, Saliu is not letting patriarchal norms put her in a box.

“People are always thrilled when I tell them what I do. Sometimes I get snide remarks from some men I work with, but I don’t allow that to get to me,” Saliu says.

In August 2022, her curiosity was piqued when she came across a post on WhatsApp from her friend featuring a woman confidently posed beside a forklift machine. That ignited her interest in the job. Soon after, she enrolled in training to become a skilled forklift operator.

“It was a change of career path for me. I used to be a project manager with a non-profit, but I left the job to be a forklift operator. The first day I started work, I was a bit afraid, but now I operate the machine like any other man would do. I believe that women should be allowed at the table because it brings different perspectives, ideas, and experiences,” she adds.

Patriarchy Lives in Nigeria

Discrimination against women has been a serious problem in Nigeria. Women still grapple with an array of challenges and are marginalized despite the Nigerian constitution providing for gender equality and nondiscrimination

Women face a heavier burden of violence, and different types of bias, which creates significant obstacles in their quest for gender equality. This is frequently caused by unfair laws, religious and cultural traditions, gender stereotypes, limited education opportunities, and the unequal impact of poverty on women.

Although the government has attempted to tackle these deep-rooted issues, the pace of progress remains sluggish. Women’s representation within politics and decision-making spheres remains poor. For example, out of a total of 15,307 candidates in the 2023 general elections, only 1,550 were women. Only three women were elected as senators as against nine in the last election, and only one woman emerged as a presidential candidate.

Women are often excluded from economic prospects. Within Nigeria’s populace exceeding 200 million, a mere 60.5 million people contribute to its labor force. Among this workforce, around 27.1 million women participate, a significant portion of whom find themselves involved in low-skilled employment. Nigeria’s position on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index is a lowly 123rd out of 156 nations.

Swimming Against the Tide

A limited number of women are challenging conventional gender norms for the purpose of livelihood, stepping into roles that are male dominated in Nigeria. However, this transition is often met with resistance and negative reactions.

In 2021, Iyeyemi Adediran gained widespread attention for her exceptional mastery of driving long-haul trucks for oil companies. However, despite her remarkable skill, the then 26-year-old shared that she faced derogatory remarks for daring to break gender norms associated with truck driving—an occupation traditionally considered male-dominated.

In 2015, Sandra Aguebor, Nigeria’s first female mechanic, gained widespread attention for her all-female garages across the country. However, she revealed that her mother initially did not support her ambitions, believing that fixing cars should only be done by men.

Faith Oyita, a shoemaker in Benue State, Nigeria, is not letting patriarchal norms stop her. Despite Aba, a growing men-led market in southeast Nigeria, dominating the shoemaking industry, Oyita has been determined to make a name for herself since 2015, even though she resides kilometers away. She says she has trained over 300 other people on how to make shoes.

“When I first started, I didn’t care about the challenges that came with shoemaking. I had a deep passion for it, and I wanted to beautify people’s legs. Even though it was a skill dominated by men, I was determined to do things differently. I knew that greatness doesn’t come from convenience. In the beginning, many people questioned why I chose shoemaking. Even the man who taught me was hesitant and doubted my potential. I was the only female among all his apprentices, and many assumed that I came because I wanted to date him. Despite all the negative remarks, I never gave up,” she tells IPS.

Patriarchy Came Through Colonialism

“A lot of what is happening today is not how we originally lived our lives as Nigerian women. Patriarchy actually entered our society during the colonial era. Before colonization, both men and women were able to do things without being restricted by gender. Historically, women were involved in trading goods and services, and they could even marry multiple wives for themselves.

“However, when the colonialists arrived, they distorted our culture and, using religion, promoted the idea that men held more power. We should strive to correct this narrative. It’s unfortunate that we have been socialized to believe that men should always be in leadership positions and that women should only be in a man’s home,” says Añuli Aniebo Ola-Olaniyi, Executive Director, HEIR Women Hub.

Speaking further, Ola-Olaniyi argues that women who want to break gender norms must have a change of mindset and be ready to face challenges.

“The country that colonized us has their women driving buses and flying planes. They have progressed from where they colonized us. But Nigeria has failed to empower its women. When a Nigerian woman does something that is traditionally seen as only for men, it is seen as a big accomplishment. However, she has always been capable of doing those things. It’s just that the opportunities were not available. I don’t even think it’s a switch in gender roles. I believe that women are simply starting to realize their potential,” she tells IPS.

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Bolivian Women Fight Prejudice to Be Accepted as Mechanics — Global Issues

Miriam Poma stands in the electromechanical workshop for high-end vehicles that she co-owns in the city of El Alto, adjacent to La Paz, Bolivia. In the past, she had several jobs in the informal sector and also had to overcome a lot of resistance to working as an automotive mechanic. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS
  • by Franz Chavez (la paz)
  • Inter Press Service

LA PAZ, Sep 21 (IPS) – In Bolivia, more and more women have gone from being homemakers or street vendors to joining the noisy world of engines, their hands now covered in grease after learning that special touch to make a car work. But they frequently have to put up with machismo or sexism, injustice and mistrust of their skills with tools.

Automotive mechanics is traditionally associated with masculine men wearing oil-stained coveralls. In La Paz and other Bolivian cities over the years many auto repair shops have upgraded from precarious workshops on the street to modern facilities with high-tech equipment.

Vehicles have also transitioned from human-operated nut-and-gear systems to cars governed by electronics.

But openness to women has not evolved in the same way in the profession, as it is unusual to find female mechanics.

And auto repair shops do not appear in studies on informal employment in Latin America by the International Labor Organization (ILO), although mechanic shops are very much present in the informal sector.

“At the age of five I learned about fractions through tears. My father would ask me for a fork wrench (middle wrench, in Bolivia), but since I didn’t know which one it was, he would throw it at my head,” Miriam Poma Cabezas, a senior electromechanical technician, now 50 and divorced, told IPS.

Since that incident, a mixture of anecdote and forced apprenticeship, 45 years have passed, most of them dedicated to the profession of mechanics specializing in engines and now in the electronics of high-end vehicles, in a workshop of which she is co-owner in the city of El Alto, next to La Paz, the country’s political capital.

On a busy street in the La Paz neighborhood of Sopocachi, Ana Castillo uses complex techniques to dismantle rubber tires, identify the damage, and clean and apply chemicals to fix them. At 56, she is an expert in the trade.

She charges about a dollar and a half for each repaired tire, which involves exerting vigorous effort to loosen rusted lug nuts, in order to find the puncture in worn tires amidst the fine black dust that has darkened her hands for 20 years.

“God put me here and I love it because you have to use your strength. I would go crazy sitting still,” Castillo, who completed law school, though she never practiced law, tells IPS as she quickly operates a wrench that creaks as it loosens one of the nuts, stuck hard and moldy from water and dirt.

But she does not only repair tires. She is also a specialist in rebuilding classic cars, an activity for which she is becoming very well-known.

Ana Castillo checks one of the rims she has on the sidewalk of her workshop on a busy street of the Sopocachi neighborhood in the Bolivian city of La Paz. Automotive mechanics holds no mysteries for Castillo, who is also a specialist in rebuilding antique cars. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS

With a great deal of effort, Poma managed to set up her own high-level electromechanical repair shop, but before that she had spent years working as an informal self-employed worker, not only in automotive mechanics.

For her part, Castillo complained about the municipal seizure of a piece of land where she wanted to build the mechanic shop of her dreams, together with her husband Mario Cardona. A court ruling granted them the right to use the land and a city council resolution upheld it, but they still have not been given back the land.

A case like so many others

The automotive mechanics sector is just one example of those in which the participation of Bolivian women is particularly difficult, because they are seen as traditionally male professions and there is strong resistance to women breaking into the field, whether out of necessity or a sense of vocation.

The 2018 Annual Report of the UN Women agency, based on figures from the National Institute of Statistics, states that seven out of 10 women in Bolivia are economically active, work in informal conditions and lack labor rights, which makes it difficult to specifically identify how many work as mechanics.

UN Women highlights that Bolivia “is the third country in the world, after Rwanda and Cuba, with the highest political participation of women”: 51 percent in the Chamber of Deputies and 44 percent in the Senate.

But this high female presence in politics in this South American country of 12.3 million inhabitants does not translate into a boost for women in other areas, particularly business and formal employment.

The president of the Chamber of Businesswomen of Bolivia (Camebol), Silvia Quevedo, told IPS that there is no “state incentive (for women’s participation) in any particular job” and encourages “women themselves to forge their own way, based on the quality of their work.”

Camebol emerged in the department of Santa Cruz, the most economically developed in the country, and has since spread to six of Bolivia’s nine regions. It has a thousand members and its purpose, together with strengthening its institutional framework, is to influence public policies to promote equal opportunities in business.

A study conducted by the ILO on Bolivian self-employed women workers in the informal sector shows that the department of La Paz accounts for 31.8 percent of this segment, with an average age of 45 years and eight years of schooling, below the 12 years of compulsory basic education.

In the city of La Paz, 75 percent of self-employed women work in commerce, 15 percent in manufacturing and eight percent in community services. In the other two largest cities in the country, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, the proportions are similar, according to the report.

Electromechanics specialist Miriam Poma checks on a screen the problems of a high-end vehicle in her specialized workshop in the Bolivian city of El Alto, adjacent to La Paz. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS

Experienced hands

Miriam Poma told IPS that she began to create her own source of employment at the age of 16, on the bustling commercial Huyustus Street in La Paz, where thousands of vendors sell all kinds of merchandise. She sold shoes and handbags.

But soon after, she decided to devote herself full time to repairing Volkswagen vehicles, and ended up as head mechanical assistant to her father, Marcelino Poma, who competed in rally races until he was 70 years old.

Creativity to adapt at a young age to the opportunities of street commerce led Ana Castillo to sell pork sandwiches. She was 14 years old at the time, forced by the responsibility of caring for her two younger brothers after they had all been abandoned by their mother.

“I know how to make everything: sausages, pickles, sauces; I’m not afraid to start from scratch,” Castillo, who helped her two younger brothers earn degrees in business administration and social communication, told IPS enthusiastically.

In the formal economy, “foreign trade has a woman’s face,” said Quevedo, the president of Camebol, based on surveys of the participation of its members in export companies.

Quevedo is an economist with extensive knowledge in agriculture who specializes in exports.

In 2022, international sales of non-traditional products amounted to 9.7 billion dollars, according to the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade (IBCE), in a country with a GDP of 41 billion dollars.

But there are still prejudices about women’s efficiency in men’s jobs, as the two women mechanics noted.

Poma said the customers in her father’s repair shop initially did not trust her to tune their engines, and tried to keep her from working on their vehicles.

Her brother, Julio Poma, would say he had done the work, and only after the client expressed complete satisfaction would he reveal that the work was actually done by his sister.

Recently, Poma tried to pass on her knowledge to men in the field of motor electronics, but no one was interested in a female instructor who was also a racing driver in 2006. In order to attract students, she had to hire a foreign expert.

A study carried out by the Women’s Institute of La Paz, belonging to the city government, indicated the level of interest in learning gastronomy, computer technology, cell phone use and education in small business finances.

Among the non-conventional trades, the respondents called for training in masonry, plumbing and electricity, a spokesperson for the Institute told IPS. The Institute conducts training workshops for 1,450 low-income women heads of households between the ages of 25 and 70.

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Gains, Losses & Lessons One Year On — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Sanam Naraghi (new york)
  • Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Sep 20 (IPS) – On September 16th Iranians everywhere commemorated the first anniversary of Mahsa Jina Amini’s murder by the country’s notorious ‘guidance patrol’. Arrested for being badly covered, the 22-year-old was beaten so violently, she died from brain injuries.

This violence and the regime’s obfuscation of its crime unleashed a forty-years long pent-up fury among Iran’s women and girls. Protests ensued in cities and towns across the country’s length and breadth. Young and old men, who in past generations had shown limited empathy for the daily humiliations and systemic discrimination facing women, joined.

Amini’s Kurdish origins prompted mobilization of Iran’s Kurds, Baluch, and other minorities. As protesters’ images flooded social media, the #WomenLifeFreedom movement was born. With the regime cracking down, killing over 500 people, raping, injuring, and threatening countless others, young Iranians’ message to the world was ‘be our voice’.

The world responded. A year on, what is there to show for the sacrifices and lives? Civil Disobedience in Iran: The Fire Under the Ashes Anticipating mass demonstrations for the anniversary, the regime rounded up people, killed more protestors and deployed security forces across major cities. Lawmakers have threatened new legislation to reinforce harsh hejab rules and punishment.

Politically, faced with an existential threat, the regime’s competing flanks – hardline principalists and moderate reformists -closed rank and arguably are more consolidated than in recent years.

Economically, thanks to the mix of sanctions and internal corruption, the revolutionary guard have monopolized much of the private sector space. Security-wise the state is beefed up, with a mix of old-fashioned hired hands and the latest surveillance and face recognition technologies.

But facing a deep domestic crisis of legitimacy, the leadership also sought external support. This time, Saudi Arabia, Iran’s longstanding regional nemesis, was their proverbial knight in shining armor. This rapprochement with China as guarantor has enabled the regime to save face and turn eastward.

But none of this has deterred Iran’s Gen-Z. The heavy crackdowns of the past year did result in significant back-downs too. From Tehran to Mashad and beyond, many women no longer wear the mandatory headscarf.

As the Persian saying goes, the WLF movement is like burning fire underneath the ashes. Knowing the regime’s playbook, the young developed new tactics. A recent visitor to Tehran noted that for weeks prior to the anniversary, young women were sharing flyers advising people to dress in solidarity. White t-shirt and jeans for women, button down shirts and cargo shorts for men.

Such nonconfrontational civil disobedience tactics are low-risk and thus high participation. Iranians knows that the regime’s arrests of musicians, artists, students, film directors, authors, poets and even chefs, was indicative of an existential fear.

With ten-year old girls ripping up photos of Ayatollah Khamenei and school age students singing protest songs, the generational tectonic shift taking place inside Iran is undeniable.

It is a shift towards greater freedom, modernity, and gender equality. It is not simply a ‘bottom up’ revolution. It is a radical societal evolution that has entrenched itself in the homes of the country’s most powerful, conservative figures.

To put it bluntly, the regime’s leadership know that their attempt to turn Iran into an ideologically Islamist society has failed with their own children and grandchildren, girls, and boys.

This is a key political, social, and ideologically symbolic victory, that no one should underestimate. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the Iranian Diaspora The call to ‘be my voice’ led to unprecedented mobilization of the Iran’s global diaspora.

A community traumatized and mistrustful of each other, characterized by their aversion to political engagement, was suddenly energized, vocal, and flexing political muscle from the streets of Los Angeles to the corridors of the European Parliament.

Not surprisingly some marginal exiled political forces sought to co-opt the events for their own political gain. Others tried to forge coalitions to offer a viable challenge to the regime. There was emotional and cognitive dissonance.

At a public level pent-up anger towards the regime, coupled with hope for a different future, became the emotional fuel for diaspora participation in demonstrations and political activism.

But hope and anger are not sufficient. Political figures who united around their shared opposition to the Islamic regime, faltered as they disagreed on a shared vision for the country and the roadmap to achieving it.

Too often it seemed that these opposition forces, from the Monarchists to the MEK, were relitigating the revolution of 1979, with old tactics, instead of embracing the Gen-Z and intrinsically feminist nature of the WLF movement inside Iran.

A year on the political groups remain divided. The wider diaspora, however, has become more empowered and with greater access to the political arenas of their adopted nations. Their challenge now is to make nuanced and responsible choices that support and not inadvertently harm the domestic WLF movement.

The world will cheer from the sidelines, but self-interest is the driver The world also responded to the call of ‘be my voice’.

For forty years, western media had demonized Iran through stereotypical images of militancy, aging angry clerics, black-clad women, and nuclear weapons. The burst of smiling, defiant Iranian teenagers on Instagram, waving scarves, singing, or dancing, bearing a striking resemblance to teenagers around the world, touched a nerve.

The news of their arrests and assassinations, prompted greater outrage. College students, artists, rock, and movie stars, showed their solidarity, by cutting their hair, and speaking out.

The emotive power of ‘Baraye’, the anthem of the burgeoning revolution, generated a level of empathy that is rare in modern times. But public attention came with stark political realities. The heartfelt support of US, Canadian and European politicians was largely rhetorical.

There is no appetite for interventionism and their overarching priority is to contain the nuclear program. For understandable reasons: On the one hand, a nuclear-armed Iranian regime that will have an interminable existence.

On the other hand, Israel has consistently warned that it would not wait for Iran to achieve breakout capacity. It would strike preemptively. So, geopolitically, the threat of a devastating war, the unknowable chaos and human suffering that comes with it, is inextricably linked with the fate of Iran’s young.

Regionally too, despite their disagreements, the Arab states prefer the proverbial devil they know, then the uncertainly of a power vacuum that a revolution could foment.

The Saudi regime and its proxies were key players in unfolding event. Since the signing of the JCPOA in 2015 and the break in Saudi-Iran relations in 2016 they had supported the armed insurrection of ethnic groups and enabling political access to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) across Europe and North America.

Private Saudi funding bolstered the satellite television channel, Iran International, enabling it to broadcast a diet of nostalgia for the Shah and anti-JCPOA messaging into Iranian homes. It was also a prime channel covering the WLF protests.

But the Saudis, were neither interested in the regime’s collapse or chaos nor an independent, strong Iranian democracy, particularly women-led and feminist. Their ideal scenario was a weakened Iranian regime, in need of Saudi’s hand. This is exactly what they got.

Meanwhile the Iranian regime is benefiting from the ebbing power of democracies and the rise of authoritarianism. Its distancing from the west and closer allegiance to Russia, and the BRICS countries is a bet on greater economic ties to bolster the regime apparatus domestically. It is unlikely that the regional or BRIC countries will voice concerns over women’s rights.

So, the world may have sympathy for young Iranians but will not stand with them. So, what will become of WLF? The answers lie in Persian poetry. The first is the parable of the Rock and the Spring. A trickle of melted snow hurtling down the mountain hits a rock. The trickle asks the rock to move aside. The rock refuses to budge.

Over time, the water pools and erodes the rock, turning first into a stream and then a powerful river. Iranian women – the grandmothers, mothers and now daughters (and sons) = who have fought the regime’s misogyny day in, year out, for decades, inching back the hijab, populating universities, and fighting for equality under the law are an unstoppable river.

“We will stay and reclaim Iran” they shout, refusing to be pushed into exile. They have ideals but are not ideologically driven. In chipping away from within, they are fostering evolution and transformation, not revolution or reform.

As for the exiled figures who seek to claim leadership of WLF, they should revisit the epic 10th poem, ‘Conference of the Bird’. As the story goes, the world was in strife.

The Hoopie bird calls on all birds to journey in search of the mythical ‘seemorq’, a wise leader. The birds soar above mountains and valleys, through snowstorms, firestorms, and deserts.

Some give up, others falter. Ultimately thirty reach the final mountain peak with a glacial lake. ‘Where is the Seemorq?’ they cry. “Look into the lake and you will see.” replies the Hoopie.

The birds peer in and see their own reflections – the faces of thirty birds (See-morq). The leadership lies within themselves. In Iran, a year on from Mahsa’s death, the river is gathering force. There will be tough times ahead, but the millions are emerging as the Seemorq.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, MBE Founder/CEO, International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) Adjunct Professor, School of International Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University, New York. [email protected]

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UN Must Live Up to Its Promises of Gender Equality —and Support Women — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Shihana Mohamed (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 19 (IPS) – In 2015, the UN’s 193 member states adopted 17 goals for the health of the world that together comprise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be reached worldwide by 2030.

The UN hosted a SDG Summit 2023 on September 18-19 to review progress toward those goals. Among the aims is to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.” On this, progress is not going well.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned in July, “Halfway to the 2030 deadline, the Sustainable Development Goals are dangerously off track. Gender equality is almost 300 years away.”

Among the furthest behind is the Asia-Pacific. Although a dynamic region, at this point the Asia-Pacific should have made half the progress needed to achieve the goals but its progress has reached only 14.4%.

According to the UN Women report on Women’s Leadership in Asia-Pacific, women’s representation in parliament is at 20% in the Asia-Pacific, below the global average of 25%. Women are underrepresented among chairs of permanent committees in charge of finance and human rights.

Women’s participation in peace negotiations — as negotiators, mediators and signatories — is notably rare. Women hold managerial positions at only 20%. This lack of progress exists at the UN as well.

The Asia-Pacific is home to around 4.3 billion people — 54% of the world population — and more than half of the world’s women. Yet only 18% of women are from the region among women in professional and higher categories of staff in UN organizations.

Among the professional staff in UN organizations, there is a visible disproportionate parity between the West and the rest of the world. Out of five regional groups of the UN member states — Western European and Other States, African States, Asia-Pacific States, Eastern European States, Latin American and Caribbean States — women from Western European and Other States, including North America, constitute just more than half of the population of professional women (51%) in the UN system.

Women from the Asia-Pacific constitute only 6% of senior or decision-making posts in UN organizations. The majority of these posts (about 53%) are held by staff from Western European and Other States.

The recent review of racism in UN organizations by the Joint Inspection Unit, the UN’s external oversight body, confirmed that UN staff from countries of the Global South, where the population is predominantly people of color, tend to be in lower pay-grades and hold less authority than those from countries where the population is predominantly white or from the group of Western European and Other States. This racial discrimination in seniority and authority has emerged as a macro-structural issue to be addressed.

At the opening of the 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the Secretary-General Guterres declared: “We need a cultural shift — in the world and our United Nations. Women everywhere should be recognized as equal and promoted on that basis. We need more than goals; we need action, targets and benchmarks to measure what we do. But for the United Nations, gender equality is not only a matter of staffing. It relates to everything we do.”

If the UN is serious about definitive advancement in the status of women, its organizations should focus exclusively on necessary measures to increase the representation of women from Asia-Pacific countries.

These measures should include, but not be limited to, establishing targets for balanced regional diversity in UN organizations, ensuring recruitment and selection assessments are free from biases, and conducting audits of Asia-Pacific women’s career progression to identify and eliminate barriers. It is equally essential to ensure that women from the region are placed in decision-making positions.

UN organizations must faithfully reflect the diversity and dynamism of staff from all countries and regions of the world, including at senior and decision-making levels. This aspect is critical if the organizations are to implement mandates to help deliver the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

At the event organized by the UN Asia Network for Diversity & Inclusion to commemorate the 77th UN Day, Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN and former UN Under Secretary-General, noted that the UN Charter “is the first international agreement to affirm the principle of equality between women and men, with explicit references in Article 8 asserting the unrestricted eligibility of both men and women to participate in various organs of the UN.”

“It would therefore be most essential for the UN to ensure equality, inclusion and diversity in its staffing pattern in a real and meaningful sense,” he said.

“Leave no one behind” is the central, transformative promise of the Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals adopted eight years ago. Fulfilling this promise for all women and girls requires addressing the rights, needs and concerns of marginalized groups.

Leaders of UN organizations need to ensure that they meet their goals at home and in their own organizations, while calling for their achievement worldwide.

Shihana Mohamed is one of the Coordinators of the United Nations Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI) and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project and Equality Now.

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One Year on, Whats Changed? — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Ines M Pousadela (montevideo, uruguay)
  • Inter Press Service

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 19 (IPS) – It’s a year since a photo of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini – bruised and in a coma she would never recover from after being arrested by the morality police for her supposedly improperly worn hijab – went viral, sending people onto the streets.

The protests became the fiercest challenge ever faced by Iran’s theocratic regime. The unprecedented scale of the protests was matched by the unparalleled brutality of the crackdown, which clearly revealed the regime’s fear for its own survival.

Led by women and young people, mobilisations under the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ banner articulated broader demands for social and political change. They spread like wildfire – to streets across Iran, to universities, even to cemeteries where growing numbers of the regime’s victims were being buried. They were echoed and amplified by the Iranian diaspora around the world. The Iranian people made it abundantly clear they wanted the Islamic Republic gone.

A year on, the theocratic regime still stands, but that doesn’t mean nothing has changed. By sheer force, the authorities have regained control – at least for now. But subtle changes in daily life reveal the presence of active undercurrents that could once again spark mass protests. The regime knows this, hence the fear with which it has awaited this date and its redoubled repression as it neared.

A glimpse of change

Last December, as protests raged and the authorities were busy trying to stop them, women could be seen on Iranian streets without their hijabs for the first time in decades. After the protests were quelled, many simply refused to resubmit to the old rules. A tactical shift followed, with mass street mobilisation turning into more elusive civil disobedience.

Women, particularly Gen Z women just like Mahsa, continue to protest on a daily basis, simply by not abiding by hijab rules. Young people express their defiance by dancing or showing affection in public. Cities wake up to acts of civil disobedience emblazoned on their walls. Anti-regime slogans are heard coming from seemingly nowhere. In parts of the country where many people from excluded ethnic minorities live, protest follows Friday prayers. It may take little for the embers of rebellion to reignite.

Preventative repression

Ahead of the anniversary, family members of those killed during the 2022 protests were pressured not to hold memorial services for their loved ones. The lawyer representing Mahsa Amini’s family was charged with ‘propaganda against the state’ due to interviews with foreign media. University professors suspected to be critical of the regime were dismissed, suspended, forced to retire, or didn’t have their contracts renewed. Students were subjected to disciplinary measures in retaliation for their activism.

Artists who expressed support for the protest movement faced reprisals, including arrests and prosecution under ridiculous charges such as ‘releasing an illegal song’. Some were kept in detention on more serious charges and subjected to physical and psychological torture, including solitary confinement and beatings.

Two months ago, the regime put the morality police back on the streets. Initial attempts to arrest women found in violation of hijab regulations, however, were met with resistance, leading to clashes between sympathetic bystanders and police. Women, including celebrities, have been prosecuted for appearing in public without their hijab. Car drivers carrying passengers not wearing hijab have been issued with traffic citations and private businesses have been closed for noncompliance with hijab laws.

The most conservative elements of the regime have doubled down, proposing a new ‘hijab and chastity’ law that seeks to impose harsher penalties, including lashes, heavy fines and prison sentences of up to 10 years for those appearing without the hijab. The bill is now being reviewed by Iran’s Guardian Council, a 12-member, all-male body led by a 97-year-old cleric.

If not now, then anytime

In the run-up to 16 September, security force street presence consistently increased, with snap checkpoints set up and internet access disrupted. The government clearly feared something big might happen.

As the anniversary passes, the hardline ruling elite remains united and the military and security forces are on its side, while the protest movement has no leadership and has taken a bad hit. Some argue that what made it spread so fast – the role of young people, and young women in particular – also limited its appeal among wider Iranian society, and particularly among low-income people concerned above all with economic strife, rising inflation and increasing poverty.

There are ideological differences among the Iranian diaspora, which formed through successive waves of exiles and includes left and right-wing groups, monarchists and ethnic separatists. While most share the goal of replacing the authoritarian theocracy with a secular democracy, they’re divided over strategy and tactics, and particularly on whether sanctions are the best way to deal with the regime.

Ever since the protests took off last year, thousands of people around the world have shown their support and called on their governments to act. And some have, starting with the USA, which early on imposed sanctions on the morality police and senior police and security officials. New sanctions affecting 29 additional people and entities, including 18 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and security forces, were imposed on the eve of the anniversary of the protests, 15 September, International Day of Democracy. That day, US President Joe Biden made a statement about Mahsa Amini’s inspiration of a ‘historic movement’ for democracy and human dignity.

The continuing outpouring of international solidarity shows that the world still cares and is watching. A new regime isn’t around the corner in Iran, but neither is it game over in the quest for democracy. For those living under a murderous regime, every day of the year is the anniversary of a death, an indignity or a violation of rights. Each day will therefore bring along a new opportunity to resurrect rebellion.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.


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How an International Criminal Court Investigation Could Expand Human Rights — Global Issues

Flashback to a time when women and girls were able to attend school. UNICEF supported Zarghuna Girls School with educational supplies, teachers’ training, and assists in repairing the infrastructure. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
  • by Abigail Van Neely (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 18 (IPS) – Two years have passed since the Taliban re-assumed power in Afghanistan, and women and girls have yet to return to work or school. Can the international justice system now come to their defense? Experts say a case for Afghan women and girls has the potential to change the way the legal community thinks about human rights abuses. Will it?

Crimes Against Humanity

Gordon Brown, the United Nations special envoy for global education, says Taliban leaders should be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for denying Afghan women and girls education and employment.

“Afghan girls and Afghan women … have been fighting the most egregious, vicious, and indefensible violation of women’s rights and girl’s rights in the world today,” Brown told journalists in August.

Such acts constitute crimes against humanity if they meet the ICC’s definitions set forth in Article 7 of the Rome Statute. The acts must be part of a “widespread or systematic civilian attack directed against any civilian population.” The charges must also be brought against an individual or group of individuals, like Taliban authorities, who had knowledge of and perpetrated the crimes. The Taliban’s policies that specifically target all women and girls provide clear evidence of all these elements, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report has found.

According to HRW, Taliban authorities are specifically responsible for gender persecution. This persecution has been imposed through spoken and written decrees that have restricted women’s and girls’ movement, expression, employment, and education.

Persecution must also occur in connection with another recognized crime against humanity to be considered by the ICC. HRW’s report cites instances of women who protested discriminatory policies being detained for up to 40 days without communication as evidence of the crime of “imprisonment.”

David Cohen, Director of the Center for Human Rights at Stanford University, adds that the severe restriction of women’s movement might be seen as “imprisonment” itself.

“A creative argument would be that Taliban increasingly confining women to their homes and preventing their free movement… is a severe deprivation of physical liberty,” Cohen said.

Another type of crime is described as “inhumane acts” that cause “great suffering.”

HRW explains that cutting off women and girls from their livelihoods and opportunities for the future has had a “devastating impact on the mental health of many women and girls” would also qualify.

Expanding Notions of Human Rights Law

Under these grounds for investigation, an ICC case for Afghan women and girls could have broader implications.

For one, the case presents an opportunity for the court to move beyond looking at individualized actions and begin looking at broader policies, Tayyiba Bajwa, a clinical supervising attorney in the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, explains.

“A crime of persecution is a particularly important crime within the ICC’s mandate because it really speaks to systemic discrimination,” HRW’s International Justice Director Elizabeth Evenson said. “We’re talking about actions that are designed to deprive individuals of fundamental rights – in this case by virtue of their gender identity – and so, in a way, it really gets at the worst kinds of discrimination.”

It could also set more precedent for the future. Most ICC cases in the past have focused on crimes like torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings. A 2018 case involving forced marriage and sexual violence in Mali was the first in which an ICC prosecutor charged the crime of gender persecution.

However, prosecuting more cases of gender persecution is a priority for ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, Evenson notes. Khan’s office has released multiple publications on gender-based crimes in the past year, including a policy on the crime of gender persecution.

Kelli Muddell, the director of the gender justice program at the International Center for Transitional Justice, suggests that investigating incidents of gender persecution can help the international community consider new aspects of the law.

“I think the sort of innovative and maybe provocative thing about this case, if it were to go forward, is that it really centers around this expanding of crimes against humanity to look at social, political and economic and civil rights,” Muddell said.

Bajwa also recognized that ICC investigations can be leveraged to impose broader sanctions or restrictions. However, she expressed concern that focusing on the prosecution of Taliban leaders as a means of delivering justice may ignore the responsibility of other powerful actors, especially those in the Global North.

“One of the other real concerns I have about this is that prosecuting an individual from within the Taliban, in isolation, to me, ignores the long history and responsibility of Western countries for how and why the Taliban are in government in the first place,” Bajwa said. “If the ICC is truly to have legitimacy, it needs to stop being so myopic.”

Bajwa encouraged the public in influential countries to put pressure on their governments to take tangible actions, like working to make it impossible for Taliban officials to travel.

This is not the first time an ICC case involving Afghanistan has been considered. In 2021, Khan resumed an investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by both the Taliban and United States armed forces. Bajwa said she thinks any potential case on behalf of Afghan women and girls would be an expansion of the preexisting investigation, which doesn’t have an end date.

Still, Cohen says the chances of a case going to trial are “slim.” Even if there was a successful investigation, Taliban authorities would have to respond to an arrest warrant and sit for trial. The ICC prohibits trials in absentia.

Regardless, the symbolic value of an investigation alone may be significant enough, especially for victims seeking justice. Many experts agree that even without a conviction, the discussion facilitated by the global spotlight of the ICC can be a useful advocacy tool.

Beyond the ICC

The education envoy also addressed other ways international institutions have tried to support Afghan women and girls beyond the ICC.

There are workarounds to the education bans, like online learning and underground schools. However, these alternatives are another burden on a budget already spread thin. According to Brown, women and girls in Afghanistan fight for their rights while also facing extreme poverty.

Only 23 percent of the required funds for Afghanistan’s humanitarian response plan have been received, with 50 million people failing to receive the aid they need. As more girls flee to neighboring countries like Pakistan, even more funding will be needed to support refugees.

At the same time, Brown has called on individual governments to sanction the Taliban. UN education aid has been suspended until schools are reopened for girls.

Brown said he believed there was a split in the Taliban regime, with some important voices, especially in the Ministry of Education, still in favor of education for all. He encouraged the leaders of Muslim-majority countries to use their position to persuade Taliban leaders to remove bans on girls’ education and women’s employment, which he said “has no basis in the Quran or the Islamic religion.”

International bodies continue to monitor human abuses under other UN treaties ratified by Afghanistan, like the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Women.

“We know that if we allow oppression to go unchallenged in Afghanistan, it could spread to other countries,” Brown warned.

Still, he spoke about the importance of seeing the resilience of Afghan women and girls as a sign of encouragement: “They can close down the schools girls go to, but they cannot close down their minds.”

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Multilingual #AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign to Return Millions Back to School — Global Issues

Education Cannot Wait’s #AfghanGirlsVoices shines a light on young Afghan girls deprived of their basic right to education and learning.
Credit: ECW
  • by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
  • Inter Press Service

NAIROBI, Sep 18 (IPS) – A Taliban edict is rolling back time in Afghanistan after access to education for all Afghan girls over the age of 12 was indefinitely suspended on September 18, 2021. Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are forbidden from attending school beyond the primary level, leaving more than 1.1 million girls and young women without access to formal education.

With an estimated 80 percent of school-aged Afghan girls and young women now out of school – in the blink of an eye – Afghanistan has gone back 20 years. As gains made over the last two decades go up in smoke, Afghan girls are bravely breaking through the frightening dark cloud of misogyny and gender persecution to tell the world about the injustice of being denied an education and their burning desire to return to school.

“It is hard to think of anyone further left behind than the girls in Afghanistan who are being denied their most basic human rights, including their right to education, based solely on their gender,” said Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Executive Director Yasmine Sherif.

“We will continue to steadfastly advocate for the full resumption of their right to education in Afghanistan and to work with our partners to deliver crucial learning opportunities to Afghan children through the community-based education programmes we support.”

To mark the tragic anniversary of the de facto authorities’ unacceptable ban on secondary school girls’ education in Afghanistan, ECW – the UN global fund for education in emergencies – has updated its compelling #AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign with new multilingual content to include English, French, Spanish and Arabic.

To mark the anniversary of the Taliban authorities’ unacceptable ban on secondary school girls’ education in Afghanistan, ECW has updated its compelling #AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign with new multilingual content. Credit: ECW

The multilingual #AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign intends to break through language barriers so that more people in the global community can read inspiring, resilient, and heartbreaking testimonies conveyed through moving artwork by a young Afghan female artist.

The girls want the world to know that they are at risk of missing a lifetime of learning and earning opportunities – never acquiring the skills needed to prosper and contribute to building the stable and prosperous future that they, their families and the people of Afghanistan deserve.

An entire generation of girls and young women could be lost – as they are being pushed out of public life, not to be seen or heard. Prospects of a bleak future have compromised their mental health.

First launched on August 15, 2023 – two years after the de facto Taliban authorities took power in Afghanistan and subsequently banned girls’ access to secondary and tertiary education – the campaign was developed in collaboration with ECW Global Champion Somaya Faruqi, former Captain of the Afghan Girls’ Robotic Team.

The Taliban have implemented over 20 written and verbal decrees on girls’ education. With each new edict, restrictions on Afghan girls and young women’s right to education have gotten even more serious and severe. Today, girls over the age of 10 years are not allowed to go to school.

Prior to the indefinite suspension of university education for female students, they were not allowed to undertake certain majors in areas such as journalism, law, agriculture, veterinary science, and economics.

#AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign seeks to bring to the attention of the global community what is at stake and why urgent action is much needed to end a brutal clampdown on education. Between 2001 and 2018, the country saw a tenfold increase in enrolment at all education levels, from around 1 million students in 2001 to around 10 million in 2018.

#AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign seeks to bring to the attention of the global community what is at stake and why urgent action is needed to end a brutal clampdown on education. Credit: ECW

“The number of girls in primary school increased from almost zero in 2001 to 2.5 million in 2018.  By August 2021, 4 out of 10 students in primary education were girls. Women’s presence in Afghan higher education increased almost 20 times, from 5,000 female students in 2001 to over 100,000 in 2021. Literacy rates for women doubled during the period, from 17 percent of women being able to read and write in 2001 to 30 percent for all age groups combined,” according to a recent UN report.

The girls’ powerful words are conveyed together with striking illustrations depicting both the profound despair experienced by these Afghan girls and young women, along with their incredible resilience and strength in the face of this unacceptable ban on their education.

The timing of the campaign will lift the voices of Afghan girls on the global stage as world leaders convene at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit on 18-19 September at the UN General Assembly in New York. The Summit aims to mark the beginning of a new phase of accelerated progress towards the SDGs with high-level political guidance on transformative and accelerated actions leading up to 2030 – progress that cannot be achieved with Afghan girls left behind.

ECW has been supporting education in Afghanistan since 2017, first through a mix of formal and non-formal education and now exclusively through programming outside the formal education system. The ECW-supported extended Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP) in Afghanistan aims to support more than 250,000 children and adolescents across some of the most remote and underserved areas of the country.

The programme delivers community-based education, organised at the local level with support from local communities, and is critical to keep education going. Girls account for well over half of all the children and adolescents reached by the MYRP. To access ECW’s social media kit to support the #AfghanGirlsVoices campaign, click here.

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The Baloch Girls Remain Stranded at the School Gates — Global Issues

In class at the public school in Lasbela, in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The low quality of government schools has turned private education into a luxury accessible to only a few. Credit: Mariyam Suleman Anees/IPS
  • by Mariyam Suleman Anees (gwadar, pakistan)
  • Inter Press Service

GWADAR, Pakistan, Sep 13 (IPS) – Ten years ago I ran an academy for girls in Dohr Gatti, a small slum on the outskirts of Gwadar, a coastal city in Balochistan, southwestern Pakistan. Most of the girls were between the ages of eleven and fifteen and had the little opportunity to receive a formal education.

Plagued by tradition and poverty, their desire to learn was often thwarted by the tradition of marrying as soon as they reached puberty and spend the rest of their lives raising children, as their mothers had.

At the academy I tried to raise awareness in the community about how crucial it was for girls to receive an education. That worked, at least a little.

Years later, some girls in Dohr Gatti managed to enroll in local public schools. In 2021, one of my students got the highest score on the district’s annual eighth-grade exam.

But even that couldn’t change her destiny. Soon after her triumph on the test, which showed her potential to continue studying, she had to stop. She was married off and sent to a remote village, where she still lives with her in-laws and a husband much older than her.

I often wonder how far students like her could have gone if their right to education was protected and if they only had one chance to pursue their dreams.

The question often raised in such cases is “who exactly is to blame?”

Religion and tradition intermingle in Balochistan, a region of Pakistan which has its own language and culture but where, as in the rest of the country, Sunni Islam is hegemonic.

Parents, tradition, patriarchy, poverty, political unrest in the region, the education system itself, the government, all come under scrutiny. But the state of access to education for girls remains largely unchanged.

Girls at Pishukan public school. The majority of them will not attend secondary school after being married as soon as they reach puberty. Credit: Anila Yousuf/IPS

A luxury good

Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest yet most underdeveloped province. According to a World Bank report, the overall literacy rate in the province is 41 percent. It’s half that for women, 19 percent.

It’s no surprise that only two out of ten women can read in Balochistan, when UN data suggests that 78 percent of Baloch girls of school age do not go to school. For those who do manage to attend, the dropout rate among female students is much higher.

Despite these stark obstacles, some have made progress. Some Baloch women have not only completed their education and begun successful careers, but have also actively contributed to improving girls’ education in the region.

Anila Yousuf is the principal of a girls’ school in Pishukan, a small fishing village in southern Balochistan. She has recently been selected for Postgraduate studies in the United Kingdom, and recently published a collection of stories of women from Gwadar, her hometown.

But she’s aware she’s the exception:

“There´s lower enrollment among girls and many of them drop out of school as soon as they reach secondary school. This means that the number of women both in higher education and in the working sector is much lower,” Yousuf tells IPS.

Long-standing political tensions between Pakistan’s central government and Balochistan often takes some of the blame for the problem, with budgets for local education often treated as a political football.

However, a 2010 reform in Pakistan’s constitution transferred responsibility for education to local provinces, and led to increases in provincial public funding for education.

International agencies including the World Bank, UNICEF, US Partnership, and British Council have also been working through local organizations focused on reducing gendered disparities in provincial education.

Provincial ministers receive an annual ‘development fund’ to allocate towards various projects, including education initiatives, within their respective constituencies. Critics say the money does not appear to have chipped away at the problem much, however.

“There is no proper planning for effective use of funds. Not even public-school teachers enroll their children in them,” says Yousuf. “They choose private schools or send their children outside the province.”

Private schools have become a thriving business in the towns and cities of the province. But with 60% of the population living below the poverty line, private schooling for girls is a luxury inaccessible to the majority.

The lack of women with formal educations in Balochistan has affected the local labor market, and limited many Baloch women’s ability to start careers. According to Yousuf, most of the few women who enter the workforce are usually teachers or healthcare workers.

“I fear that we are going backwards throughout the country. Women are increasingly locked up at home. There are still specific markets for them and more and more Koranic schools are seen, more women hidden under a burla,” says the activist.

Anila Yousuf with her students in the library of the school she runs in Pishukan. Education in Pakistan is segregated and there are fewer schools for female students. Credit: Mariyam Suleman Anees/IPS

Gender roles

Zaitoon Kareen, a university professor in Uthal, Balochistan, tells IPS that educating a daughter is always more expensive in Balochistan.

“Baloch girls need assistance, especially for higher education when they have to travel and live in a different town or city. They need better shelters and someone to accompany them when traveling to schools or universities for safety reasons,” explains Kareen.

She will be leaving the province herself soon, after being accepted for a Postgraduate study in the UK.

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) suggests that girls only attend school if there is one close to home. But with only 26 percent of primary schools, 42 percent of lower secondary and 36 percent of upper secondary schools accepting girls, it’s often hard for families to find a neighborhood school their daughters can attend.

“When parents can only afford to invest in the education of a single child, they tend to prioritize the boy, as he is more likely to get a paid job and live with his parents in the future,” Hafsa Qadir, an activist with WANG -a local NGO- tells IPS.

In 2020, the Baloch provincial government attempted to address the problem, claiming a new educational plan, the Educational Sector Plan 2020-25, would address the disparity.

But COVID-19 and the devastating floods of 2022 wiped out hundreds of schools and roads in the region, the plans were derailed.

Zakia Baloch, a local woman who attended school and now works as a physical therapist — one of the first women to work in the field in the region — said part of the problem is the schools themselves often dissuade girls from continuing their education.

“Instead of providing proper education, there is often a heavy emphasis on traditional gender roles, preparing girls primarily for domestic roles rather than equipping them for careers and empowering them as independent individuals,” she says.

She called the government-funded education system “negligent” in its teacher selection process, resulting in “inadequately trained educators with very limited skills and exposure.”

“In 2023, when technology has opened many avenues of learning, our system is still locked in a cocoon,” laments the Baloch woman.

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Women Lured by Promise of Jobs, Sold as Brides — Global Issues

Women walk in a village in Indian-administered Kashmir. Women here often find themselves lured by the promise of a job into unsuitable marriages. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS
  • by Athar Parvaiz (budgam, india)
  • Inter Press Service

BUDGAM, INDIA, Sep 13 (IPS) – It has been over a decade since 32-year-old Rafiqa (not her real name) was sold to a villager after being lured by the promise that she would be employed in the handicrafts industry of Indian-administered Kashmir.

But, instead of getting a job, she was sold to a Kashmiri man in central Kashmir’s Budgam district for a paltry sum of 50,000 Indian rupees (USD 605). Before the traffickers lured her, Rafiqa lived with her parents and three siblings in a poor Muslim family in West Bengal, a state in eastern India.

Ranging from Rohingya refugees – there are an estimated 40,000 Rohingya refugees in India – to women in other states of the country, such as West Bengal and Assam, women are trafficked and sold as brides to men who find it hard to find brides within their communities. Such grooms often include aged, physically challenged, and men with mental health issues.

Rafiqa’s husband, who drives a horse-cart for a living and lives in a one-room wooden shed, had to sell the only cow he possessed to pay the sum to the human traffickers.

She has now come to terms with “what I was destined to face in my life.” Embracing the reality, she says, was the only option left with her.

“I could have either tried to escape or taken some extreme step, but I decided to apply myself positively to make some kind of life out of what I ended up with,” Rafiqa told IPS while sitting at the base of the small wooden staircase of her house. “My husband’s simplicity and kind nature were also helpful in taking this decision – even though I didn’t like his appearance.”

“Now I have three kids for whom I have to live,” Rafiqa said. “I miss my parents and siblings. But it is very difficult to visit them. Even if I convince my husband, we can’t afford to visit them as it takes a lot of money to pay for the travel,” she added, saying her husband hardly provides two square meals for the family.

Rafiqa is not the only trafficked woman in that village. Over a dozen women have ended up getting married in similar circumstances. Elsewhere in the region, hundreds of other women from the Indian states of West Bengal and Assam are married to divorced and physically challenged men.

When 23-year-old Zarina (name changed), a woman from a poor family in West Bengal, got ensnared in a human trafficker’s trap, she had no idea that she would end up marrying a man whom she had never seen and was almost double her age. Zarina also fell for the false promise that a job in a carpet manufacturing unit in north Kashmir’s Patan area would be arranged for her. But, to her shock, she was sold into marriage.

“Now, how will my situation change after talking to you if it has not changed in the last five years? This is where I must be all my life,” an annoyed Zarina told IPS and then refused to elaborate.

Some women who encounter human traffickers are far unluckier. In a village of southern Kashmir’s Anantnag district, a young Rohingya woman was sold to a family by traffickers for their son with mental health issues after she was trafficked from a Rohingya refugee makeshift camp in the adjacent Jammu province.

“We were surprised when we discovered that the family has got a bride for their son who we knew was not mentally sound since his childhood,” said a neighbour of the family. “We would hear her screaming when her husband used to beat her almost every day. But fortunately for her, the young Rohingya woman was somehow able to escape after a few months.”

There are not any accurate official figures about sold brides, but some estimates say that thousands of girls and women are sold annually. The media sometimes reports the arrest of human traffickers, but such reports are not that common.

On July 26, India’s Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Kumar Mishra, told the Indian parliament that 1,061,648 women above 18 years and 251,430 girls below 18 years went missing between 2019 and 2021 across different states in the country.

Mishra, however, said that most of the victims have been found and added that the Indian government has taken several initiatives for the safety of women.

Last year in April, India’s National Commission for Women launched an Anti-Human Trafficking Cell “to improve effectiveness in tackling cases of human trafficking, raising awareness among women and girls, capacity building and training of Anti Trafficking Units, and to increase the responsiveness of law enforcement agencies.”

In its 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report, the US Department of State identifies India as a Tier 2 country.

“The Government of India does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. The government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, if any, on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore, India remained on Tier 2,” the report says.

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Global Pushback Puts Lives at Risk — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Dorothy Akongo – Flata Mwale – Vivian Mugarisi (kampala/lusaka/harare)
  • Inter Press Service

KAMPALA/LUSAKA/HARARE, Sep 12 (IPS) – Almost 30 years ago in 1994, the world witnessed a historic event as 179 nations convened on African soil, in Cairo, for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

In an unprecedented moment of collective action, Heads of State adopted a revolutionary Programme of Action and called for women’s reproductive health and rights to take center stage in national and global development efforts.

This summer, in another first, the Women Deliver Conference had its annual meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. As the largest conference on gender equality in the world with 6,000 in-person delegates and a further 200,000 remote participants, the event was a welcome symbol of Africa’s commitment to the rights of women and girls.

Despite this, it was frustrating to witness echoes of the global pushback currently plaguing the reproductive justice movement and how decades of progress on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) continue to face assault.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, the Hungarian President drew controversy for championing her ‘pro-family’ ideals in sharp contrast to the purpose that had united many of the delegates present.

President Katalin Novák, a key player in the movement opposing women’s and girls’ rights, notably access to safe and legal abortion, has publicly asserted that Hungarian women “should not compete with men” or expect to earn equal pay. She publicly envisioned her teenage daughter being empowered to choose a path of mothering a substantial number of children, “even 10 children if she chooses to”.

As part of a 40-women delegation from the Women in Global Health network, we experienced the clash firsthand. Three decades since Cairo, and the struggle for women’s and girls’ rights continues, but as African health professionals and agents of change in the systems we deliver, so does our determination to sustain progress on the continent.

We have much to be proud of. In November 2021, Benin’s Parliament voted to legalize abortion in most circumstances. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the first country in Francophone Africa to do so, expanded access to abortion care, and endorsed guidelines to implement the directives of the African Protocol on the Rights of Women (the Maputo Protocol).

In July 2022, Sierra Leone took steps to modernize outdated abortion laws following decades of advocacy by the women’s movement and government officials.

Despite these advances, women and adolescent girls in Africa continue to have some of the world’s highest maternal death and morbidity rates. With low access to modern contraceptive methods and quality, safe and legal abortion, stalling progress means life and death for many women and girls.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the failure of many governments to integrate a gender-responsive approach in national health systems on SRHR. During the emergency response, SRHR services were not always deemed essential and sidelined, resulting in a surge of gender-based violence, unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions.

Access to modern contraception and reproductive health, fundamental to determining whether and how many children to have, when and with whom, remains inaccessible for many adolescent girls and women. Quality, safe abortion care is a right. Restrictions on abortion do not eliminate abortion; they only eliminate safe abortions, resulting in women’s deaths.

According to global estimates up to 10 million more girls will be at risk of becoming child brides in the next decade as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reports also indicate that though all women and girls globally face discrimination in laws, social norms and practices, women and girls in Africa bear the highest share of discrimination in terms of intra-household dynamics and caregiving roles, working environments including harmful practices such as domestic violence and female genital mutilation.

Women health workers are grossly underrepresented in health leadership and this is a key factor in the current push back on SRHR. Women comprise the majority of the health workforce, given they are 70 percent of the overall workforce globally and 90 percent of frontline staff, yet they occupy just 25 percent of leadership roles.

For lower- and middle-income regions such as Africa, the percentage of women in leadership is as low as five percent. As the majority of frontline health professionals, women health workers have a deeper understanding of the health needs of their communities including SRHR needs. This power imbalance at decision-making tables excludes their valuable experiences and expertise to shape policies and programs that adequately address the health needs of women and girls.

Compounding this, 70% of women in Africa are said to be excluded financially, with an estimated gap of $42 billion between men and women. Around six million women work unpaid and underpaid in core health systems roles, effectively subsidizing global health.

Health and care are essential employment sectors for women and have the potential to unlock gender transformative lessons for the rest of the economy by addressing systemic biases that hinder women’s empowerment. Investing in the health workforce, the majority of whom are women, is a sound investment with potential gains for health systems, social change, and economic growth.

The role of women health workers delivering SRHR services in health systems cannot be overestimated. Women health workers typically counsel and support women and girls in accessing a range of modern contraceptives and in dealing with high-risk or unwanted pregnancy.

They brave violence and harassment from anti-rights protestors at quality, safe abortion facilities. They face online abuse and threats when expressing views in favor of SRHR, especially safe abortion.

As a platform, the Women Deliver Conference provided an opportunity for gender advocates and Civil Society Organizations to amplify efforts towards promoting a gender-responsive agenda among policy players and government leaders. While several countries have ratified human rights declarations over the years, not enough has been done to live up to the promise of making gender equality a reality.

Women’s movements and their allies are pivotal for mobilizing the necessary political will needed to drive progress on SRHR. As members of Women in Global Health, a movement challenging power and privilege for gender equity in health, we are calling on political and global health leaders to establish the following:

    1. Gender responsive UHC that ensures all people have access to the services they need, when they need them including access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for women and girls.
    2. Gender Equal and diverse leadership in Global Health based on Gender Transformative Leadership. This offers equal opportunities for women to lead in health and contribute to shaping health systems and health policies that are gender responsive. This is critical if we are to achieve health for all.
    3. Gender equity in emergency preparedness and response. We are calling for continuation of essential health services, including SRHR, and the protection of health workers to be central in these political agreements.

Movements such as ours are pivotal in building allyship between health workers and national leaders in the delivery of SRHR while also safeguarding health outcomes for future generations. Across Africa, reducing health inequities and maternal mortalities is of paramount concern.

African countries have the opportunity to secure the foundation for just societies and health for all, what we need now is to hold firm against the global pushback on reproductive rights and deliver on the promises made to women and girls.

This article was authored by Members of the African Women in Global Health network:
Dorothy Akongo, Research and Advocacy Manager, Busoga Health Forum and Coordinator, Uganda Chapter; Flata Mwale, Global Health Professional and Deputy Country Lead, Zambia Chapter; Vivian Mugarisi, Public Health Communications Specialist, Zimbabwe Chapter.

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