Africa | Nigeria | Corruption

Nigeria police rescue 19 young women, girls from ‘baby factory’

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Nigerian authorities said Monday that 19 girls and young women who were abducted and impregnated by captors who planned to sell their babies have been rescued. Lagos police spokesman Bala Elkana said the victims and four babies were rescued from four locations in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The victims, aged between 15 and 28, are mainly from eastern Nigeria. They told police they were tricked into coming to Lagos with the promise of jobs. Nigeria has a high number of syndicates that keep young women to produce babies for sale – a scheme locally termed "baby factories." The p
Latin America | Colombia | Activism

Revered Social Leader and Activist Killed in Colombia

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Social leader Tatiana Paola Posso Espitia, 35, was shot twice in the head Wednesday morning in front of her house in El Copey located in the Department of Cesar when two men on motorcycles fired at the activist and fled the scene. The assassination occurred just as Espitia’s taxi driver, Wilson Ortega Palomino, arrived at her home to take the social leader to work, according to local media reports. The bad timing resulted in Ortega also being shot four times by the hitmen. He is in critical condition at a nearby hospital. The National Network for Democracy and Peace in Colombia
Middle East | Saudi Arabia | Culture

The Saudi government is hunting down women who flee the country by tracking the IMEI number on their cellphones

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Women who flee Saudi Arabia expect to be chased. They expect their friends to be interviewed, their social media to be scoured, their passports to be frozen. They mostly do not expect Saudi government agents to hunt down the old box for their iPhone. But according to multiple sources who spoke with INSIDER, this is what has been happening in Saudi Arabia's quest to track down the growing number of women who flee the country every year. Cellphone packaging can provide information that could — with the help of spy-grade tracking equipment — trace a Saudi runaway to within a few feet of her
Africa | Nigeria | Corruption

Nigerian police arrested 65 women in a raid. Some of the women say officers raped them

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In a sparsely decorated room in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja, seven women are seated in a row, their backs turned to the assembled media to remain anonymous. One after the other, the women recount horrific physical and sexual abuse they say they were subjected to following their arrests on April 27 by officers of a special task force that raided hotels and nightclubs in Abuja. The 65 women who were arrested say they were beaten and harassed by officers, who forced them into their vans and drove them to the police station, their lawyers and NGOs told CNN. The seven women in the vid
North America | United States | Law

Women’s Rights Advocates Condemn DOJ Decision to Not Defend Female Genital Mutilation Law

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On Thursday, April 25th, Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (NY-12) (pictured center) joined elected officials and Equal Rights Amendment advocates to condemn a recent US Department of Justice decision to not  defend a federal law banning FGM/C, to call for Speaker Pelosi to step in to defend the law, and call for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Congresswoman Maloney is the sponsor of H.J. Res. 35, a bill to restart the ratification process of the ERA. While the Trump Administration has decided not to defend the 1996 law banning FGM/C, the House or the Senate could do s
Europe | Italy | Scandal

Italy’s highest court overturns decision that woman was too ‘masculine’ to be raped

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Italy’s highest court has overturned a decision that a woman was too “masculine” to be raped, in a turn of events that activists hope will bring about a change in attitudes toward sexual violence and its victims in Italy. Last month, protesters took to the streets outside the appeals court in Ancona, a city on Italy’s Adriatic Coast, after it was revealed why a panel of three female judges had acquitted two men accused of rape in 2017. The protesters took issue with the jurists’ reasoning, disclosed last month through the Italian Supreme Court’s retrial order: The judges reach
Middle East | Saudi Arabia | Technology

Saudi app criticized for feature to control women’s travel

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The Saudi government app Absher is mostly a way for people to pay traffic fines and complete other administrative tasks electronically. But one feature isn’t sitting well with civil-rights advocates: the ability for men to grant or deny a woman permission to travel. Regardless of their age, women in Saudi Arabia must have the consentof a male relative to obtain a passport, travel or marry. In the past, a travel permit was a paper document issued by the Interior Ministry and signed by a male relative. The Absher app replaces the need for a paper document.
International | Sports

Martina Navratilova Call Against Trans Athletes. She’s Not Backing Down.

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Tennis legend Martina Navratilova, who has been slammed for her opinion that it isn’t fair for male athletes who call themselves women to compete against biological women, issued a tweet on Tuesday indicating that no matter how nasty her critics get, she’s immovable on the subject. The entire series of events began last December, when Navratilova, a staunch advocate of LGBT rights, issued a blunt tweet that inflamed the transgender community, writing, ““You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis
Africa | Sudan | Activism

Letter from Africa: How ‘cheating husbands’ are linked to Sudan’s protests

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Unprecedented numbers of women are taking to the streets to join daily nationwide protests that erupted in mid-December. Despite a violent crackdown by the security forces and reports of sexual harassment, they remain undeterred. More than 50 people are thought to have died at the hands of security agents and many have been tortured, rights groups say. Yet women make up 70% of marchers at some protests, observers say, defiant in the face of the repressive laws of the conservative, Islamic state.
North America | United States | Religion

Inside the horrifying, unspoken world of sexually abusive nuns

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It’s the line from Scripture that stayed with Cait Finnegan for nearly half a century as she tried to suppress the painful memories of the sexual abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her Catholic clergy educator. “God is Love,” Sister Mary Juanita Barto told Finnegan as she repeatedly raped her in classrooms at Mater Christi High School in Queens in the late 1960s. The abuse began when Finnegan was 15 and continued throughout her high school years — on school buses to out-of-town sporting events, at religious retreats in upstate New York, at Finnegan’s childhood home in
North America | United States | Corruption

Sheila Jackson Lee Resigns from Head of Congressional Black Caucus

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Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has resigned from the top post of the Congressional Black Caucus following a former employee’s accusation that she was fired for reporting a rape. Recently, a lawsuit was filed by a former aide to Rep. Lee, alleging that she was fired after reporting that an employee of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation raped her. The litigant says that Lee deliberately fired her after she let it be known that she was planning to sue the Foundation.
Asia | Korea | Corruption

South Korea’s Park Geun-hye sentenced to 24 years in jail

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A South Korean court has sentenced former President Park Geun-hye to 24 years in prison after she was found guilty of corruption. The disgraced former president was found guilty of several corruption charges, abuse of power and coercion in a verdict issued on Friday. She was also fined $16m. WATCH: Warrant issued for S Korea’s ex-president on corruption charges (2:13) It was alleged in the trial that Park, 66, colluded with a friend, Choi Soon-sil, and a former presidential aide, in pressuring big businesses to donate to two foundations set up to back her policy initiatives.
Middle East | Iran | Activism

Iran arrests 29 women as headscarf protests intensify

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Tehran police have arrested 29 women for appearing in public without a headscarf as protests against the dress code in force since the Islamic revolution of 1979 intensify, Iranian media reported Friday. Those arrested were accused of public order offences and referred to the state prosecutor's office, the Fars, ILNA and Tasnim news agencies reported without elaborating. Chief prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri had played down the escalating protests on Wednesday, saying they were "trivial" and "childish" moves possibly incited by foreigners.
Middle East | Saudi Arabia | Activism

Saudi human rights activist who broke ban on women driving arrested again

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Saudi Arabian women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul was arrested again on Sunday at King Fahad International Airport in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, for an unspecified offense. Samah Hadid, director of campaigns at Amnesty International in the Middle East, has spoken out in support of Loujain al-Hathloul and against what he considers to be a travesty of justice on the part of Saudi Arabian authorities. “The Saudi Arabian authorities’ continuous harassment of Loujain al-Hathloul is absurd and unjustifiable,” Hadid said. “It appears she is being targeted once again because of her pea