Partner abuse leads to HIV infection, and black women are most at risk. A new study at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing has found that 46 percent of African-American adolescent girls report that their partner did not use a condom the last time they had sex -- often because of partner abuse. The girls described physical and sexual abuse and threats as preventing them from having their partner use condoms. The relationship between HIV and partner abuse is significant: In the U.S., at least 12 percent of HIV infections among women are a result of partner abuse.

Read More 0 comments |

Polygamist Warren Jeffs (C) is flanked by Las Vegas Metro Police SWAT officers during an extradition hearing at the Clark County Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, in this August 31, 2006 file photograph. – Reuters Photo

He is a polygamist religious leader who married many women, including underage girls, and raped a minor. He banned parades, dances and magazines like the Sports Illustrated and Car and Driver and yet revelled in the company of multiple wives.

Read More 0 comments |

Some 90 per cent of Afghan women face some form of domestic violence - many are forced into early marriage, kidnapped, or raped with no hope of justice

In December 2010, in a small house located in Sarbande Chakush village in the Juzjan province of Afghanistan, a 14-year-old girl named Aziza was abruptly awakened by loud banging on the front door in the middle of the night.

Read More 0 comments |

The news of an elderly woman being paraded naked in Haripur, a remote village in Punjab, is really heart throbbing. Her crime? Her son is accused of adultery with a fellow village woman. The village jury declares her son guilty and the victim (her mother) is paraded around the streets naked, as the punishment. Justice dispensed! I wonder if the chief arbiter had pronounced the same verdict had he been accused of adultery/rape. But that is another story. In our Orwellian world, some people are just more equal than others.

So, what then, disturbs me is the fact that why, each time, a mother has to pay for the crimes of her son? Why, always, is a sister punished for a wrong done by her brother? Is this our way of restoring honour? Bartering and exchanging girls like cattle, raping them in the open, siccing dogs on them, and now, parading them naked on the streets. The simple logic that two wrongs never make one right seems incomprehensible to our ‘jurists’.

Read More 0 comments |

by Razeshta Sethna

For most governments that have come and gone, Pakistan’s women haven’t mattered. Gaunt and broken, fifty-something Shahnaz Bibi was paraded naked in her village of Neelor Bala in Haripur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in June.

Her son was accused of having an affair with a married woman, but it was Shahnaz who was punished when some influential men of the area decided to take matters into their own hands. The devastating impact of male-dominated parallel justice systems have destroyed, and taken, the lives of Pakistani women.

Read More 0 comments |

by Uzma Ahmed Khan

Is chivalry an obsolete concept? “A few thousand years into civilisation and we still haven’t figured out how men and women should relate to each other” is Nighat’s first reaction as she rolls her eyes. A born and bred Pakistani now living independently in Canada, she feels that women really need to be very clear on what they need from men.

Read More 0 comments |

Couples who want to separate are to be confronted by experts about the impact a divorce would have on their children and finances.

Those who go ahead with the split will be charged a fee if they want the state to sort out child maintenance arrangements. The measures are designed to reduce Britain’s divorce rate which is among the highest in Europe, and will be unveiled by the Government this week.

Ministers are planning to adopt a programme pioneered successfully in Norway in which couples threatening to split are made to ‘think again’. Experts talk them through the consequences of a separation, focusing on the likely damage to children and the pair’s future financial success.

Read More 0 comments |

“Who is it?” asks 12-year-old Khadijah as she unlocks the door to her home. Her accent differs from that of a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa native’s — and after she pulls open the door, her unique features further pique my curiosity. Where are Khadijah and her family really from?
Khadijah is one of the thousands of people in Pakistan whose lives have been influenced by the war in neighbouring Afghanistan, a country that has seen nothing but conflict for three decades. Khadijah is actually the granddaughter of Sufi Hameed Gul, who is famous in this small town of Regi, situated some 12 kilometres from the provincial capital of Peshawar. Although he is a respectable religious cleric, Sufi Hameed Gul’s fame stems from the fact that he is the father in-law of two former Guantanamo detainees.

Read More 0 comments |