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International Updates
ACHPR adopts Resolution 376 on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in Africa
The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights has adopted Resolution 376 on the situation of human rights defenders in Africa. The resolution recognizes widespread violation of rights of human rights defenders and their family members, who are routinely subjected to violations such as unlawful detention, acts of torture, extrajudicial and summary execution, enforced disappearance, […]
Kenyan legislature amends education law, obliges state schools to distribute sanitary pads
The Kenyan legislature has amended the Basic Education Act, which places an obligation upon the government to provide “free, sufficient and quality” sanitary pads to girls in state schools. The amendment comes after a long campaign by school girls to make sanitary pads free, given that lack of access to menstrual hygiene products is said […]
Amendment to Sierra Leone’s Citizenship Act
The Sierra Leone legislature has amended its Citizenship Act to allow both women and men equal rights in conferring nationality on their children. Prior to this critical reform, the Citizenship Act of 1973 denied the children of Sierra Leonean women who were born abroad the right to acquire citizenship of Sierra Leone. The right was […]
Marriage with rapist no longer a basis for exonerating the offence of rape in Jordan, Lebanon, Tunsia and El Salvador
The provision that allowed rapists to escape penalty by marrying their victims was repealed by Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and El Salvador in their respective legislations. For many years, civil society activists had pointed out how the provision was often misused, especially in poor, rural areas where parents married their minor pregnant daughters to rapists in […]
Nepal criminalises isolation of menstruating women
Nepal’s Parliament has voted unanimously to criminalise the practice of chhaupadi, which entails banishment of menstruating women, including after childbirth, from their homes. Practicing this custom will now invite a prison sentence of three months, or a fine of NPR 3,000. Rooted in the belief that menstruating women are unclean, the custom of chhaupadi affects […]
Transgender Chinese man wins first-of-its-kind labour discrimination case
A Guiyang court has ruled that the gender of an employee could not be treated as a ground for terminating their employment. In this case, a transgender man was fired from his job at a health services firm, after several of his colleagues told him that he “looked like a lesbian” and might damage the […]
Qatar adopts new law on Domestic Workers
The Emir of Qatar ratified Law No.15 on service workers in the home (“Domestic Workers Law”), thus adopting a law on labour rights for domestic workers for the first time in the country. The law guarantees workers a maximum 10-hour workday, a weekly rest day, three weeks of annual leave, and an end-of-service payment of […]
Maldives set to reintroduce death penalty
Maldives is set to reintroduce death penalty despite international criticism after a 60 year-moratorium, on the ground that severity of punishment might have an impact on the rising number of murder cases and help the law enforcement agencies in controlling drug trafficking in the country. The UN and international non-governmental organizations have urged the government […]
South Korea Supreme Court upholds LGBT Rights
The Supreme Court of South Korea has directed the government to allow an LGBT rights organisation ‘Beyond the Rainbow Foundation’ to legally register itself as a charity, ending the organisation’s three-year struggle against discriminatory rejection by government agencies on the ground that the foundation’s main purpose of promoting LGBTI rights was different from and opposed […]
Sikkim High Court to consider the unconstitutionality of the Sikkim Succession Act, 2008
Several Sikkimese women have filed a petition in High Court challenging the Sikkim Succession Act, 2008 for being discriminatory. Although the Sikkim Succession Act, 2008grants daughters and wives equal rights to hold and inherit property, it denies these rights to women married to non-Sikkimese men, or those who have acquired foreign citizenship. Immovable assets of […]