Against Her Will. Forced and Coerced Sterilization of Women Worldwide

Open Society Foundations2011

This Open Society Foundations fact sheet provides information on instances of forced sterilization of racial and ethnic minorities, poor women, women living with HIV, and women with disabilities in Chile, Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Hungary, India, Mexico, Namibia, Kenya, Peru, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Venezuela, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uzbekistan. It also provides recommendations for governments, medical professionals, UN agencies, and donors on how to end the practice of forced and coerced sterilization.

ECLAC: At least 2,795 were victims of femicide in 23 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in 2017

Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean

2017

Stressing the need to create inter-agency agreements, the 2017 Economic Commission for the Latin America and the Caribbean’s report on femicide shows that Brazil topped the list of femicides (with 1,133 victims confirmed in 2017). In 2016, Honduras recorded 5.8 femicides for every 100,000 women. In Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia, high rates were also seen in 2017, equal to or above 2 cases for every 100,000 women. In the region, only Panama, Peru and Venezuela have rates below 1.0. In the Caribbean, four countries accounted for a total of 35 femicide victims in 2017: Belize (9 victims), the British Virgin Islands (1), Saint Lucia (4) and Trinidad and Tobago (21). In the same year, Guyana and Jamaica — which only have data on intimate femicides — reported the deaths of 34 and 15 women, respectively, at the hands of their current or former partners. In 2017, the rates of intimate femicides in Latin America ranged between a maximum of 1.98 for every 100,000 women in the Dominican Republic, to a minimum of 0.47 in Chile.

Rape during conflict: The Wolves of War; the Nobel Peace Prize honours two campaigners against rape in war

In: The Economist, 2018, pp. 59ff

Reports on the Nobel Peace Prize jointly awarded to Nadia Murad, a Yazidi in Iraq who was made a sex slave by Isis and wrote a book, The Last Girl, on her experience, and Dr. Mukwege in the Democratic Republic of Congo who runs a hospital that has treated over 40,000 women and children, survivors of rape and mutilation by militias.  He has survived an assassination attempt in 2012.

See also: 'Nobel winner vows to use honour in fight to protect Congolese women', Observer, 7 October 2018, pp. 28-9.

We Will Make a New Chile: Interview with Isidora Cepeda Beccar

In: Jacobin Magazine, 2019

An interview with a political activist in Santiago in the context of 'the largest demonstrations in Chile since the return of democracy', which had developed into demands for a new constitution and comprehensive political reform.  Beccar argues that the post-Pinochet reforms had primarily benefited a small elite.  

Available online at:

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/chile-protests-fare-hike-pinera-demands

Take Five: Fighting femicide in Latin America

In: UN Women, 2017

Discusses the deadly forms of violence against women in Latin America, the current development of the launching of the Latin America Model Protocol in 2014 by UN Women and the High Commissioner of Human Rights, and the most recent updates on the legislation by Latin American countries.

To access the last Survey on gender-based violence in Latin America, please see http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/about-us/highlights/2016/highlight-rn63.html

Available online at:

http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2017/2/take-five-adriana-quinones-femicide-in-latin-america

Indigenous Anti-nuclear Summit Declaration

Indigenous Environmental, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1996

The Indigenous Anti-Nuclear Summit declaration that brought together a network of Indigenous Peoples from different areas that have been negatively impacted by the nuclear chain. This includes Uranium mining in the Grants Mineral Belt; northern Saskatchewan; the areas near the Sequoyah Fuels Uranium Processing Plant, and the Prairie Island Power Plant.

Available online at:

https://www.ienearth.org/indigenous-anti-nuclear-summit-declaration/

Opinion Special. The George Floyd Protests

In: Guardian Weekly, 2020, pp. 7-16

Six brief commentaries on key issues relating to the resurgence of Black Lives Matter in both the US and Britain. Philip V. McHarris, 'Property damage is not real violence'; Malaika Jaball, 'Police brutality is ingrained in America'; Jericho Brown, 'We need the rage that abolished slavery'; Kojo Koram, 'Systemic racism is a British problem too'; David Olusoga, 'Toppling a slave trader's statue is history being  made'; Patricia J. Williams, 'The corrupt language used to describe black pain'.

See also: ‘The Big Story: Black Lives Matter: Do Look Now’, Guardian Weekly, 19 June, pp. 7-14.

Covers protests in the UK against statues honouring slave traders and imperialists; anti-racist demonstrations in Belgium and a petition to remove all statues of King Leopold, who presided over a particularly brutal colonial rule in the Congo; protests against police violence and racism against indigenous and black citizes in Canada; and demonstrations in the Dominican Republic about racist discrimination against those of Haitian descent. There is also an article reflecting on lessons to be learned from how Germany has confronted its Nazi past. 

Take Five: Fighting femicide in Latin America

In: UN Women, 2017

Discusses the deadly forms of violence against women in Latin America, the current development of the launching of the Latin America Model Protocol in 2014 by UN Women and the High Commissioner of Human Rights, and the most recent updates on the legislation by Latin American countries.

To access the last Survey on gender-based violence in Latin America, please see http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/about-us/highlights/2016/highlight-rn63.html

Available online at:

http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2017/2/take-five-adriana-quinones-femicide-in-latin-america

Successes and Shortcomings: How Algeria's Hirak can inform Lebanon's Protest Movement

Vol 03/06/2020, Middle East Institute2020

The author summarizes the beginning  of the two movements, but notesthat despite significant victories, given the political power structure has not been overthrown the goals of regime change 'remain elusive'. She considers the successes in Algeria - the wide range of social groups involved and 'ethos of peacefulness' - and the shortcomings of lack of leadership and of a clear strategy to achieve change. Using the Algerian example she suggests lessons for Lebanon, such as maintaining nonviolence and avoiding political partisanship and sectarianism. 

Available online at:

https://www.mei.edu/publications/successes-and-shortcomings-how-algerias-hirak-can-inform-lebanons-protest-movement

Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN)

WECAN is a climate justice body which stresses that indigenous women, women of colour, women on low incomes and from Global South countries live on 'the front lines of climate change'. Therefore solutions to climate change require not only ending extraction of oil and gas, but 'building a new economy' based on communal and women's rights, right of nature and the rights of future generations. WECAN aims to mobilise women around the world in policy advocacy (for example at UN climate conferences) and in movement building.

Available online at:

https://www.wecaninternational.org

A Cold War cast of thousands. Anti-nuclear activists and protest-action

In: National Park Service, 2017

Discusses the anti-nuclear weapons movements in the late 1950s, for example the Committee for Non-Violent Action, and the shift of focus, from the mid-1960s until the early 1970s to the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War by many local and national peace groups in the United States. In the late 1970s and 1980s Europe and the United States experienced a resurgence of concern over nuclear weapons.

Available online at:

https://www.nps.gov/articles/antinuclearactivism.htm

The Big Story: Kids v. Climate Change

In: Guardian Weekly, 2019, pp. 10-14

Covers the origins of the School Strike Movement in Greta Thunberg's solitary protest outside the Swedish Parliament, charts 'The snowball effect' prints Thunberg's speech at the Davos Economic Forum in January 2019, and summarizes a week of bad climate news.

The Pandemic Strikes: Responding to Colombia’s Mass Protests

International Crisis Group2021, pp. 34

The report examines the significance of the mass strikes and demonstrations in Colombia in 2020-21, examines the government's response, and also suggests some of the dangers involved.  It notes that far right vigilantes supporting the police had fired on demonstrators, and that in some areas criminal gangs were taking advantage of the social disorder.

Colombia femicide: new exhibition aims to raise femicide awareness

2017

TRT World journalist, Dimitri O’Donnell interviews Adriana Cely Verdadero, a women’s rights activist, and Ana Guezmes Garcia, a representative of UN Women Colombia, who provide background to the exhibition dedicated to the victims of femicide in Colombia and the gaps the social and political systems need to fill. Published on 16 December 2017 on YouTube.

Available online at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=92&v=op5DDnrqzz0

Rita Segato on political feminism: ‘There is no prince

In: TeleSur, 2018

Rita Segato, an Argentine-Brazilian academic and one of the most celebrated Latin American  feminists, comments on the biases still affecting cases of femicide in Latin America due to the hyper machismo culture. She also discusses the need to unite academics working in the field of Communication, journalists and editors in order to promote discourses that encourage women to be seen as political actors rather than merely as victims.

Available online at:

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Rita-Segato-on-Political-Feminism-There-is-No-Prince-20181219-0020.html

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