Friday Links | September 12, 2014

Friday Links | September 12, 2014 September 12, 2014

News that Scottish student Aqsa Mahmood has joined ISIS in Syria shocked many, but she isn’t the only woman to do so. The Guardian features an article on the reasons why young women choose to go to Syria and what kind of life they are living there.

Human Rights Watch reports that African Union peacekeepers in Somalia have sexually abused and exploited vulnerable Somali women and girls on two bases in the capital Mogadishu. Somalia has said that it will investigate the charges.

Sare Davutoglu is Turkey’s new first lady, and a accomplished medical doctor in her own right, but the (predominantly secular) Turkish press still target her in what some call a smear campaign.

A year after the riots between Hindus and Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, India, many Muslim women are still waiting for justice in their rape cases, even though many say that they are pressured to drop charges.

Women playing volleyball inside an Afghan prison for women in Herat. The prison was built in cooperation with an Italian NGO and offers skills training to prepare women for a life outside prison. Image by Aref Karimi/AFP/Getty Images
Women playing volleyball inside an Afghan prison for women in Herat. The prison was built in cooperation with an Italian NGO and offers skills training to prepare women for a life outside prison. Image by Aref Karimi/AFP/Getty Images

An increasing number of Syrian refugee women in Turkey opt to marry Turkish husbands, despite the fact that vast majority of these marriages are not legal.

When one Guinean woman went into early labour when visiting South Africa, she found that she was put into isolation, because of the fear that she might have ebola, though she was tested before entering the country.

The American woman, who was arrested earlier this year when she tried to leave the country to join rebels in Syria, has plead guilty to terror charges.

The International Olympic Committee is urging Saudi Arabia to send more female athletes to international sporting events after the country failed to send any female athletes to the upcoming Asian Games.

An Afghan court has sentenced seven men to death for gang raping and robbing a group of women, while wearing police uniforms, just outside the capital Kabul.

The Swiss cabinet has rejected a motion to ban the headscarf in passport pictures.

Dr Maryam El Mahdi, a Sudanese opposition leader, has been released from prison earlier this week; she was incarcerated for 4 weeks, but has not been told the reason for her arrest.

The Atlantic features an article on Afghan girls living as boys, often to answer the need of a family to have a son.

According to an expert, female genital mutilation (FGM) could be eradicated from Iraqi Kurdistan within a generation.

Last June more than a dozen Iranian women were arrested for trying to attend a volleyball match in a stadium in Tehran; over two months later one British-Iranian woman is still incarcerated.

One mother in Kosovo has gone public with her plea to her husband to bring back her young son, who he took to join the Islamic State fighters in Syria earlier this summer.

Spain is considering a ban on the face veil.


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