News…
Most Afghan women prisoners jailed for being victims of rape
Two-thirds of women imprisoned in Afghanistan were jailed for illegal sexual relations, a category that includes infidelity and premarital sex but also punishes the victims of rape. A newly formed consultant council, the Women and Children’s Justice Shura, hopes to draw attention to their plight while Western agencies are trying to improve conditions at the facilities where these women are jailed.
Russian Judge Rules to Allow Sexual Harassment
After a Russian woman lost her sexual harasment case after a judge ruled employers were obliged to make passes at female staff to ensure the survival of the human race. The judge stated that ”If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children,” the judge ruled. According to a recent survey, 100% of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 percent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven percent claimed to have been raped.
Rubber out-growers intensify campaign against child labour
The President of the Rubber Out-growers and Agents Association of Ghana (ROAA), Nana Asaa Kofi (III), has called on members of the Association, to adhere to the crusade against child labor in the rubber growing areas of the country.
UK pedophile was “librarian” for global abuse ring
A pedophile who acted as a “librarian” for a global Internet child abuse ring was jailed on Monday after one of the biggest undercover police investigations into online abuse in Britain. Unemployed Philip Thompson, 27, amassed nearly a quarter of a million indecent pictures of children, including thousands in the two most serious categories.
Palestinian refugees to benefit from nutrition programme
Difficult economic conditions triggered by high fuel prices have prompted the Jordanian authorities to extend their US$5 million school nutrition programme to include Palestinian refugees in schools run by the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA). The academic year, which starts on 17 August, will see about 70,000 students from 13 refugee camps benefit from the initiative, which provides students with a daily mid-morning snack containing essential vitamins that most of the children lack.
Many children still miss out on treatment
Experience has shown that it is possible to run successful paediatric HIV programmes in rural African settings, yet less than 10% of patients on life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs are children, field officers of the international medical NGO, Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), have said. “Studies show that without treatment, 50 percent of children with HIV will die within the first two years of their lives,” Fernando Parreno, who has worked for MSF’s ARV programme in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, said at the recent International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. “It is imperative that all children are diagnosed and started on treatment as early as possible after diagnosis, or too many children will continue to die.”