30 July 2017
Quartz: Confronting a Sexual Rite of Passage in Malawi
Mwase was just 10 when she was led, along with about a dozen other girls, to remote huts outside her village during winter vacation from school in August. The girls were accompanied by older women from their village in Chiradzulu district, near the border with Mozambique. The women, known as anamkungwi, or “key leaders,” told them that when they returned to their villages they should cook and clean—and have sex. According to Mwase, most of the two weeks she spent at the initiation camp were dedicated to learning how to engage in sexual acts. She had been excited for this time with friends away from home, but that feeling quickly gave way to dread as she learned the true purpose of initiation. [...]
Initiation is a centuries-old practice in the region, according to Harriet Chanza of the World Health Organization. In many agrarian communities, she notes, “There’s nothing like adolescence. You are either a child or an adult.” Initiation is meant to establish the gender norms that boys and girls are expected to follow as men and women. The emphasis on having sex may also have a darker purpose in a country where nearly three-fourths of the population lives below the poverty line. Chanza, who is based in Malawi, says that some parents may actually want their daughters to get pregnant at a young age. A girl is often married soon after she is found to be pregnant, deferring the cost of caring for her and her baby from her parents to her husband. [...]
Her small, sharp eyes aglow in the dimly lit room, a grain mill whirring in the background, Mwase says the anamkungwi who oversaw her initiation told her to find an older man to have sex with after she left the camp. In defiance of tradition, however, Mwase refused to do so, fearing the costs to her health from unprotected sex. Like many first-born daughters in Malawi, Mwase was raised by her grandmother. She says her grandmother, who had sent her to the camp, didn't force her to have sex—likely because Mwase never told her about her decision not to do so. If her grandmother had learned the truth, she might have paid a man to take Mwase’s virginity. In some villages, young men hired for this task are called “hyenas,” and they occasionally have sex with many girls in a single village who have gone through initiation together.
Quartz: Slowly but surely, India’s queer community is winning the battle for sexual equality
In 2015, a student at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru was blackmailed and threatened with being publicly exposed for being gay. When he refused to pay extortion money, the private letters turned into notices pinned on noticeboards on campus. The words were sharp, relentless and inhumane: “I think it’s completely shameful, bad, immoral and disgusting. You should go kill yourself. Why do you think it’s illegal to be gay in India?” [...]
The law is not the only force behind this violence, but it is an important one. “Why do you think,” the blackmailer asks, “it’s illegal to be gay in India?” When petitioners in the Naz argued that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (which criminalises “voluntary carnal intercourse against the order of nature”) played an important part in shrouding our lives in criminality and legitimizing violence, this letter was one of many that we wrote against in our heads. In 2009, Naz gave many of us—not all, never all, for the law does not have such power by itself—a feeling of complete personhood. [...]
So what does it look like from within our fears? What has happened since the Supreme Court reversal of Naz? In one sense, it has been extraordinary. The reversal drew widespread condemnation in different forms and sites, from an extraordinary range of voices. The then-ruling government, led by the Indian National Congress, came out for the first time in strong and public support of queer rights as did several other parties including the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Janata Dal (S) and the Aam Aadmi Party. [...]
Progressive groups, state bodies like the National Human Rights Commission, teachers’ associations, professional associations including the medical and mental health establishments, women’s groups, student groups, trade unionists and private companies came out publicly against the judgment. Thousands across the country stood together, repeating the chant that brought together our resistance: “No Going Back.” A week after the judgment, “No Going Back” protests to mark a “Global Day of Rage” took place across thirty-six cities in the world, including seventeen in India. That resistance remains amidst the uncertainty and the fear, unwavering, unafraid.
Politico: The EU can’t solve Italy’s migration crisis
Italy is under huge strain. The country has seen 85,000 new arrivals so far this year, a 10 percent increase over 2016, according to interior ministry data. But while Italy has the infrastructure to handle the pressure, its politics may not. With elections to be held by the spring of next year and still no end in sight to the migration crisis, the situation has become a real emergency for its politicians.
The European Union has already provided crucial economic and logistical support, but Rome’s demands for more “solidarity” are far from unreasonable. The number of migrants entering Europe has increased exponentially, and the flow shows no sign of abating. Circumstances have changed and the EU has to adapt its rules accordingly. Italy can handle the immediate emergency, but the EU has to do more to tackle the causes of the crisis. [...]
Rome has largely been left to handle the crisis on its own. Even as the EU offers financial support, France, Switzerland and Austria are busy trying to seal their borders. Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz even went so far as to ask his Italian counterpart to leave arriving migrants on the small island of Lampedusa, where many migrants land. [...]
The EU needs to take three main steps. First, claim ownership of a Libya reconciliation and stabilization process. Second, launch a systematic program of forced repatriation for economic migrants. And third, negotiate with African countries, offering substantial aid and job creation opportunities in exchange for serious commitments to rein in illegal migration.
Politico: Hungary ignoring court orders to improve border camp conditions: watchdog
The Hungarian government repeatedly ignored international legal orders to improve conditions for asylum seekers in a controversial border zone camp, according to a human rights group and an asylum seeker held inside the camp. [...]
Since the Hungarian parliament approved the mandatory detention of asylum seekers in March, the transit zone has been criticized by watchdogs and international bodies concerned about the legality of automatically detaining asylum seekers, including children.
In March, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the detention of two Bangladeshi asylum seekers who were confined to the compound for three weeks before being sent back to Serbia amounted to a “de facto deprivation of their liberty.” [...]
Under new Hungarian rules introduced in the spring, authorities do not have to provide food to asylum seekers whose first application was rejected or canceled. R, who was separated from his family during the journey to the EU and went back to find them, falls into this category.
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