Women laborers take a break at an agriculture market, Ahmadabad, India, Nov. 23, 2016 (AP photo by Ajit Solanki).

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the status of women’s rights and gender equality in various countries around the globe. India’s minister for women, Maneka Gandhi, recently declared that the country’s rape problem was exaggerated, and that the Indian media’s overemphasis on rape was negatively affecting tourism. In an email interview, Nandita Bhatla, a senior technical specialist at the International Center for Research on Women, discussed women’s rights in India. WPR: What is the current status of women’s rights and gender equality in India? Nandita Bhatla: Achieving women’s rights and gender equality continues to […]

Kyrgyzstan's president, Almazbek Atambayev, at a Commonwealth of Independent States summit, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Sept. 16, 2016 (Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP).

Kyrgyzstan will hold a referendum on Dec. 11 on proposed reforms to its constitution that would give more power to the prime minister. Opponents of the reforms fear they are a way for President Almazbek Atambayev to maintain his grip on power and crack down on human rights. In an email interview, Medet Tiulegenov, an assistant professor at the American University of Central Asia, discusses Kyrgyzstan’s constitutional referendum. WPR: What changes would the Dec. 11 referendum make to Kyrgyzstan’s constitution, and what are President Almazbek Atambayev’s political objectives in seeking them? Medet Tiulegenov: The proposed changes largely concern issues of […]

Colombian indigenous peoples participate in a peace march, Bogota, Colombia, Oct. 12, 2016 (AP photo by Fernando Vergara).

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the legal status and socio-economic conditions of indigenous peoples in a range of countries. According to the United Nations, at least 21 human rights activists, mostly from indigenous communities, have been killed in Colombia this year. Most of the murders are related to the ongoing peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and many fear it will only get worse if a peace accord isn’t implemented soon. In an interview transcribed by Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli, a senior associate with the Washington Office on Latin America, […]

A Saudi woman casts her ballot at a polling center during municipal elections, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 12, 2015 (AP photo by Aya Batrawy).

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the status of women’s rights and gender equality in various countries around the globe. Earlier this month, the Shura Council, a formal advisory body to Saudi King Salman, refused to even look into the possibility of letting women in Saudi Arabia drive. That leaves Saudi Arabia as the only country in the world that forbids women from driving. In an email interview, Katherine Zoepf, a fellow at New America and author of “Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World,” discusses women’s […]

A protester holds a banner that reads in Spanish "we want them alive" during a demonstration against violence against women, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Oct. 19, 2016 (AP photo Victor R. Caivano).

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the status of women’s rights and gender equality in various countries around the globe. Last month, tens of thousands of women marched in Buenos Aires to protest violence against women in Argentina, after several particularly brutal cases came to light there. In an email interview, Jennifer M. Piscopo, an assistant professor of politics at Occidental College and the Peggy Rockefeller visiting scholar at Harvard University, discusses women’s rights in Argentina. WPR: What is the current status of women’s rights and gender equality in Argentina? Jennifer M. Piscopo: Argentina […]

Myanmarese police officers patrol along the border fence between Myanmar and Bangladesh, Maungdaw, Rakhine state, Myanmar, Oct. 14, 2016 (AP photo by Thein Zaw).

Over the past month, the situation in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which has been extremely volatile since an eruption of violence in the early 2010s, has deteriorated once again. Following an attack on police outposts near the border with Bangladesh in early October, which killed at least nine policemen, Rakhine has been on edge. Some human rights groups have reported that the security forces and police, as well as individuals, are striking back at the state’s ethnic Rohingya, since militant Rohingya Muslims were believed to be behind the killings of the police. Although the security forces, which are dominated by […]

Then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi in New York, Sept. 19, 2016 (AP photo by Andres Kudacki).

Egypt’s general-turned-strongman, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, was the first foreign leader to call Donald Trump and congratulate him on his surprising election as president of the United States. Read into that what you will. Back in September, Trump met with el-Sisi in New York during the United Nations General Assembly and didn’t bring up Egypt’s grim human rights record in the three-plus years that el-Sisi has been in power. In her own meeting with Egypt’s president, Hillary Clinton did. Under el-Sisi, tens of thousands of political dissidents and regime opponents have been thrown in Egyptian jails. According to the Trump campaign’s readout […]

A woman walks past graffiti in Sidi Bouzid, where the protests that lit the Arab world began, Tunisia, Oct. 19, 2011 (AP photo by Amine Landoulsi).

When Tunisians overthrew dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, they kicked off a wave of popular uprisings throughout the Middle East and spurred a jubilant sense of unity at home. But for champions of women’s rights in the country, that jubilation was soon replaced by a sense of dread over what might happen to those rights as Islamist conservatism began to take hold. While Ben Ali’s two decades in power were marked by corruption, human rights abuses and tight restrictions on free speech and political opposition, his regime did preserve the secular foundations of Tunisia’s strong women’s rights legislation, […]

A man looks at a formation of police during a presentation to the press, San Salvador, El Salvador, June 14, 2016 (AP Photo by Salvador Melendez).

With the world’s three highest homicide rates since 2010, the Northern Triangle of Central America—the countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras—have become the fulcrum of regional insecurity. In addition to levels of violence surpassing those of countries at war, the region is a base for transnational drug cartels, the virulent youth gangs known as “maras,” and criminality ranging from mass deforestation to money laundering. The reverberations of this multifaced security crisis, particularly the waves of underage migrants fleeing north to the United States, has finally focused attention enough to forge a concerted response. In February 2015, the Obama administration […]

With graphic posters and signs, thousands of Moroccans protest against the death of Mouhcine Fikri, Rabat, Morocco, Oct. 30, 2016 (AP photo by Abdeljalil Bounhar).

On Friday, Mouhcine Fikri, a fishmonger in the northern Moroccan town of Al-Hoceima, jumped into the compacter of a garbage truck in an attempt to salvage some $11,000 of fish that had been confiscated by the police. He was subsequently crushed to death. Footage of the carnage was shared widely online. Moroccans immediately took to social media, decrying “hogra,” a term used to describe injustice at the hands of the government. Angry posts turned into mass protests, which began Sunday in the Rif region and spread across the country. Some protesters called Fikri’s death premeditated. The demonstrations, which are ongoing, […]

Saudi women journalists during a press conference by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 23, 2016 (AP photo by Jacquelyn Martin).

The status of women in traditional Muslim societies, particularly Saudi Arabia, has long been an awkward source of cultural and political tension between the West and the oil-rich monarchies of the Arab world. Women’s roles are gradually changing as these states modernize, but more disruptive social change could well occur within a generation, as larger cohorts of educated women succeed in challenging social norms. Gender issues have been at the margins of U.S. relations with the Arab world for decades, and the mantra inside Western bureaucracies more generally has been that each society changes at its own pace. But while […]