When Sudan announced in April that it would officially criminalize female genital mutilation, or FGM, the news was met with a burst of support and celebration from international observers and activists. UNICEF said the ban signaled a “new era” for girls’ rights, calling it a “landmark move” in a country where around 88 percent of women and girls aged 15 to 49 have undergone genital mutilation. The measure, which amended the criminal code to make performing FGM punishable by up to three years in prison, was immediately hailed as a sign of hope for the country’s fragile transitional government, formed [...]
In late January, President Donald Trump announced the formation of a Coronavirus Task Force, made up of 12 senior officials who would be responsible for leading the U.S. response to COVID-19. All were men. On Feb. 29, Vice President Mike Pence, the head of the task force, posted a now infamous photo to his Twitter account of a “very productive meeting,” with more than a dozen men and no women sitting around a table in the White House’s Situation Room. By early March, two women had been appointed to the team: Deborah Birx, who took the high-profile role of response [...]
MONTREAL—On Feb. 10, Karla Tait was arrested in northern British Columbia while participating in a ceremony along the path of a multi-billion-dollar pipeline project to honor missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police accused Tait and other members of the Wet’suwet’en Nation of violating an injunction preventing them from blocking construction on the Coastal GasLink pipeline. The project passes through an area where members of the Unist’ot’en clan, a sub-group of the Wet’suwet’en peoples, have set up a traditional healing center and camp to reclaim their ancestral lands and protest the pipeline’s construction. The road [...]
