Child Marriage Doesn’t Actually Happen Here, Right?
Why is it so hard to end child marriage in America?
In 1762, North Carolina’s colonial governor, Arthur Dobbs, married his second wife, 15-year-old Justina Davis. He was 73. It’s easy to feel some combination of revulsion for Mr. Dobbs, pity for Ms. Davis or, likely, a sense of relief that times have changed.
Except they haven’t. Almost 260 years later, North Carolina still allows pregnant and parenting children to marry as young as 14 with a court order, sometimes in direct opposition to a state statutory rape law, which criminalizes sex with a person age 15 or under, with few exceptions.
The state’s House of Representatives is considering a bill, which would increase the minimum age of marriage to 16 and cap age gaps with 16- or 17-year-old spouses at four years. The bill that was originally introduced would have set the marriage age at 18, with no exceptions, but the process of getting even this far has been fraught and revealed surprising opposition.
That North Carolina, my home state, is tied with Alaska for the nation’s lowest legal age of marriage (though there are some states that fail to specify age floors in law, where even younger children can marry) comes as a shock to most North Carolinians. We often think of child marriage as a problem that’s over there — something affecting other countries — or long ago — between people of our parents’ or grandparents’ generations.
Indeed, when I first spoke to North Carolinian leaders and advocates of women and children’s rights in 2018 about the prospect of studying rates of child marriage in the state, many were skeptical as to why. Surely this was just an old law on the books?
This sense of exceptionalism has left this issue understudied. In a 2017 investigation, PBS’s “Frontline” could not access data from six states — mine included — on how often child marriage occurs or among whom.
Last year, my organization, the International Center for Research on Women, compiled the first-ever comprehensive child-marriage estimates for North Carolina and found that thousands of adults have been granted licenses to marry children in the state. This research was our first investigation of child marriage in the United States, after over a decade of work on this issue around the world, where approximately 12 million girls marry below the age of 18 each year.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Social Evils
Where are India's millions of missing girls?
Published 23 May 2011
India's 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven - activists fear eight million female foetuses may have been aborted in the past decade. The BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi explores what has led to this crisis.
Kulwant has three daughters aged 24, 23 and 20 and a son who is 16.
In the years between the birth of her third daughter and her son, Kulwant became pregnant three times.
Each time, she says, she was forced to abort the foetus by her family after ultrasound tests confirmed that they were girls.
"My mother-in-law taunted me for giving birth to girls. She said her son would divorce me if I didn't bear a son."
Kulwant still has vivid memories of the first abortion. "The baby was nearly five months old. She was beautiful. I miss her, and the others we killed," she says, breaking down, wiping away her tears.
Until her son was born, Kulwant's daily life consisted of beatings and abuse from her husband, mother-in-law and brother-in-law. Once, she says, they even attempted to set her on fire.
"They were angry. They didn't want girls in the family. They wanted boys so they could get fat dowries," she says.
India outlawed dowries in 1961, but the practice remains rampant and the value of dowries is constantly growing, affecting rich and poor alike.
Kulwant's husband died three years after the birth of their son. "It was the curse of the daughters we killed. That's why he died so young," she says.
Common attitude
Her neighbour Rekha is mother of a chubby three-year-old girl.
Last September, when she became pregnant again, her mother-in-law forced her to undergo an abortion after an ultrasound showed that she was pregnant with twin girls.
"I said there's no difference between girls and boys. But here they think differently. There's no happiness when a girl is born. They say the son will carry forward our lineage, but the daughter will get married and go off to another family."
Kulwant and Rekha live in Sagarpur, a lower middle-class area in south-west Delhi.
Here, narrow minds live in homes separated by narrow lanes.
The women's story is common and repeated in millions of homes across India, and it has been getting worse.
In 1961, for every 1,000 boys under the age of seven, there were 976 girls. Today, the figure has dropped to a dismal 914 girls.
Although the number of women overall is improving (due to factors such as life expectancy), India's ratio of young girls to boys is one of the worst in the world after China.
Many factors come into play to explain this: infanticide, abuse and neglect of girl children.
But campaigners say the decline is largely due to the increased availability of antenatal sex screening, and they talk of a genocide.
The government has been forced to admit that its strategy has failed to put an end to female foeticide.
'National shame'
"Whatever measures have been put in over the past 40 years have not had any impact on the child sex ratio," Home Secretary GK Pillai said when the census report was released.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described female foeticide and infanticide as a "national shame" and called for a "crusade" to save girl babies.
But Sabu George, India's best-known campaigner on the issue, says the government has so far shown little determination to stop the practices.
Until 30 years ago, he says, India's sex ratio was "reasonable". Then in 1974, Delhi's prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences came out with a study which said sex-determination tests were a boon for Indian women.
It said they no longer needed to produce endless children to have the right number of sons, and it encouraged the determination and elimination of female foetuses as an effective tool of population control.
"By late 80s, every newspaper in Delhi was advertising for ultrasound sex determination," said Mr George.
"Clinics from Punjab were boasting that they had 10 years' experience in eliminating girl children and inviting parents to come to them."
In 1994, the Pre-Natal Determination Test (PNDT) Act outlawed sex-selective abortion. In 2004, it was amended to include gender selection even at the pre-conception stage.
Abortion is generally legal up to 12 weeks' gestation. Sex can be determined by a scan from about 14 weeks.
"What is needed is a strict implementation of the law," says Varsha Joshi, director of census operations for Delhi. "I find there's absolutely no will on the part of the government to stop this."
Today, there are 40,000 registered ultrasound clinics in the country, and many more exist without any record.
'Really sad'
Ms Joshi, a former district commissioner of south-west Delhi, says there are dozens of ultrasound clinics in the area. It has the worst child sex ratio in the capital - 836 girls under seven for every 1,000 boys.
Delhi's overall ratio is not much better at 866 girls under seven for every 1,000 boys.
"It's really sad. We are the capital of the country and we have such a poor ratio," Ms Joshi says.
The south-west district shares its boundary with Punjab and Haryana, the two Indian states with the worst sex ratios.
Since the last census, Punjab and Haryana have shown a slight improvement. But Delhi has registered a decline.
"Something's really wrong here and something has to be done to put things right," Ms Joshi says.
Almost all the ultrasound clinics in the area have the mandatory board outside, proclaiming that they do not carry out illegal sex-determination tests.
But the women in Sagarpur say most people here know where to go when they need an ultrasound or an abortion.
They say anyone who wants to get a foetal ultrasound done, gets it done. In the five-star clinics of south Delhi it costs 10,000-plus rupees ($222; £135), In the remote peripheral areas of Delhi's border, it costs a few hundred rupees.
Similarly, the costs vary for those wanting an illegal abortion.
Delhi is not alone in its anti-girl bias. Sex ratios have declined in 17 states in the past decade, with the biggest falls registered in Jammu and Kashmir.
Ms Joshi says most offenders are members of the growing middle-class and affluent Indians - they are aware that the technology exists and have the means to pay to find out the sex of their baby and abort if they choose.
"We have to take effective steps to control the promotion of sex determination by the medical community. And file cases against doctors who do it," Mr George says.
"Otherwise by 2021, we are frightened to think what it will be like."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13264301
Published 23 May 2011
India's 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven - activists fear eight million female foetuses may have been aborted in the past decade. The BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi explores what has led to this crisis.
Kulwant has three daughters aged 24, 23 and 20 and a son who is 16.
In the years between the birth of her third daughter and her son, Kulwant became pregnant three times.
Each time, she says, she was forced to abort the foetus by her family after ultrasound tests confirmed that they were girls.
"My mother-in-law taunted me for giving birth to girls. She said her son would divorce me if I didn't bear a son."
Kulwant still has vivid memories of the first abortion. "The baby was nearly five months old. She was beautiful. I miss her, and the others we killed," she says, breaking down, wiping away her tears.
Until her son was born, Kulwant's daily life consisted of beatings and abuse from her husband, mother-in-law and brother-in-law. Once, she says, they even attempted to set her on fire.
"They were angry. They didn't want girls in the family. They wanted boys so they could get fat dowries," she says.
India outlawed dowries in 1961, but the practice remains rampant and the value of dowries is constantly growing, affecting rich and poor alike.
Kulwant's husband died three years after the birth of their son. "It was the curse of the daughters we killed. That's why he died so young," she says.
Common attitude
Her neighbour Rekha is mother of a chubby three-year-old girl.
Last September, when she became pregnant again, her mother-in-law forced her to undergo an abortion after an ultrasound showed that she was pregnant with twin girls.
"I said there's no difference between girls and boys. But here they think differently. There's no happiness when a girl is born. They say the son will carry forward our lineage, but the daughter will get married and go off to another family."
Kulwant and Rekha live in Sagarpur, a lower middle-class area in south-west Delhi.
Here, narrow minds live in homes separated by narrow lanes.
The women's story is common and repeated in millions of homes across India, and it has been getting worse.
In 1961, for every 1,000 boys under the age of seven, there were 976 girls. Today, the figure has dropped to a dismal 914 girls.
Although the number of women overall is improving (due to factors such as life expectancy), India's ratio of young girls to boys is one of the worst in the world after China.
Many factors come into play to explain this: infanticide, abuse and neglect of girl children.
But campaigners say the decline is largely due to the increased availability of antenatal sex screening, and they talk of a genocide.
The government has been forced to admit that its strategy has failed to put an end to female foeticide.
'National shame'
"Whatever measures have been put in over the past 40 years have not had any impact on the child sex ratio," Home Secretary GK Pillai said when the census report was released.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described female foeticide and infanticide as a "national shame" and called for a "crusade" to save girl babies.
But Sabu George, India's best-known campaigner on the issue, says the government has so far shown little determination to stop the practices.
Until 30 years ago, he says, India's sex ratio was "reasonable". Then in 1974, Delhi's prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences came out with a study which said sex-determination tests were a boon for Indian women.
It said they no longer needed to produce endless children to have the right number of sons, and it encouraged the determination and elimination of female foetuses as an effective tool of population control.
"By late 80s, every newspaper in Delhi was advertising for ultrasound sex determination," said Mr George.
"Clinics from Punjab were boasting that they had 10 years' experience in eliminating girl children and inviting parents to come to them."
In 1994, the Pre-Natal Determination Test (PNDT) Act outlawed sex-selective abortion. In 2004, it was amended to include gender selection even at the pre-conception stage.
Abortion is generally legal up to 12 weeks' gestation. Sex can be determined by a scan from about 14 weeks.
"What is needed is a strict implementation of the law," says Varsha Joshi, director of census operations for Delhi. "I find there's absolutely no will on the part of the government to stop this."
Today, there are 40,000 registered ultrasound clinics in the country, and many more exist without any record.
'Really sad'
Ms Joshi, a former district commissioner of south-west Delhi, says there are dozens of ultrasound clinics in the area. It has the worst child sex ratio in the capital - 836 girls under seven for every 1,000 boys.
Delhi's overall ratio is not much better at 866 girls under seven for every 1,000 boys.
"It's really sad. We are the capital of the country and we have such a poor ratio," Ms Joshi says.
The south-west district shares its boundary with Punjab and Haryana, the two Indian states with the worst sex ratios.
Since the last census, Punjab and Haryana have shown a slight improvement. But Delhi has registered a decline.
"Something's really wrong here and something has to be done to put things right," Ms Joshi says.
Almost all the ultrasound clinics in the area have the mandatory board outside, proclaiming that they do not carry out illegal sex-determination tests.
But the women in Sagarpur say most people here know where to go when they need an ultrasound or an abortion.
They say anyone who wants to get a foetal ultrasound done, gets it done. In the five-star clinics of south Delhi it costs 10,000-plus rupees ($222; £135), In the remote peripheral areas of Delhi's border, it costs a few hundred rupees.
Similarly, the costs vary for those wanting an illegal abortion.
Delhi is not alone in its anti-girl bias. Sex ratios have declined in 17 states in the past decade, with the biggest falls registered in Jammu and Kashmir.
Ms Joshi says most offenders are members of the growing middle-class and affluent Indians - they are aware that the technology exists and have the means to pay to find out the sex of their baby and abort if they choose.
"We have to take effective steps to control the promotion of sex determination by the medical community. And file cases against doctors who do it," Mr George says.
"Otherwise by 2021, we are frightened to think what it will be like."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13264301
How Alcohol Affects the Heart
A new study has found that even moderate drinking can increase the risk of A-fib, a heart rhythm abnormality that afflicts some 3 million Americans.
A new study has found that consuming alcohol, even as little as one can of beer or one glass of wine, can quickly increase the risk of a common type of cardiac arrhythmia known as atrial fibrillation in people who have a history of the condition.
Doctors have long suspected a link between alcohol and atrial fibrillation, but until now, they did not have definitive evidence that alcohol could cause arrhythmias. The new study is among the most rigorous to date: The researchers recruited 100 people with a history of atrial fibrillation and tracked them intensely for four weeks, monitoring their alcohol intake and their cardiac rhythms in real time.
The scientists found that drinking alcohol heightened the odds that a person would have an episode of atrial fibrillation, or an abnormal heart rhythm, within the next few hours. And the more they drank, the greater their likelihood of having an arrhythmia. The new study was published on Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The conclusions, along with data from previous studies, suggest that people with a history of atrial fibrillation could reduce their chances of developing arrhythmias by cutting back on alcohol or avoiding it altogether.
The authors speculated that the findings could have broader implications for healthy adults as well. Although moderate drinking is widely considered beneficial for heart health, the new research suggests that, at least in some people, it could potentially disrupt how the heart functions. “This demonstrates that whenever we consume alcohol, it is presumably having a nearly immediate effect on the electrical workings of our hearts,” said Dr. Gregory Marcus, an author of the study and a professor of medicine in the division of cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/well ... 778d3e6de3
A new study has found that even moderate drinking can increase the risk of A-fib, a heart rhythm abnormality that afflicts some 3 million Americans.
A new study has found that consuming alcohol, even as little as one can of beer or one glass of wine, can quickly increase the risk of a common type of cardiac arrhythmia known as atrial fibrillation in people who have a history of the condition.
Doctors have long suspected a link between alcohol and atrial fibrillation, but until now, they did not have definitive evidence that alcohol could cause arrhythmias. The new study is among the most rigorous to date: The researchers recruited 100 people with a history of atrial fibrillation and tracked them intensely for four weeks, monitoring their alcohol intake and their cardiac rhythms in real time.
The scientists found that drinking alcohol heightened the odds that a person would have an episode of atrial fibrillation, or an abnormal heart rhythm, within the next few hours. And the more they drank, the greater their likelihood of having an arrhythmia. The new study was published on Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The conclusions, along with data from previous studies, suggest that people with a history of atrial fibrillation could reduce their chances of developing arrhythmias by cutting back on alcohol or avoiding it altogether.
The authors speculated that the findings could have broader implications for healthy adults as well. Although moderate drinking is widely considered beneficial for heart health, the new research suggests that, at least in some people, it could potentially disrupt how the heart functions. “This demonstrates that whenever we consume alcohol, it is presumably having a nearly immediate effect on the electrical workings of our hearts,” said Dr. Gregory Marcus, an author of the study and a professor of medicine in the division of cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/well ... 778d3e6de3
Will My Students Ever Know a World Without School Shootings?
There’s a rule that many teachers live by, and there are times when it’s frustratingly insufficient: “If you see something, say something.” We see something odd in the classroom or around school, we hear something troubling, we read something serious, we follow directives and protocols. We report it.
Sometimes it’s taken seriously and acted upon. Often, school administrators tell us that if nothing violent or serious has occurred, they will make note of it, but nothing can be done until the student breaks a rule or school board policy. A disconcerting but cryptic comment, a terrifying but enigmatic drawing. Our warnings may end up in a file somewhere until the threat becomes reality.
I was left thinking about how teachers try to look out for their students, and can still be powerless to stop tragedy, when I read in a Facebook group about a student opening fire last week at Oxford High School in Michigan, killing four people and injuring several others. My Facebook group was for teachers, like me, who survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida nearly four years ago. I was on campus on that day, when a former student opened fire, killing 17, injuring 17 others and traumatizing an entire community.
Reading the accounts of what happened at Oxford High School, I noticed examples of teachers trying to do the right thing, raising concerns to the officials who were supposed to act. But at the same time, teachers are left with the horrifying reality that they can do only so much as a line of defense to protect their students. Once again, a child gained access to a lethal weapon. Once again, he was able to bring it to campus.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/opin ... 778d3e6de3
There’s a rule that many teachers live by, and there are times when it’s frustratingly insufficient: “If you see something, say something.” We see something odd in the classroom or around school, we hear something troubling, we read something serious, we follow directives and protocols. We report it.
Sometimes it’s taken seriously and acted upon. Often, school administrators tell us that if nothing violent or serious has occurred, they will make note of it, but nothing can be done until the student breaks a rule or school board policy. A disconcerting but cryptic comment, a terrifying but enigmatic drawing. Our warnings may end up in a file somewhere until the threat becomes reality.
I was left thinking about how teachers try to look out for their students, and can still be powerless to stop tragedy, when I read in a Facebook group about a student opening fire last week at Oxford High School in Michigan, killing four people and injuring several others. My Facebook group was for teachers, like me, who survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida nearly four years ago. I was on campus on that day, when a former student opened fire, killing 17, injuring 17 others and traumatizing an entire community.
Reading the accounts of what happened at Oxford High School, I noticed examples of teachers trying to do the right thing, raising concerns to the officials who were supposed to act. But at the same time, teachers are left with the horrifying reality that they can do only so much as a line of defense to protect their students. Once again, a child gained access to a lethal weapon. Once again, he was able to bring it to campus.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/opin ... 778d3e6de3
New Zealand Plans to Eventually Ban All Cigarette Sales
The proposal, expected to become law next year, would raise the smoking age year by year until it covers the entire population.
Construction workers during a cigarette break in Wellington, New Zealand, last year.
New Zealand unveiled a plan on Thursday to eventually ban all sales of cigarettes in the country, a decades-long effort unique in the world to prevent young people from taking up smoking.
The proposed legislation, which is expected to become law next year, would leave current smokers free to continue buying cigarettes. But it would gradually raise the smoking age, year by year, until it covers the entire population.
Starting in 2023, anyone under age 15 would be barred for life from buying cigarettes. So, for instance, in 2050 people 42 and older would still be able to buy tobacco products — but anyone younger would not.
“We want to make sure young people never start smoking, so we will make it an offense to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth,” Dr. Ayesha Verrall, the country’s associate health minister, said in Parliament on Thursday. “People aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco.”
The legislation was among several proposals announced on Thursday that aim to reduce smoking levels in New Zealand across all ethnic groups, including its poorer Indigenous Maori and Pacific Island citizens, below 5 percent by 2025. Currently the rate is just under 10 percent.
New Zealand first announced this target in 2011. Since then, it has steadily raised the price of cigarettes to among the highest in the world. A pack in New Zealand costs about 30 New Zealand dollars, or a little over $20, second only to neighboring Australia, where wages are considerably higher.
Dr. Verrall said the government was not considering raising prices beyond that point. “We’ve already seen the full impact of excise tax increases,” she said. “Going further will not help people quit. It will only further punish smokers who are struggling to kick the habit.”
Banning tobacco sales, despite the clear benefits to public health, has been a virtual nonstarter around the world, with arguments often centering on civil liberties and fears of increased smuggling. In 2010, the Himalayan nation of Bhutan prohibited the sale of tobacco products, only to suspend the restrictions last year amid worries that cigarette traffickers would bring in the coronavirus.
As New Zealand unveiled its proposal, the government acknowledged the possible effects on the black market, which currently makes up at least 10 percent of tobacco sales in the country.
It said that smuggling of tobacco products into New Zealand, particularly by organized crime groups, had been rising. “The changes proposed in this document may contribute to this problem,” the government’s proposal notes.
But Dr. Robert Beaglehole, a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Auckland, said there were potential solutions. “We can deal with it, if we only scanned every container coming into the country, which we don’t,” he said. “The technology is there.”
Since the New Zealand government began targeting smoking, rates have fallen far below the global average: 9.4 percent of New Zealanders currently smoke, down from 18 percent in 2008. Around 14 percent of people in the United States smoke, and roughly 20 percent worldwide.
The rates are not consistent among the New Zealand population. While the government is likely to meet its target for white New Zealanders by 2025, it would need to adjust its plans to sufficiently lower smoking rates among Maori and Pacific Island communities, Dr. Verrall said.
In addition to the gradual ban on cigarette sales, the proposed legislation would increase funding for addiction services, limit where cigarettes can be sold and reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. Vaping products, which the government has embraced as a safer alternative, would not be affected by the law.
The proposal did not say how the ban on sales would be enforced.
The New Zealand government has an absolute majority in Parliament, so it does not need the support of any coalition partners to make the proposals into law.
Janet Hoek, a public health expert at the University of Otago, said the ban for future generations would help maintain the country’s gains.
“Once we get to the Smokefree 2025 goal and we’ve reduced smoking prevalence, we want to make sure that’s what the future looks like as well,” she said. The phased ban on cigarette sales is “one way of ensuring that this goal, once we reach it, is sustained,” she added.
Dr. Hoek said she hoped New Zealand’s plans would inspire other countries to pass similarly ambitious legislation, especially in light of World Health Organization estimates that a billion people will die of smoking-related causes this century.
“Now that New Zealand has made that step, I expect many other countries are going to follow suit,” she said. “This will be something that begins in New Zealand but that really has global implications.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/worl ... 778d3e6de3
The proposal, expected to become law next year, would raise the smoking age year by year until it covers the entire population.
Construction workers during a cigarette break in Wellington, New Zealand, last year.
New Zealand unveiled a plan on Thursday to eventually ban all sales of cigarettes in the country, a decades-long effort unique in the world to prevent young people from taking up smoking.
The proposed legislation, which is expected to become law next year, would leave current smokers free to continue buying cigarettes. But it would gradually raise the smoking age, year by year, until it covers the entire population.
Starting in 2023, anyone under age 15 would be barred for life from buying cigarettes. So, for instance, in 2050 people 42 and older would still be able to buy tobacco products — but anyone younger would not.
“We want to make sure young people never start smoking, so we will make it an offense to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth,” Dr. Ayesha Verrall, the country’s associate health minister, said in Parliament on Thursday. “People aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco.”
The legislation was among several proposals announced on Thursday that aim to reduce smoking levels in New Zealand across all ethnic groups, including its poorer Indigenous Maori and Pacific Island citizens, below 5 percent by 2025. Currently the rate is just under 10 percent.
New Zealand first announced this target in 2011. Since then, it has steadily raised the price of cigarettes to among the highest in the world. A pack in New Zealand costs about 30 New Zealand dollars, or a little over $20, second only to neighboring Australia, where wages are considerably higher.
Dr. Verrall said the government was not considering raising prices beyond that point. “We’ve already seen the full impact of excise tax increases,” she said. “Going further will not help people quit. It will only further punish smokers who are struggling to kick the habit.”
Banning tobacco sales, despite the clear benefits to public health, has been a virtual nonstarter around the world, with arguments often centering on civil liberties and fears of increased smuggling. In 2010, the Himalayan nation of Bhutan prohibited the sale of tobacco products, only to suspend the restrictions last year amid worries that cigarette traffickers would bring in the coronavirus.
As New Zealand unveiled its proposal, the government acknowledged the possible effects on the black market, which currently makes up at least 10 percent of tobacco sales in the country.
It said that smuggling of tobacco products into New Zealand, particularly by organized crime groups, had been rising. “The changes proposed in this document may contribute to this problem,” the government’s proposal notes.
But Dr. Robert Beaglehole, a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Auckland, said there were potential solutions. “We can deal with it, if we only scanned every container coming into the country, which we don’t,” he said. “The technology is there.”
Since the New Zealand government began targeting smoking, rates have fallen far below the global average: 9.4 percent of New Zealanders currently smoke, down from 18 percent in 2008. Around 14 percent of people in the United States smoke, and roughly 20 percent worldwide.
The rates are not consistent among the New Zealand population. While the government is likely to meet its target for white New Zealanders by 2025, it would need to adjust its plans to sufficiently lower smoking rates among Maori and Pacific Island communities, Dr. Verrall said.
In addition to the gradual ban on cigarette sales, the proposed legislation would increase funding for addiction services, limit where cigarettes can be sold and reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. Vaping products, which the government has embraced as a safer alternative, would not be affected by the law.
The proposal did not say how the ban on sales would be enforced.
The New Zealand government has an absolute majority in Parliament, so it does not need the support of any coalition partners to make the proposals into law.
Janet Hoek, a public health expert at the University of Otago, said the ban for future generations would help maintain the country’s gains.
“Once we get to the Smokefree 2025 goal and we’ve reduced smoking prevalence, we want to make sure that’s what the future looks like as well,” she said. The phased ban on cigarette sales is “one way of ensuring that this goal, once we reach it, is sustained,” she added.
Dr. Hoek said she hoped New Zealand’s plans would inspire other countries to pass similarly ambitious legislation, especially in light of World Health Organization estimates that a billion people will die of smoking-related causes this century.
“Now that New Zealand has made that step, I expect many other countries are going to follow suit,” she said. “This will be something that begins in New Zealand but that really has global implications.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/worl ... 778d3e6de3
More than 14,000 rape cases reported over last four years, NA told
Nadir Guramani
Published December 24, 2021
More than 14,000 rape cases were reported in Pakistan during the last four years, the Ministry of Human Rights told the National Assembly on Friday.
The ministry submitted a written reply during today's session in response to a query by PPP MNA Dr Shazia Sobia Aslam Soomro. The MNA had asked the ministry for a breakdown of harassment and rape cases in the country since 2018 as well as the steps the government had taken to combat this.
In its written reply, the ministry said that 16,153 cases of sexual violence against women and workplace harassment were reported during the last four years.
The document, based on the information received from the National Police Bureau, only accounts for the first six months of the current year (from January to June).
The ministry divided the crimes reported into two categories: sexual violence and workplace harassment. The former was further divided into four sub-categories: rape, gang-rape, custodial and incest.
Incidents under the category for workplace harassment were also separated according to them being physical, sexual and psychological in nature.
According to the breakdown provided by the ministry, 5,048 cases of sexual violence and workplace harassment were reported in 2018, 4,751 in 2019, 4,276 in 2020 and 2,078 in 2021.
The data shows that Punjab reported the highest number of overall cases in 2018 (3,496), followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (1,164) and Sindh (328). There were 4,326 rape cases recorded during the year.
In 2019, Punjab again reported the highest number of cases (4,089), followed by Sindh (346) and KP (259). The year also saw 4,377 rape cases being reported.
A similar trend was also witnessed in 2020, with the highest number of cases again being reported from Punjab (3,250), followed by Sindh (386) and KP (299). Around 3,887 rape cases were also reported.
Meanwhile, the data until June 2021 shows that the most number of cases were reported in Punjab (1,687), followed by Sindh (226) and KP (125). No cases were reported in Gilgit-Baltistan while 1,886 rape cases were reported till June.
The ministry also highlighted the steps taken by the government to curb such incidents, stating that a project titled 'Human Rights Awareness Programme' had been launched to "create awareness among the public with a special focus on the rights of women and children".
The ministry said that it also regularly ogranises awareness programmes with exclusive sessions on women's rights and pro-women laws, adding that it was also operating a free helpline (1099) for legal advice regarding human rights violations.
The ministry noted that the Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act 2021 and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2021 had also been promulgated recently.
The ministry said it had launched a public awareness campaign on child abuse, while the Federal Ombudsperson Secretariat for Protection against Harassment of Women also runs print and electronic campaigns in order to reach victims of harassment.
"Moreover, field units of police are sensitised by the provincial/regional police offices to provide awareness regarding sexual harassment to the general public," the ministry said
https://www.dawn.com/news/1665575/more- ... rs-na-told
Nadir Guramani
Published December 24, 2021
More than 14,000 rape cases were reported in Pakistan during the last four years, the Ministry of Human Rights told the National Assembly on Friday.
The ministry submitted a written reply during today's session in response to a query by PPP MNA Dr Shazia Sobia Aslam Soomro. The MNA had asked the ministry for a breakdown of harassment and rape cases in the country since 2018 as well as the steps the government had taken to combat this.
In its written reply, the ministry said that 16,153 cases of sexual violence against women and workplace harassment were reported during the last four years.
The document, based on the information received from the National Police Bureau, only accounts for the first six months of the current year (from January to June).
The ministry divided the crimes reported into two categories: sexual violence and workplace harassment. The former was further divided into four sub-categories: rape, gang-rape, custodial and incest.
Incidents under the category for workplace harassment were also separated according to them being physical, sexual and psychological in nature.
According to the breakdown provided by the ministry, 5,048 cases of sexual violence and workplace harassment were reported in 2018, 4,751 in 2019, 4,276 in 2020 and 2,078 in 2021.
The data shows that Punjab reported the highest number of overall cases in 2018 (3,496), followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (1,164) and Sindh (328). There were 4,326 rape cases recorded during the year.
In 2019, Punjab again reported the highest number of cases (4,089), followed by Sindh (346) and KP (259). The year also saw 4,377 rape cases being reported.
A similar trend was also witnessed in 2020, with the highest number of cases again being reported from Punjab (3,250), followed by Sindh (386) and KP (299). Around 3,887 rape cases were also reported.
Meanwhile, the data until June 2021 shows that the most number of cases were reported in Punjab (1,687), followed by Sindh (226) and KP (125). No cases were reported in Gilgit-Baltistan while 1,886 rape cases were reported till June.
The ministry also highlighted the steps taken by the government to curb such incidents, stating that a project titled 'Human Rights Awareness Programme' had been launched to "create awareness among the public with a special focus on the rights of women and children".
The ministry said that it also regularly ogranises awareness programmes with exclusive sessions on women's rights and pro-women laws, adding that it was also operating a free helpline (1099) for legal advice regarding human rights violations.
The ministry noted that the Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act 2021 and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2021 had also been promulgated recently.
The ministry said it had launched a public awareness campaign on child abuse, while the Federal Ombudsperson Secretariat for Protection against Harassment of Women also runs print and electronic campaigns in order to reach victims of harassment.
"Moreover, field units of police are sensitised by the provincial/regional police offices to provide awareness regarding sexual harassment to the general public," the ministry said
https://www.dawn.com/news/1665575/more- ... rs-na-told
BBC
India's unwinnable battle against spitting
Aparna Alluri - BBC News, Delhi
Sun, December 26, 2021, 6:00 PM
Earlier this year, Raja and Priti Narasimhan kicked off a road trip across India armed with one message: stop spitting in public. The couple carried a loudspeaker and blared their message from inside a car covered in anti-spitting slogans.
If you have spent time in India, you know what the Narasimhans are up against. Saliva graces the streets. Sometimes plain and phlegmy, sometimes blood red from chewing tobacco-laced betel nut or paan, it decorates simple walls and mighty edifices alike. It even threatens Kolkata city's historic howrah bridge.
So the Narasimhans travel the country, aiming to protect its streets and buildings and bridges from the public spitters. They live in Pune city, and have been self-appointed warriors against the spitting scourge since 2010. Workshops, online and offline campaigns, clean-up efforts with local municipalities - they have done it all. One time, Mr Narasimhan said, they painted over the paan stains on a wall at the Pune railway station only to have people start spitting on it again in three days.
"There is no reason to spit on a wall!" he says.
Reactions to their admonishes have historically ranged from indifference to anger. Mr Narasimhan recalled one man who asked him: "What is your problem? Is it your father's property?"
But the Covid-19 wave that crashed through India has changed some things, Ms Narasimhan says. Some spitters have even apologised.
"The fear of the pandemic has got them thinking," she says.
'A spitting country'
India's battle against spit on its streets has always been half-hearted. Mumbai city has tried the hardest, with voluntary "nuisance" inspectors who scold people to not spit, litter or urinate in public. But the offence of spitting has long been largely ignored.
The anti-spitting squad of the Pune municipal corporation (PMC) took action against 11 persons, including three car drivers, during an Anti Spitting drive at Mhasoba Gate Chowk, on November 12, 2018 in Pune, India. The offenders were given a mop and made to clean their gutkha-laced spit.
Some cities tried having men scrub their spit from the streets
Then came Covid, its airborne danger coupled with Indian men's love of spitting wherever they choose. Officials swung into action, penalising spitting with steeper fines and even jail time, all under the Disaster Management Act. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi advised his countrymen not to spit in public places - something "we always knew was wrong".
This was a sharp contrast to 2016, when the health minister, replying to a question about the spitting menace, told parliament: "Sir, India is a spitting country. We spit when we are bored; we spit when we are tired; we spit when we are angry or we spit just like that. We spit anywhere and everywhere and we spit at all times and at odd hours."
He is right too. Spitting is a given on India's streets: men lounge on the side of the road, casually move their head a few inches, and let loose their saliva; men driving cars, bikes and auto-rickshaws don't hesitate to stick their heads out at traffic lights and spew. The act often comes with a warning - a uniquely guttural sound as they summon the offending sputum.
And the habit is an overwhelmingly male one. Indian men are comfortable with their bodies, says columnist Santosh Desai, "and everything that comes out of the body".
"There is an unselfish conscious ease with relieving oneself in public," he says. "If I am uncomfortable, I will immediately act up on it, the idea of restraining yourself doesn't really really exist."
Spit is also a form of "swag" that feeds into toxic masculinity, says Uddalak Mukherjee, an associate editor at Indian newspaper the Telegraph.
A motorist spits chewed betel nut on the raod with complete disregard towards cleanliness and aesthetics in New Delhi on September 29, 2009.
"It's simply remarkable how unremarkable it is" to watch men spit in public, Mr Desai says
But why spit at all in public?
Mr Narasimhan says he has found that the reasons range from anger to "timepass" (they have nothing better to do), or simply because they can - "they feel it's their right to spit", he says.
According to the historian Mukul Kesavan, it also stems from "an Indian obsession with pollution and how to void yourself of it".
Some historians believe that this obsession can be traced to Hindu and upper-caste notions of maintaining bodily purity by discharging anything dirty outside of the home.
"Attitudes to spitting transcend questions of hygiene," Mr Mukherjee says. "A taxi driver once told me, 'I had a bad day and I wanted to eject my experience.'"
The war against spittle
It turns out, there was a time when people everywhere were spitting everywhere. In India, spitting was celebrated in royal courts, and grand spittoons were a centrepiece in many homes.
In Europe in the middle ages, you could spit during a meal, as long as it was underneath the table. Erasmus wrote that "sucking back saliva" was "unmannerly". In 1903, the British Medical Journal labelled America one of the "expectorative storm centres of the world". A Massachusetts health inspector, upon asking in 1908 why tailors spat on the floor in every factory he visited, reported receiving the reply, "Of course they spit on the floor; where do you expect them to spit, in their pockets?"
Not that things were much better in Britain, where it was common enough to spit on tram cars that people were being fined for it and the medical community demanding a law against it.
During a public revolt against spitting on the sidewalk in Syracuse, New York: in which all local organizations joined to stop the practice,
In the 1880s, New York became the first American city to ban spitting
It was the spread of tuberculosis that finally dealt a blow to the habit in the West. The growing awareness of germ theory in the late 19th to early 20th Century played a crucial role, says journalist Vidya Krishnan, author of the upcoming book Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History.
"The awareness of how germs spread gave rise to new social habits and customs. People learned to shield their sneezes and coughs, reject handshaking, and kissing a baby was frowned upon. Domestic awareness of hygiene radiated outward as well."
Ms Krishnan says the increased awareness led to "behaviour change" in men, since they were and still are the ones "who indulge in public spitting at a scale that causes infectious diseases like TB to spread".
But India has a number of obstacles to surmount, Ms Krishnan says. Its states have never tried very hard to end the habit. And spitting is still socially acceptable - be it chewing tobacco, sportsmen spiting on camera or Bollywood portrayals of men spitting while fighting each other.
Mr Narasimhan laments the modern lack of spitoons. "Even if I have to spit, where do I spit?" he says. "As a child in Kolkata, I remember spittoons tied to lampposts filled with sand. That's disappeared, and people spit everywhere."
A man wears mask as a protection from corona virus walk pass next to the no spitting message on the wall at Marinelines, on March 18, 2020 in Mumbai, India.
Efforts to curb public spitting have already weakened in India
And there are bigger challenges. "No large-scale behaviour change or public health intervention can rule out caste, class and gender," Ms Krishnan says. "In India, access to bathrooms, running water and good plumbing are all matters of privilege."
Health experts have warned that merely punishing people, without attempting to understand why they spit, will not win the war against the habit. And two years into the Covis-19 pandemic, the zeal for curing this particular addiction is waning. But Raja and Priti Narasimhan are undeterred in their street battle. Most people remain unaware it could contribute to the spread of Covid-19, they say - and that is something they can at least change a little, if not fix.
"It's okay if we are wasting time, we will try," Mr Narasimhan says. "If we can.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ai ... 00422.html
India's unwinnable battle against spitting
Aparna Alluri - BBC News, Delhi
Sun, December 26, 2021, 6:00 PM
Earlier this year, Raja and Priti Narasimhan kicked off a road trip across India armed with one message: stop spitting in public. The couple carried a loudspeaker and blared their message from inside a car covered in anti-spitting slogans.
If you have spent time in India, you know what the Narasimhans are up against. Saliva graces the streets. Sometimes plain and phlegmy, sometimes blood red from chewing tobacco-laced betel nut or paan, it decorates simple walls and mighty edifices alike. It even threatens Kolkata city's historic howrah bridge.
So the Narasimhans travel the country, aiming to protect its streets and buildings and bridges from the public spitters. They live in Pune city, and have been self-appointed warriors against the spitting scourge since 2010. Workshops, online and offline campaigns, clean-up efforts with local municipalities - they have done it all. One time, Mr Narasimhan said, they painted over the paan stains on a wall at the Pune railway station only to have people start spitting on it again in three days.
"There is no reason to spit on a wall!" he says.
Reactions to their admonishes have historically ranged from indifference to anger. Mr Narasimhan recalled one man who asked him: "What is your problem? Is it your father's property?"
But the Covid-19 wave that crashed through India has changed some things, Ms Narasimhan says. Some spitters have even apologised.
"The fear of the pandemic has got them thinking," she says.
'A spitting country'
India's battle against spit on its streets has always been half-hearted. Mumbai city has tried the hardest, with voluntary "nuisance" inspectors who scold people to not spit, litter or urinate in public. But the offence of spitting has long been largely ignored.
The anti-spitting squad of the Pune municipal corporation (PMC) took action against 11 persons, including three car drivers, during an Anti Spitting drive at Mhasoba Gate Chowk, on November 12, 2018 in Pune, India. The offenders were given a mop and made to clean their gutkha-laced spit.
Some cities tried having men scrub their spit from the streets
Then came Covid, its airborne danger coupled with Indian men's love of spitting wherever they choose. Officials swung into action, penalising spitting with steeper fines and even jail time, all under the Disaster Management Act. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi advised his countrymen not to spit in public places - something "we always knew was wrong".
This was a sharp contrast to 2016, when the health minister, replying to a question about the spitting menace, told parliament: "Sir, India is a spitting country. We spit when we are bored; we spit when we are tired; we spit when we are angry or we spit just like that. We spit anywhere and everywhere and we spit at all times and at odd hours."
He is right too. Spitting is a given on India's streets: men lounge on the side of the road, casually move their head a few inches, and let loose their saliva; men driving cars, bikes and auto-rickshaws don't hesitate to stick their heads out at traffic lights and spew. The act often comes with a warning - a uniquely guttural sound as they summon the offending sputum.
And the habit is an overwhelmingly male one. Indian men are comfortable with their bodies, says columnist Santosh Desai, "and everything that comes out of the body".
"There is an unselfish conscious ease with relieving oneself in public," he says. "If I am uncomfortable, I will immediately act up on it, the idea of restraining yourself doesn't really really exist."
Spit is also a form of "swag" that feeds into toxic masculinity, says Uddalak Mukherjee, an associate editor at Indian newspaper the Telegraph.
A motorist spits chewed betel nut on the raod with complete disregard towards cleanliness and aesthetics in New Delhi on September 29, 2009.
"It's simply remarkable how unremarkable it is" to watch men spit in public, Mr Desai says
But why spit at all in public?
Mr Narasimhan says he has found that the reasons range from anger to "timepass" (they have nothing better to do), or simply because they can - "they feel it's their right to spit", he says.
According to the historian Mukul Kesavan, it also stems from "an Indian obsession with pollution and how to void yourself of it".
Some historians believe that this obsession can be traced to Hindu and upper-caste notions of maintaining bodily purity by discharging anything dirty outside of the home.
"Attitudes to spitting transcend questions of hygiene," Mr Mukherjee says. "A taxi driver once told me, 'I had a bad day and I wanted to eject my experience.'"
The war against spittle
It turns out, there was a time when people everywhere were spitting everywhere. In India, spitting was celebrated in royal courts, and grand spittoons were a centrepiece in many homes.
In Europe in the middle ages, you could spit during a meal, as long as it was underneath the table. Erasmus wrote that "sucking back saliva" was "unmannerly". In 1903, the British Medical Journal labelled America one of the "expectorative storm centres of the world". A Massachusetts health inspector, upon asking in 1908 why tailors spat on the floor in every factory he visited, reported receiving the reply, "Of course they spit on the floor; where do you expect them to spit, in their pockets?"
Not that things were much better in Britain, where it was common enough to spit on tram cars that people were being fined for it and the medical community demanding a law against it.
During a public revolt against spitting on the sidewalk in Syracuse, New York: in which all local organizations joined to stop the practice,
In the 1880s, New York became the first American city to ban spitting
It was the spread of tuberculosis that finally dealt a blow to the habit in the West. The growing awareness of germ theory in the late 19th to early 20th Century played a crucial role, says journalist Vidya Krishnan, author of the upcoming book Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History.
"The awareness of how germs spread gave rise to new social habits and customs. People learned to shield their sneezes and coughs, reject handshaking, and kissing a baby was frowned upon. Domestic awareness of hygiene radiated outward as well."
Ms Krishnan says the increased awareness led to "behaviour change" in men, since they were and still are the ones "who indulge in public spitting at a scale that causes infectious diseases like TB to spread".
But India has a number of obstacles to surmount, Ms Krishnan says. Its states have never tried very hard to end the habit. And spitting is still socially acceptable - be it chewing tobacco, sportsmen spiting on camera or Bollywood portrayals of men spitting while fighting each other.
Mr Narasimhan laments the modern lack of spitoons. "Even if I have to spit, where do I spit?" he says. "As a child in Kolkata, I remember spittoons tied to lampposts filled with sand. That's disappeared, and people spit everywhere."
A man wears mask as a protection from corona virus walk pass next to the no spitting message on the wall at Marinelines, on March 18, 2020 in Mumbai, India.
Efforts to curb public spitting have already weakened in India
And there are bigger challenges. "No large-scale behaviour change or public health intervention can rule out caste, class and gender," Ms Krishnan says. "In India, access to bathrooms, running water and good plumbing are all matters of privilege."
Health experts have warned that merely punishing people, without attempting to understand why they spit, will not win the war against the habit. And two years into the Covis-19 pandemic, the zeal for curing this particular addiction is waning. But Raja and Priti Narasimhan are undeterred in their street battle. Most people remain unaware it could contribute to the spread of Covid-19, they say - and that is something they can at least change a little, if not fix.
"It's okay if we are wasting time, we will try," Mr Narasimhan says. "If we can.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ai ... 00422.html
Alcohol should have cancer warning labels, say doctors and researchers pushing to raise awareness of risk
Advocates of warning labels want Canadians to understand alcohol is one of top causes of preventable cancer
Alcohol is one of the top three causes of preventable cancer, so why aren’t Canadians being informed about the risks? Health experts say it's time to put warning labels on alcohol — something the industry has pushed back against. 7:52
Watch video at:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/alcohol- ... -1.6304816
It's not a secret, but it may as well be. Few Canadians know the truth, and few may want to hear it: alcohol, any amount of alcohol, can cause cancer. There is no safe amount, and the calls to inform Canadians are growing.
"Even drinking one drink a day increases your risk of some cancers — including, if you're a woman, breast cancer — but also cancers of the digestive system, the mouth, stomach," said Tim Stockwell, a senior scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria.
"The risk increases with every drink you take."
Alcohol has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen (carcinogenic to humans) for decades by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). It's right up there with tobacco and asbestos. Alcohol is also a top cause of preventable cancer after smoking and obesity.
But the vast majority of Canadians have no idea of the risk.
Stockwell wants to change that, and he and other health experts are advocating for cancer warning labels on alcohol containers. People need to know, he says, that though there are other genetic and lifestyle factors that contribute to developing cancer, every drink comes with a risk.
"The risk from alcohol, it's a dose response. The bigger and more frequent the dose, the higher your risk."
Tim Stockwell, a senior scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, is among the researchers and doctors pushing for cancer warning labels on alcohol. (University of Victoria)
Kathy Andrews had no idea that the wine she enjoyed most nights before she got pregnant was dangerous. The Vancouver resident was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016.
"Some of the risk factors for me were that I'd been through IVF with my child and then pregnancy, as well as a stressful lifestyle and drinking, not exercising enough. So all of those things, I think, played a role," she said.
When Andrews did her own research after her diagnosis, she says she was shocked to discover that moderate alcohol consumption has been linked to an approximate 30 to 50 per cent increased risk of breast cancer.
WATCH | Cancer survivor Kathy Andrews on why she's dismayed at the lack of public awareness of alcohol's link to cancer:
More...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/alcohol- ... -1.6304816
Advocates of warning labels want Canadians to understand alcohol is one of top causes of preventable cancer
Alcohol is one of the top three causes of preventable cancer, so why aren’t Canadians being informed about the risks? Health experts say it's time to put warning labels on alcohol — something the industry has pushed back against. 7:52
Watch video at:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/alcohol- ... -1.6304816
It's not a secret, but it may as well be. Few Canadians know the truth, and few may want to hear it: alcohol, any amount of alcohol, can cause cancer. There is no safe amount, and the calls to inform Canadians are growing.
"Even drinking one drink a day increases your risk of some cancers — including, if you're a woman, breast cancer — but also cancers of the digestive system, the mouth, stomach," said Tim Stockwell, a senior scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria.
"The risk increases with every drink you take."
Alcohol has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen (carcinogenic to humans) for decades by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). It's right up there with tobacco and asbestos. Alcohol is also a top cause of preventable cancer after smoking and obesity.
But the vast majority of Canadians have no idea of the risk.
Stockwell wants to change that, and he and other health experts are advocating for cancer warning labels on alcohol containers. People need to know, he says, that though there are other genetic and lifestyle factors that contribute to developing cancer, every drink comes with a risk.
"The risk from alcohol, it's a dose response. The bigger and more frequent the dose, the higher your risk."
Tim Stockwell, a senior scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, is among the researchers and doctors pushing for cancer warning labels on alcohol. (University of Victoria)
Kathy Andrews had no idea that the wine she enjoyed most nights before she got pregnant was dangerous. The Vancouver resident was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016.
"Some of the risk factors for me were that I'd been through IVF with my child and then pregnancy, as well as a stressful lifestyle and drinking, not exercising enough. So all of those things, I think, played a role," she said.
When Andrews did her own research after her diagnosis, she says she was shocked to discover that moderate alcohol consumption has been linked to an approximate 30 to 50 per cent increased risk of breast cancer.
WATCH | Cancer survivor Kathy Andrews on why she's dismayed at the lack of public awareness of alcohol's link to cancer:
More...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/alcohol- ... -1.6304816
It’s Misleading to Call Addiction a Disease
By Carl Erik Fisher
Dr. Fisher is an addiction physician and bioethicist. He’s the author of “The Urge: Our History of Addiction.”
In 2010, a little more than a year after graduating from medical school, I was admitted to a psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital after a drinking and Adderall binge.
The first day there, I was finally ready to acknowledge that I had a problem with addiction. After a few days alone on the ward, however, I started calling around to friends, trying to get them to sign on to my newly revised opinion that my problem wasn’t that bad after all.
Denial is common for people with substance problems. But in my case, my very idea of addiction was working against me. I thought addiction was an extreme mental illness — a “disease,” as I learned in medical school and later, in rehab. I understood addiction as a damaged condition that neatly divided me from the normal population.
Addiction as a disease made sense to me initially, but before long, I realized how harmful that view was.
Annual U.S. overdose deaths recently topped 100,000, a record for a single year, and that milestone demonstrates the tragic insufficiency of our current “addiction as disease” paradigm. Thinking of addiction as a disease might simply imply that medicine can help, but disease language also oversimplifies the story and leads to the view that medical science is the single best framework for understanding addiction. Addiction becomes an individual problem, reduced to the level of biology alone. This narrows the view of a complex problem that requires community support and healing.
Once I was a few years into my recovery, I began studying addiction medicine, in no small part to make sense of what had gone wrong with me and my family — both of my parents were alcoholics. I found little help from my own field, which is divided into sometimes clashing schools of thought about how addiction works. As a result, I looked beyond medicine and science to history, philosophy and sociology; addiction is an idea with a long, messy and controversial history, dating back more than half a millennium. That history deepened my understanding of addiction and helped me make sense of my own experiences.
Around 500 years ago, when the word “addict” entered the English language, it meant something very different: more akin to a “strong devotion.” It was something you did, rather than something that happened to you. For example, an early writer counseled his readers to “addict all their doings towards the attainment of life everlasting.” My experiences and those of my patients seem more in line with how 16th- and 17th-century writers described addiction: a disordered choice, decisions gone awry.
Benjamin Rush, a founding father of the United States and one of the most influential physicians in America in the late 18th century, was particularly focused on mental illness. He was famous for describing habitual drunkenness as a chronic and relapsing disease. However, Rush argued medicine could help only in part; he recognized that social and economic policies were central to the problem. It was the later temperance movements of the 1820s and 1830s that emphasized a harder language of disease, insisting that people with drinking problems had been damaged by a sort of reductionist biology, that “demon rum” took you over, as in a possession.
It’s imperative to be careful about these types of deterministic stories. Such reductionistic narratives were repeatedly used as a justification for racist, oppressive crackdowns in the United States, on Chinese opium smoking at the turn of the 20th century and on crack cocaine in the 1980s, which was painted as a problem primarily in Black neighborhoods. Today, amid the opioid overdose epidemic, addiction is more likely to be called a disease, but the language of disease has not done away with the misleading notion that drugs hold all the power.
Not all drug problems are problems of addiction, and drug problems are strongly influenced by health inequities and injustice, like a lack of access to meaningful work, unstable housing and outright oppression. The disease notion, however, obscures those facts and narrows our view to counterproductive criminal responses, like harsh prohibitionist crackdowns.
In contrast, today, descriptions of “brain disease” imply that people have no capacity for choice or self-control. This strategy is meant to evoke compassion, but it can backfire. Studies have found that biological explanations for mental disorders increase aversion and pessimism toward people with psychological problems, including addiction. What’s needed now more than ever, with overdose deaths on the rise, is not fatalism or dehumanization, but hope.
I am not saying that addiction is not a real problem, and as a person in addiction recovery, I would never deny that it is a problem of profound challenges with self-control. I know that for some of my peers in recovery and their families, the disease analogy helps them make sense of those struggles and the terrifying breakdown of reason that comes when people cannot seem to change despite their best efforts.
There are innumerable ways to make sense of addiction and many paths to recovery. But the view of addiction as disease fails to capture much of the experience of addiction, and disease language is not necessary to make the point for humane treatment.
Today, I am grateful to be in recovery from addiction. I have made peace with the idea that I am the kind of person who should not drink, at least for today. But I do not need to consider it a disease to do this. I believe that waking up to addiction is a tremendous gift, because it points us toward universal human struggles with self-control and working with our pain. In that sense, addiction is profoundly ordinary, contiguous with all of human suffering. We cannot end it, we certainly cannot cure it, and medicine alone will never save us. But if we drop the idea of disease and open up to a fuller picture of addiction, it will allow for more nuance, care and compassion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/15/opin ... 778d3e6de3
By Carl Erik Fisher
Dr. Fisher is an addiction physician and bioethicist. He’s the author of “The Urge: Our History of Addiction.”
In 2010, a little more than a year after graduating from medical school, I was admitted to a psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital after a drinking and Adderall binge.
The first day there, I was finally ready to acknowledge that I had a problem with addiction. After a few days alone on the ward, however, I started calling around to friends, trying to get them to sign on to my newly revised opinion that my problem wasn’t that bad after all.
Denial is common for people with substance problems. But in my case, my very idea of addiction was working against me. I thought addiction was an extreme mental illness — a “disease,” as I learned in medical school and later, in rehab. I understood addiction as a damaged condition that neatly divided me from the normal population.
Addiction as a disease made sense to me initially, but before long, I realized how harmful that view was.
Annual U.S. overdose deaths recently topped 100,000, a record for a single year, and that milestone demonstrates the tragic insufficiency of our current “addiction as disease” paradigm. Thinking of addiction as a disease might simply imply that medicine can help, but disease language also oversimplifies the story and leads to the view that medical science is the single best framework for understanding addiction. Addiction becomes an individual problem, reduced to the level of biology alone. This narrows the view of a complex problem that requires community support and healing.
Once I was a few years into my recovery, I began studying addiction medicine, in no small part to make sense of what had gone wrong with me and my family — both of my parents were alcoholics. I found little help from my own field, which is divided into sometimes clashing schools of thought about how addiction works. As a result, I looked beyond medicine and science to history, philosophy and sociology; addiction is an idea with a long, messy and controversial history, dating back more than half a millennium. That history deepened my understanding of addiction and helped me make sense of my own experiences.
Around 500 years ago, when the word “addict” entered the English language, it meant something very different: more akin to a “strong devotion.” It was something you did, rather than something that happened to you. For example, an early writer counseled his readers to “addict all their doings towards the attainment of life everlasting.” My experiences and those of my patients seem more in line with how 16th- and 17th-century writers described addiction: a disordered choice, decisions gone awry.
Benjamin Rush, a founding father of the United States and one of the most influential physicians in America in the late 18th century, was particularly focused on mental illness. He was famous for describing habitual drunkenness as a chronic and relapsing disease. However, Rush argued medicine could help only in part; he recognized that social and economic policies were central to the problem. It was the later temperance movements of the 1820s and 1830s that emphasized a harder language of disease, insisting that people with drinking problems had been damaged by a sort of reductionist biology, that “demon rum” took you over, as in a possession.
It’s imperative to be careful about these types of deterministic stories. Such reductionistic narratives were repeatedly used as a justification for racist, oppressive crackdowns in the United States, on Chinese opium smoking at the turn of the 20th century and on crack cocaine in the 1980s, which was painted as a problem primarily in Black neighborhoods. Today, amid the opioid overdose epidemic, addiction is more likely to be called a disease, but the language of disease has not done away with the misleading notion that drugs hold all the power.
Not all drug problems are problems of addiction, and drug problems are strongly influenced by health inequities and injustice, like a lack of access to meaningful work, unstable housing and outright oppression. The disease notion, however, obscures those facts and narrows our view to counterproductive criminal responses, like harsh prohibitionist crackdowns.
In contrast, today, descriptions of “brain disease” imply that people have no capacity for choice or self-control. This strategy is meant to evoke compassion, but it can backfire. Studies have found that biological explanations for mental disorders increase aversion and pessimism toward people with psychological problems, including addiction. What’s needed now more than ever, with overdose deaths on the rise, is not fatalism or dehumanization, but hope.
I am not saying that addiction is not a real problem, and as a person in addiction recovery, I would never deny that it is a problem of profound challenges with self-control. I know that for some of my peers in recovery and their families, the disease analogy helps them make sense of those struggles and the terrifying breakdown of reason that comes when people cannot seem to change despite their best efforts.
There are innumerable ways to make sense of addiction and many paths to recovery. But the view of addiction as disease fails to capture much of the experience of addiction, and disease language is not necessary to make the point for humane treatment.
Today, I am grateful to be in recovery from addiction. I have made peace with the idea that I am the kind of person who should not drink, at least for today. But I do not need to consider it a disease to do this. I believe that waking up to addiction is a tremendous gift, because it points us toward universal human struggles with self-control and working with our pain. In that sense, addiction is profoundly ordinary, contiguous with all of human suffering. We cannot end it, we certainly cannot cure it, and medicine alone will never save us. But if we drop the idea of disease and open up to a fuller picture of addiction, it will allow for more nuance, care and compassion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/15/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Re: Social Evils
Can MDMA Save a Marriage?
For some couples on the brink of divorce, taking the illegal psychedelic drug was a last resort — but it ended up being the only thing that worked.
After 10 years of marriage, Ree, 42, and her husband were ready to call it quits. Even their therapist had given up, she said, in part because her husband “was so closed off, just unable to open up.”
“We loved each other a lot and we were very compatible, however, we didn’t know how to deal with conflict,” Ree said. She was often anxious about their relationship and could be “a little neurotic at times,” but the more she pushed her husband to connect, the more withdrawn he became. Their sex life suffered.
Then a friend suggested that they try the illegal drug MDMA, popularly known as Ecstasy or Molly.
For Ree — who, along with her husband, requested anonymity to speak about drug use, and is referred to by a nickname — the answer was an “immediate no.” MDMA, long associated with rave culture, is currently categorized as a Schedule I drug — meaning it has a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use in the United States.
Six months later, after reading “How to Change Your Mind,” the best-selling book by Michael Pollan that details his transformative experience with psychedelics, Ree reconsidered. And that’s how they found themselves in a secluded area of Utah at a large, rented house with a beautiful view of the mountains to trip on MDMA with five other couples.
“We literally said on the drive to this house, ‘If this doesn’t work, we’re done,’” Ree said.
In recent years, clinical trials have shown that MDMA, when combined with talk therapy, can bring relief to those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, a finding that has elevated MDMA’s reputation from party drug to potential therapeutic. Some couples, drawn to the drug’s ability to produce feelings of empathy, trust and compassion, have started using unregulated MDMA on their own in an effort to help them reconnect, improve communication and have better sex.
But experts warn that MDMA, an amphetamine derivative, can have serious side effects. And although MDMA is known for enhancing empathy, there is very little research on couples who use it together, which makes it difficult to know how beneficial or long-lasting its effects are or in what instances the drug might be effective for people having relationship difficulties
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/well ... 778d3e6de3
“We are about as strait-laced as you can come,” she said. “We’re not people who break laws or do drugs.”
For some couples on the brink of divorce, taking the illegal psychedelic drug was a last resort — but it ended up being the only thing that worked.
After 10 years of marriage, Ree, 42, and her husband were ready to call it quits. Even their therapist had given up, she said, in part because her husband “was so closed off, just unable to open up.”
“We loved each other a lot and we were very compatible, however, we didn’t know how to deal with conflict,” Ree said. She was often anxious about their relationship and could be “a little neurotic at times,” but the more she pushed her husband to connect, the more withdrawn he became. Their sex life suffered.
Then a friend suggested that they try the illegal drug MDMA, popularly known as Ecstasy or Molly.
For Ree — who, along with her husband, requested anonymity to speak about drug use, and is referred to by a nickname — the answer was an “immediate no.” MDMA, long associated with rave culture, is currently categorized as a Schedule I drug — meaning it has a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use in the United States.
Six months later, after reading “How to Change Your Mind,” the best-selling book by Michael Pollan that details his transformative experience with psychedelics, Ree reconsidered. And that’s how they found themselves in a secluded area of Utah at a large, rented house with a beautiful view of the mountains to trip on MDMA with five other couples.
“We literally said on the drive to this house, ‘If this doesn’t work, we’re done,’” Ree said.
In recent years, clinical trials have shown that MDMA, when combined with talk therapy, can bring relief to those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, a finding that has elevated MDMA’s reputation from party drug to potential therapeutic. Some couples, drawn to the drug’s ability to produce feelings of empathy, trust and compassion, have started using unregulated MDMA on their own in an effort to help them reconnect, improve communication and have better sex.
But experts warn that MDMA, an amphetamine derivative, can have serious side effects. And although MDMA is known for enhancing empathy, there is very little research on couples who use it together, which makes it difficult to know how beneficial or long-lasting its effects are or in what instances the drug might be effective for people having relationship difficulties
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/well ... 778d3e6de3
“We are about as strait-laced as you can come,” she said. “We’re not people who break laws or do drugs.”
Re: Social Evils
AKSWB: Understanding Substance Abuse and Addiction: Perspectives from Science & Religion
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DEJla0vDTI
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DEJla0vDTI
Re: Social Evils
Just one drink per day can shrink your brain, study says
Just one pint of beer or average glass of wine a day may begin to shrink the overall volume of the brain, a new study has found, and the damage worsens as the number of daily drinks rises.
The pandemic may have created a nation of problem drinkers -- and many are women
On average, people at age 50 who drank a pint of beer or 6-ounce glass of wine (two alcohol units) a day in the last month had brains that appeared two years older than those who only drank a half of a beer (one unit), according to the study, which published Friday in the journal Nature.
The brains of people that age who said they drank three alcohol units a day had reductions in both white and gray matter that looked as if they had added 3.5 years to the ages of their brains.
One alcohol unit is 10 milligrams or 8 grams of pure alcohol. That means 25 milligrams or a single shot of liquor is one unit; a 16-ounce can of beer or cider is two units; and a standard 6-ounce glass of wine (175 milligrams) is two units.
The brains of nondrinkers who began consuming an average of one alcohol unit a day showed the equivalent of a half a year of aging, according to the study.
In comparison, drinking four alcohol units a day aged a person's brain by more than 10 years.
"It's not linear. It gets worse the more you drink," first author Remi Daviet, an assistant professor of marketing in the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement.
"A problem in this study is that they only have information on people's drinking habits for the one year prior to the (brain) imaging," said alcohol researcher Emmanuela Gakidou, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington.
"I think this is a major limitation of the study as it's likely that the cumulative consumption of alcohol throughout one's lifetime is associated with the brain, not just the level of consumption right before the images were taken," she added.
"The relationship between alcohol and health is complex, and our understanding of that relationship is evolving over time. Based on this study, I would not really draw any definitive conclusions, but I would say that the authors have identified areas for further research."
Benefits of alcohol?
Doctors used to believe that moderate amounts of alcohol could provide a health benefit, especially to the heart and the brain, but recent research has called that assumption into question. A number of studies have found no amount of drinking to be healthy, and the World Heart Federation recently published a policy brief saying there is "no level of alcohol consumption that is safe for health."
Worried about your drinking? Here's how to check it
"Small amounts of alcohol are associated with health benefits for some conditions, such as ischemic heart disease and diabetes, but harmful for others, such as road traffic accidents and breast cancer," Gakidou said, adding there are others, such as a stroke, where the outcome isn't clear.
"There isn't really a simple answer for a given individual," she said. "Based on what we do know at this time, whether small amounts of alcohol are beneficial or harmful for an individual depends on that person's health status and their risk profile. ... Are they more prone to heart disease or cancer?"
Brain scans and large study size
The report analyzed data from more than 36,000 people who took part in the UK Biobank study, which houses in-depth genetic and health information on more than 500,000 middle-aged adults living in the United Kingdom.
People in the study had provided information on the number of drinks they had each week in the previous year and had undergone an MRI brain scan.
Researchers compared their scans with images of typical aging brains and then controlled for such variables as age, sex, smoking status, socioeconomic status, genetic ancestry and overall head size.
No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, new report says, but critics disagree on science
No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, new report says, but critics disagree on science
"The fact that we have such a large sample size allows us to find subtle patterns, even between drinking the equivalent of half a beer and one beer a day," coauthor Gideon Nave, an assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.
"Having this dataset is like having a microscope or a telescope with a more powerful lens," Nave said. "You get a better resolution and start seeing patterns and associations you couldn't before."
He told CNN that is why this study was able to find a more distinct pattern of association between drinking and brain volume than past studies. However, he added, the results are just that -- an association -- as the study could not prove cause and effect.
"Our study is by far the largest investigation of the topic," Nave said. "It uses a general population sample, and it controls for more confounds than before. As such, it provides overwhelmingly more evidence than any previous investigations and gets us closer to settling the debate."
However, the study left a number of questions unanswered, such as a person's cognitive engagement, Gakidou said.
"I believe that there is sufficient evidence that suggests that brain function decays faster among those that are not engaged in intellectually stimulating activities, either through work or hobbies," she said.
"My main criticism is that the authors are overinterpreting the findings of their study and drawing conclusions that are not necessarily supported by what is presented in the paper. I do not see a significant trend in their graphs, and so I'm not convinced by the conclusions."
Paid Content
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/04/health/a ... index.html
Just one pint of beer or average glass of wine a day may begin to shrink the overall volume of the brain, a new study has found, and the damage worsens as the number of daily drinks rises.
The pandemic may have created a nation of problem drinkers -- and many are women
On average, people at age 50 who drank a pint of beer or 6-ounce glass of wine (two alcohol units) a day in the last month had brains that appeared two years older than those who only drank a half of a beer (one unit), according to the study, which published Friday in the journal Nature.
The brains of people that age who said they drank three alcohol units a day had reductions in both white and gray matter that looked as if they had added 3.5 years to the ages of their brains.
One alcohol unit is 10 milligrams or 8 grams of pure alcohol. That means 25 milligrams or a single shot of liquor is one unit; a 16-ounce can of beer or cider is two units; and a standard 6-ounce glass of wine (175 milligrams) is two units.
The brains of nondrinkers who began consuming an average of one alcohol unit a day showed the equivalent of a half a year of aging, according to the study.
In comparison, drinking four alcohol units a day aged a person's brain by more than 10 years.
"It's not linear. It gets worse the more you drink," first author Remi Daviet, an assistant professor of marketing in the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement.
"A problem in this study is that they only have information on people's drinking habits for the one year prior to the (brain) imaging," said alcohol researcher Emmanuela Gakidou, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington.
"I think this is a major limitation of the study as it's likely that the cumulative consumption of alcohol throughout one's lifetime is associated with the brain, not just the level of consumption right before the images were taken," she added.
"The relationship between alcohol and health is complex, and our understanding of that relationship is evolving over time. Based on this study, I would not really draw any definitive conclusions, but I would say that the authors have identified areas for further research."
Benefits of alcohol?
Doctors used to believe that moderate amounts of alcohol could provide a health benefit, especially to the heart and the brain, but recent research has called that assumption into question. A number of studies have found no amount of drinking to be healthy, and the World Heart Federation recently published a policy brief saying there is "no level of alcohol consumption that is safe for health."
Worried about your drinking? Here's how to check it
"Small amounts of alcohol are associated with health benefits for some conditions, such as ischemic heart disease and diabetes, but harmful for others, such as road traffic accidents and breast cancer," Gakidou said, adding there are others, such as a stroke, where the outcome isn't clear.
"There isn't really a simple answer for a given individual," she said. "Based on what we do know at this time, whether small amounts of alcohol are beneficial or harmful for an individual depends on that person's health status and their risk profile. ... Are they more prone to heart disease or cancer?"
Brain scans and large study size
The report analyzed data from more than 36,000 people who took part in the UK Biobank study, which houses in-depth genetic and health information on more than 500,000 middle-aged adults living in the United Kingdom.
People in the study had provided information on the number of drinks they had each week in the previous year and had undergone an MRI brain scan.
Researchers compared their scans with images of typical aging brains and then controlled for such variables as age, sex, smoking status, socioeconomic status, genetic ancestry and overall head size.
No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, new report says, but critics disagree on science
No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, new report says, but critics disagree on science
"The fact that we have such a large sample size allows us to find subtle patterns, even between drinking the equivalent of half a beer and one beer a day," coauthor Gideon Nave, an assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.
"Having this dataset is like having a microscope or a telescope with a more powerful lens," Nave said. "You get a better resolution and start seeing patterns and associations you couldn't before."
He told CNN that is why this study was able to find a more distinct pattern of association between drinking and brain volume than past studies. However, he added, the results are just that -- an association -- as the study could not prove cause and effect.
"Our study is by far the largest investigation of the topic," Nave said. "It uses a general population sample, and it controls for more confounds than before. As such, it provides overwhelmingly more evidence than any previous investigations and gets us closer to settling the debate."
However, the study left a number of questions unanswered, such as a person's cognitive engagement, Gakidou said.
"I believe that there is sufficient evidence that suggests that brain function decays faster among those that are not engaged in intellectually stimulating activities, either through work or hobbies," she said.
"My main criticism is that the authors are overinterpreting the findings of their study and drawing conclusions that are not necessarily supported by what is presented in the paper. I do not see a significant trend in their graphs, and so I'm not convinced by the conclusions."
Paid Content
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/04/health/a ... index.html
Re: Social Evils
THE ROAD TO DECRIMINALIZATION OF PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS RUNS THROUGH RELIGION
The city of Hazel Park, Michigan made national headlines last week after its city council voted unanimously to decriminalize entheogens, or naturally occurring psychoactive drugs consumed for religious reasons. Substances like psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and ibogaine remain illegal at the state and federal levels, but cities like Hazel Park are invoking their religiosity as they decriminalize entheogens at the local level.
To understand the term entheogen and its relationship to the broader effort to decriminalize psychedelic drugs, consider that in 1978, Dr. Carl Ruck, Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University, sought to distinguish the religious from the recreational use of psychedelics. Psychedelic drugs became associated with what many perceived as the adolescent rebellion of the 1960s and early ‘70s counterculture. The federal government criminalized the use, possession, sale, and cultivation of these drugs, though many continued to use them both recreationally and sacramentally. To honor the latter, Ruck created the word entheogen by combining the Greek word “entheos,” often translated as “god within,” with “gen” from the word hallucinogen.
The term has grown in recent decades motivated by several factors. Chief among them is what activists and proponents often refer to as the Psychedelic Renaissance. As journalist and author Michael Pollan wrote in his 2018 New York Times bestselling book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, a growing interest in psychedelics is sweeping the nation as researchers and therapists consider the medicinal and therapeutic benefits of these ancient plants. Based on their initial findings, venture capital and corporations are increasingly interested as well, resulting in millions of dollars of investments in psychedelic research.
Concurrently, Americans across the nation consumed psychedelic drugs for various reasons, including, but not limited to, the pursuit of religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences, as well as for their purported psychopharmacological benefits. Their effects were emboldened by a 2006 decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that members of União do Vegetal (or Union of the Plants), a small religious group from South America, can legally consume a psychedelic tea called hoasca (or ayahuasca), an otherwise illegal psychoactive drug, during twice-monthly rituals.
Based largely on the Supreme Court’s decision, three years later a lower court ruled that members of a similar religion in Oregon have a religious right to consume what they call Daime, a variation of the base ingredients used to create ayahuasca. In these decisions, justices did not invoke the word entheogen, but reinforced the broader idea that under certain circumstances, Americans had a legal right to consume otherwise forbidden psychoactive drugs.
While the entheogenic use of psychoactive substances predates the Psychedelic Renaissance, the two have combined in the form of the Decriminalize Nature movement, which encourages local governments to essentially decriminalize the use of entheogens by making the enforcement of prohibition among the police’s lowest priorities.
This movement received its first victory in May 2019, when voters in Denver, Colorado narrowly approved Ordinance 301, a ballot initiative “designed to decriminalize the use and possession of mushrooms that contain psilocybin, a hallucinogenic compound.” For the first time since the federal war on drugs, a city effectively decriminalized the use of a psychedelic drug. Motivated by this victory, the movement to decriminalize psychedelics subsequently spread, as over a dozen cities and counties followed Denver’s lead.
Despite their similarities, subsequent decriminalization bills have notable differences. Chief among them is that almost all these initiatives explicitly invoke the category of entheogens, resulting in a broader range of decriminalized substances.
Hazel Park, for example, decriminalized all entheogenic plants, which the city defined as:
“the full spectrum of plants, fungi, and natural materials and/or their extracted compounds, limited to those containing the following types of compounds: indole amines, tryptamines, and phenethylamines; that can benefit psychological and physical wellness, support and enhance religious and spiritual practices, and can reestablish human’s inalienable and direct relationship to nature.”
This classification is significant as it simultaneously sacralizes and broadens the category of decriminalized substances.
Cities like Hazel Park are but one component of the larger Psychedelic Renaissance, where activists, clinicians, and practitioners are working tirelessly to legitimize the use of psychedelic drugs. The category of entheogen—which has connected it to our nation’s long standing commitment to religious freedom—is proving a powerful tool in implementing that movement at the local level.
https://religiondispatches.org/the-road ... h-religion
The city of Hazel Park, Michigan made national headlines last week after its city council voted unanimously to decriminalize entheogens, or naturally occurring psychoactive drugs consumed for religious reasons. Substances like psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and ibogaine remain illegal at the state and federal levels, but cities like Hazel Park are invoking their religiosity as they decriminalize entheogens at the local level.
To understand the term entheogen and its relationship to the broader effort to decriminalize psychedelic drugs, consider that in 1978, Dr. Carl Ruck, Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University, sought to distinguish the religious from the recreational use of psychedelics. Psychedelic drugs became associated with what many perceived as the adolescent rebellion of the 1960s and early ‘70s counterculture. The federal government criminalized the use, possession, sale, and cultivation of these drugs, though many continued to use them both recreationally and sacramentally. To honor the latter, Ruck created the word entheogen by combining the Greek word “entheos,” often translated as “god within,” with “gen” from the word hallucinogen.
The term has grown in recent decades motivated by several factors. Chief among them is what activists and proponents often refer to as the Psychedelic Renaissance. As journalist and author Michael Pollan wrote in his 2018 New York Times bestselling book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, a growing interest in psychedelics is sweeping the nation as researchers and therapists consider the medicinal and therapeutic benefits of these ancient plants. Based on their initial findings, venture capital and corporations are increasingly interested as well, resulting in millions of dollars of investments in psychedelic research.
Concurrently, Americans across the nation consumed psychedelic drugs for various reasons, including, but not limited to, the pursuit of religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences, as well as for their purported psychopharmacological benefits. Their effects were emboldened by a 2006 decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that members of União do Vegetal (or Union of the Plants), a small religious group from South America, can legally consume a psychedelic tea called hoasca (or ayahuasca), an otherwise illegal psychoactive drug, during twice-monthly rituals.
Based largely on the Supreme Court’s decision, three years later a lower court ruled that members of a similar religion in Oregon have a religious right to consume what they call Daime, a variation of the base ingredients used to create ayahuasca. In these decisions, justices did not invoke the word entheogen, but reinforced the broader idea that under certain circumstances, Americans had a legal right to consume otherwise forbidden psychoactive drugs.
While the entheogenic use of psychoactive substances predates the Psychedelic Renaissance, the two have combined in the form of the Decriminalize Nature movement, which encourages local governments to essentially decriminalize the use of entheogens by making the enforcement of prohibition among the police’s lowest priorities.
This movement received its first victory in May 2019, when voters in Denver, Colorado narrowly approved Ordinance 301, a ballot initiative “designed to decriminalize the use and possession of mushrooms that contain psilocybin, a hallucinogenic compound.” For the first time since the federal war on drugs, a city effectively decriminalized the use of a psychedelic drug. Motivated by this victory, the movement to decriminalize psychedelics subsequently spread, as over a dozen cities and counties followed Denver’s lead.
Despite their similarities, subsequent decriminalization bills have notable differences. Chief among them is that almost all these initiatives explicitly invoke the category of entheogens, resulting in a broader range of decriminalized substances.
Hazel Park, for example, decriminalized all entheogenic plants, which the city defined as:
“the full spectrum of plants, fungi, and natural materials and/or their extracted compounds, limited to those containing the following types of compounds: indole amines, tryptamines, and phenethylamines; that can benefit psychological and physical wellness, support and enhance religious and spiritual practices, and can reestablish human’s inalienable and direct relationship to nature.”
This classification is significant as it simultaneously sacralizes and broadens the category of decriminalized substances.
Cities like Hazel Park are but one component of the larger Psychedelic Renaissance, where activists, clinicians, and practitioners are working tirelessly to legitimize the use of psychedelic drugs. The category of entheogen—which has connected it to our nation’s long standing commitment to religious freedom—is proving a powerful tool in implementing that movement at the local level.
https://religiondispatches.org/the-road ... h-religion
Re: Social Evils
Chicago Tribune
Feds want nearly 34 years for producer who pleaded guilty to trafficking young Indian actresses in Chicago
Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune
Fri, June 3, 2022, 12:08 PM
Federal prosecutors are asking for up to 34 years in prison for a former Indian movie producer who pleaded guilty to running a Chicago-based sex-trafficking ring that lured unsuspecting young actresses from their home country to the U.S., where authorities said they were forced into prostitution, physically abused and threatened with public shaming if they complained.
Kishan Modugumudi, 42, pleaded guilty in February 2020 to a count of sex trafficking related to one victim. His wife, Chandra, 35, also pleaded guilty to sex trafficking for her role in the scheme, court records show.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall later held a closed-door hearing where she heard directly from some of the Modugumudis’ victims, including an actress who testified the couple likely thought none of them would show up to “talk against them,” prosecutors revealed in a court filing Friday.
“But yes, we are here,” the woman, identified only as Victim C, told the judge, according to the prosecution filing. “Women, we are here, and we are talking against them. We are raising our voice. And we are showing that they did something wrong in their life. They have to feel regret until their death.”
In asking for a sentence of between 27 and 34 years for Kishan Modugumudi, prosecutors said in the filing he was a predator who “preyed on the hopes and dreams of young, innocent Indian women with dreams of coming to the United States and advancing their careers.”
In a separate filing Friday, prosecutors asked Kendall to sentence Chandra Modugumudi to up to 27 years behind bars.
Both defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on June 24.
A Tribune report detailing the allegations against the couple in July 2018 caused a major stir in Tollywood, a nickname for the lively Telugu-language film scene in southern India where Kishan Modugumudi had worked as a producer and found his alleged victims.
According to federal prosecutors, Modugumudi lured the actresses to Chicago with the promise of being discovered. Once here on temporary visas, however, the actresses were treated like sex slaves, forced to stay in a dingy, two-story apartment building in Chicago’s Belmont Cragin neighborhood waiting for their next “date,” the charges alleged.
The Modugumudis advertised the girls, some as young as 16, for sex at Indian conferences and cultural events across the country. The couple charged clients up to $3,000 for each sexual encounter, which took place in hotel rooms in Chicago, Dallas, New Jersey, Washington and elsewhere, according to prosecutors.
To keep the scheme going, Modugumudi resorted to physical and sexual assault of the victims as well as threats to disclose their names, which would “result in career-ending and reputation-destroying shame for the victims and their families in India,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen Merin wrote.
They were not empty threats, according to Merin. Kishan Modugumudi took lewd photos of some of the victims and kept them to blackmail them into silence. Actresses who were sent back to India suffered continued threats of exposure if they spoke out, Merin wrote.
One of the actresses, who was 17 at the time, refused to engage in commercial sex acts, prompting Kishan Modugumudi to text his wife, “Is she blabbering anything?”
“I threatened to kill her if she speaks anything,” Chandra Modugumudi replied, according to the prosecution filing.
Her husband texted back: “Tell her you would inform her mother if she creates any trouble.”
Even after he was arrested and held without bond, Kishan Modugumudi attempted to disclose information about the victims “to gain sympathy in Indian media and make good on his threats to destroy his victims’ lives if they dared to speak out against him and his wife,” Merin said.
Investigators were able to stop the attempt after they intercepted emails he had sent to an Indian reporter from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, according to prosecutors.
Before his arrest, Kishan Modugumudi had risen to become a player in the Tollywood movie industry and co-produced several hit films.
Founded in the silent-film era in the early 1900s, the Telugu film industry is one of the oldest and busiest in India. Its commercial hub, Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad, holds the Guinness World Record as the largest film studio complex in the world with 47 sound stages.
But Tollywood also has been criticized as a haven for traffickers who use promises of stardom to trap aspiring young actresses in the sex trade. An estimated 200,000 women and children in India are forced into prostitution every year, many lured by opportunities to model or act in films, according to Reuters.
When federal agents searched the Modugumudis’ apartment in the 5700 block of West Belden Avenue in February 2018, they found detailed ledgers of the sex acts performed by each girl, including where they occurred and how much they collected, according to prosecutors.
The ledgers showed that the couple had taken in at least $617,000 from forcing the victims to engage in commercial sex acts, prosecutors said.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/fe ... 00992.html
Feds want nearly 34 years for producer who pleaded guilty to trafficking young Indian actresses in Chicago
Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune
Fri, June 3, 2022, 12:08 PM
Federal prosecutors are asking for up to 34 years in prison for a former Indian movie producer who pleaded guilty to running a Chicago-based sex-trafficking ring that lured unsuspecting young actresses from their home country to the U.S., where authorities said they were forced into prostitution, physically abused and threatened with public shaming if they complained.
Kishan Modugumudi, 42, pleaded guilty in February 2020 to a count of sex trafficking related to one victim. His wife, Chandra, 35, also pleaded guilty to sex trafficking for her role in the scheme, court records show.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall later held a closed-door hearing where she heard directly from some of the Modugumudis’ victims, including an actress who testified the couple likely thought none of them would show up to “talk against them,” prosecutors revealed in a court filing Friday.
“But yes, we are here,” the woman, identified only as Victim C, told the judge, according to the prosecution filing. “Women, we are here, and we are talking against them. We are raising our voice. And we are showing that they did something wrong in their life. They have to feel regret until their death.”
In asking for a sentence of between 27 and 34 years for Kishan Modugumudi, prosecutors said in the filing he was a predator who “preyed on the hopes and dreams of young, innocent Indian women with dreams of coming to the United States and advancing their careers.”
In a separate filing Friday, prosecutors asked Kendall to sentence Chandra Modugumudi to up to 27 years behind bars.
Both defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on June 24.
A Tribune report detailing the allegations against the couple in July 2018 caused a major stir in Tollywood, a nickname for the lively Telugu-language film scene in southern India where Kishan Modugumudi had worked as a producer and found his alleged victims.
According to federal prosecutors, Modugumudi lured the actresses to Chicago with the promise of being discovered. Once here on temporary visas, however, the actresses were treated like sex slaves, forced to stay in a dingy, two-story apartment building in Chicago’s Belmont Cragin neighborhood waiting for their next “date,” the charges alleged.
The Modugumudis advertised the girls, some as young as 16, for sex at Indian conferences and cultural events across the country. The couple charged clients up to $3,000 for each sexual encounter, which took place in hotel rooms in Chicago, Dallas, New Jersey, Washington and elsewhere, according to prosecutors.
To keep the scheme going, Modugumudi resorted to physical and sexual assault of the victims as well as threats to disclose their names, which would “result in career-ending and reputation-destroying shame for the victims and their families in India,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen Merin wrote.
They were not empty threats, according to Merin. Kishan Modugumudi took lewd photos of some of the victims and kept them to blackmail them into silence. Actresses who were sent back to India suffered continued threats of exposure if they spoke out, Merin wrote.
One of the actresses, who was 17 at the time, refused to engage in commercial sex acts, prompting Kishan Modugumudi to text his wife, “Is she blabbering anything?”
“I threatened to kill her if she speaks anything,” Chandra Modugumudi replied, according to the prosecution filing.
Her husband texted back: “Tell her you would inform her mother if she creates any trouble.”
Even after he was arrested and held without bond, Kishan Modugumudi attempted to disclose information about the victims “to gain sympathy in Indian media and make good on his threats to destroy his victims’ lives if they dared to speak out against him and his wife,” Merin said.
Investigators were able to stop the attempt after they intercepted emails he had sent to an Indian reporter from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, according to prosecutors.
Before his arrest, Kishan Modugumudi had risen to become a player in the Tollywood movie industry and co-produced several hit films.
Founded in the silent-film era in the early 1900s, the Telugu film industry is one of the oldest and busiest in India. Its commercial hub, Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad, holds the Guinness World Record as the largest film studio complex in the world with 47 sound stages.
But Tollywood also has been criticized as a haven for traffickers who use promises of stardom to trap aspiring young actresses in the sex trade. An estimated 200,000 women and children in India are forced into prostitution every year, many lured by opportunities to model or act in films, according to Reuters.
When federal agents searched the Modugumudis’ apartment in the 5700 block of West Belden Avenue in February 2018, they found detailed ledgers of the sex acts performed by each girl, including where they occurred and how much they collected, according to prosecutors.
The ledgers showed that the couple had taken in at least $617,000 from forcing the victims to engage in commercial sex acts, prosecutors said.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/fe ... 00992.html
Risking a Society’s Retribution, Growing Numbers of Girls Resist Genital Cutting
Sierra Leone is one of a few countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have not banned cutting. Now, young women are defying mothers and grandmothers by refusing to undergo the procedure.
When Seio Bangura, 18, told her family she did not want to participate in a ritual ceremony that involved genital cutting, they forced her to leave home and seek refuge with friends.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York
Stephanie Nolen
By Stephanie Nolen
June 14, 2022
Updated 2:20 p.m. ET
KAMAKWIE, Sierra Leone — When Seio Bangura’s final high school exam results arrived not long ago, she learned she had earned grades high enough to get into college. It was a thrilling moment for the daughter of farmers who never finished primary school. But Ms. Bangura is not making plans for university. Instead, she spends most days sitting on a bench, watching others head to class or work.
Ms. Bangura, 18, left home almost five years ago, after her parents gave her a choice: to be initiated in a ceremony centered on genital cutting, or leave. The ceremony allows entrance to bondo, or “the society,” a term for the gender-and-ethnicity-based groups that control much of life here.
“My mom said, ‘If you won’t do bondo, you have to go,’” Ms. Bangura said, her voice low but her chin defiantly raised. The choice cut her off from her family’s financial support and left her unable to pay for further education or to marry.
For more than two decades, there has been a push across the developing world to end female genital cutting, a centuries-old ritual tied up in ideas of sexual purity, obedience and control. Today, Sierra Leone is one of only a few countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have not banned it. Cutting is still practiced by almost every ethnic group in every region of the country. But the practice is now at the center of intense debate here.
Progressive groups, many supported by international organizations, are pushing to ban cutting, while conservative forces say it is an essential part of the culture that is practiced across tribal and religious lines.
As that battle plays out in the media and in parliament, growing numbers of girls and young women like Ms. Bangura are taking the matter into their own hands. It is an act of defiance almost unimaginable a generation ago: They are refusing to participate in initiation, telling their mothers and grandmothers they will not join bondo.
More than 90 percent of women over 30 in Sierra Leone have undergone genital cutting, compared with just 61 percent of those ages 15 to 19, according to the most recent household survey on the subject, conducted by UNICEF in 2019. The practice is normally carried out on girls at the onset of puberty, although there are areas of the country where it is done on girls who are much younger.
A “bondo devil,” a key figure in women’s rituals, in Port Loko, Sierra Leone.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
Refusing bondo comes at great social cost. Women who have not joined are, by custom if not by law, not permitted to marry; to represent their communities in religious or cultural events; to participate in celebrations or funerals; or to serve as chief or in parliament.
In most cases, the initiation involves excision of the clitoris and labia minora with a razor by a senior society member called a sowei, who has no medical training but is believed to be spiritually powerful. The ceremony is carried out in women-only encampments, which were once rural but are now sometimes in towns, known as the “bondo bush.”
Laws against cutting have had uneven enforcement and mixed results. Some countries, such as Egypt and Ethiopia, have seen rates fall dramatically. But in others, such as Senegal and Somalia, the decline has been negligible. Globally, the number of girls at risk of being cut continues to grow, because countries without laws or enforcement against cutting have large and rapidly growing youth populations.
While Sierra Leone has one of the world’s highest rates of cutting, it is also one of the few places where the practice seems to be showing a sustained decline, as more and more young women resist.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/heal ... 778d3e6de3
When Seio Bangura, 18, told her family she did not want to participate in a ritual ceremony that involved genital cutting, they forced her to leave home and seek refuge with friends.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York
Stephanie Nolen
By Stephanie Nolen
June 14, 2022
Updated 2:20 p.m. ET
KAMAKWIE, Sierra Leone — When Seio Bangura’s final high school exam results arrived not long ago, she learned she had earned grades high enough to get into college. It was a thrilling moment for the daughter of farmers who never finished primary school. But Ms. Bangura is not making plans for university. Instead, she spends most days sitting on a bench, watching others head to class or work.
Ms. Bangura, 18, left home almost five years ago, after her parents gave her a choice: to be initiated in a ceremony centered on genital cutting, or leave. The ceremony allows entrance to bondo, or “the society,” a term for the gender-and-ethnicity-based groups that control much of life here.
“My mom said, ‘If you won’t do bondo, you have to go,’” Ms. Bangura said, her voice low but her chin defiantly raised. The choice cut her off from her family’s financial support and left her unable to pay for further education or to marry.
For more than two decades, there has been a push across the developing world to end female genital cutting, a centuries-old ritual tied up in ideas of sexual purity, obedience and control. Today, Sierra Leone is one of only a few countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have not banned it. Cutting is still practiced by almost every ethnic group in every region of the country. But the practice is now at the center of intense debate here.
Progressive groups, many supported by international organizations, are pushing to ban cutting, while conservative forces say it is an essential part of the culture that is practiced across tribal and religious lines.
As that battle plays out in the media and in parliament, growing numbers of girls and young women like Ms. Bangura are taking the matter into their own hands. It is an act of defiance almost unimaginable a generation ago: They are refusing to participate in initiation, telling their mothers and grandmothers they will not join bondo.
More than 90 percent of women over 30 in Sierra Leone have undergone genital cutting, compared with just 61 percent of those ages 15 to 19, according to the most recent household survey on the subject, conducted by UNICEF in 2019. The practice is normally carried out on girls at the onset of puberty, although there are areas of the country where it is done on girls who are much younger.
A “bondo devil,” a key figure in women’s rituals, in Port Loko, Sierra Leone.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
Refusing bondo comes at great social cost. Women who have not joined are, by custom if not by law, not permitted to marry; to represent their communities in religious or cultural events; to participate in celebrations or funerals; or to serve as chief or in parliament.
In most cases, the initiation involves excision of the clitoris and labia minora with a razor by a senior society member called a sowei, who has no medical training but is believed to be spiritually powerful. The ceremony is carried out in women-only encampments, which were once rural but are now sometimes in towns, known as the “bondo bush.”
Laws against cutting have had uneven enforcement and mixed results. Some countries, such as Egypt and Ethiopia, have seen rates fall dramatically. But in others, such as Senegal and Somalia, the decline has been negligible. Globally, the number of girls at risk of being cut continues to grow, because countries without laws or enforcement against cutting have large and rapidly growing youth populations.
While Sierra Leone has one of the world’s highest rates of cutting, it is also one of the few places where the practice seems to be showing a sustained decline, as more and more young women resist.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/heal ... 778d3e6de3
Why Mass Shooters Do the Evil They Do
By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist
I will never get over the fact that our society seems to produce a steady stream of young men who think it is heroic to murder innocent people. I read their histories. I look at the social science research. I’ve tried to understand the typical pathway they take to get to their evil behavior.
The common thing to say about mass shooters is that they have mental health issues, but that’s often misleading. This has been studied in a variety of ways. A majority of mass shooters are not suffering from a diagnosed mental illness. It’s mostly the circumstances that drive them to do what they do, not an underlying disease.
The more accurate place to start is with something George Bernard Shaw wrote many years ago: “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: That’s the essence of inhumanity.”
These young men are frequently ghosts. They often experience early childhood trauma, like abuse or extreme bullying. In school no one knows them. Boys and girls turn their backs on them. Later, when journalists interview their teachers or neighbors, they are remembered as withdrawn and remote. These young men often have no social skills. Why doesn’t anybody like me? As one researcher put it, they are not necessarily loners; they are failed joiners.
They harden into their solitude. As one acquaintance of a mass shooter told GQ magazine: “He was quiet, uncomfortably quiet, strangely quiet. I mean really strange.” Humans only realize how much they crave the recognition of the world when that recognition is withheld, and when it is, they crawl inward.
The stressors build up: bad at school, bad at work, humiliating encounters with others. It feels shameful to be so unworthy of human attention. We see ourselves as others see us, and when no one sees us, our sense of self disintegrates. They are ill equipped to deal with their pain.
Many contemplate suicide. This is a key point. Mass murder is often a form of suicide and can be treated as akin to suicide. In their despair many seem to have what almost amounts to an identity crisis. Is it my fault or is it the world’s fault? Am I a loser or are they losers?
And here’s where victimhood turns into villainy. The ones who become mass shooters decide they are Superman, and it is the world that is full of ants. They decide to commit suicide in a way that will selfishly give them what they crave most: to be known, to be recognized, to be famous.
They craft a narrative in which they are the hero. The world is evil, and they will stand up to the world. Or the world is in catastrophic danger. The Blacks/Jews/women are destroying us, and they will strike back. These internet-fueled narratives have an arousing power. They make them feel righteous, strong and significant. People whose lives are dissolving into chaos will grasp any black-and-white story that provides order and purpose.
Of course, the narratives are all malicious lunacy. “Loneliness obfuscates,” Giovanni Frazzetto wrote in his book “Together, Closer.” “It becomes a deceiving filter through which we see ourselves, others, and the world.”
The guns seem to have some sort of psychological effect, too. For people who have felt impotent all their lives, the guns seem to provide an almost narcotic sense of power. Perhaps it is the pleasure they feel posing with their guns that pushes some of them over the edge. The guns are like serpents in the trees, whispering to them.
By this point their image of ideal human relationships is diseased. It is not friend-friend. It is star-fan. The only form of human companionship they can envision is themselves broadcast on a screen and the faceless crowds watching and reposting.
They begin plotting their rampage. It is a theatrical performance. They want it to be as public and spectacular as possible. Many are not secretive about this. They tell people. They post videos. They count themselves members of the brotherhood of killers and wallow in delusions of grandeur. But even at the last minute, especially among the younger ones, there’s often a last-minute cry for help. They want somebody to tell them, You don’t have to do this.
The most affecting article I read while researching this column was written by Tom Junod in Esquire in 2014. He interviewed a young man who prosecutors said set out to commit a mass shooting but was caught before he was able to get started. (The man pleaded guilty to carjacking and served time for it.)
When he got out of prison, he looked at his old high school yearbook and was shocked. Fellow students had signed it, offering to get together over the summer. People were reaching out, but he had been too self-involved to see.
On the day he set out armed with guns, ammunition and machete, he didn’t want to do it. It was like some painful duty. He told Junod: “I wanted attention. If someone would have come up to me and said, ‘You don’t have to do this, you don’t have to have this strange strength, we accept you,’ I would have broken down and given up.”
These things are evil but not inevitable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Opinion Columnist
I will never get over the fact that our society seems to produce a steady stream of young men who think it is heroic to murder innocent people. I read their histories. I look at the social science research. I’ve tried to understand the typical pathway they take to get to their evil behavior.
The common thing to say about mass shooters is that they have mental health issues, but that’s often misleading. This has been studied in a variety of ways. A majority of mass shooters are not suffering from a diagnosed mental illness. It’s mostly the circumstances that drive them to do what they do, not an underlying disease.
The more accurate place to start is with something George Bernard Shaw wrote many years ago: “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: That’s the essence of inhumanity.”
These young men are frequently ghosts. They often experience early childhood trauma, like abuse or extreme bullying. In school no one knows them. Boys and girls turn their backs on them. Later, when journalists interview their teachers or neighbors, they are remembered as withdrawn and remote. These young men often have no social skills. Why doesn’t anybody like me? As one researcher put it, they are not necessarily loners; they are failed joiners.
They harden into their solitude. As one acquaintance of a mass shooter told GQ magazine: “He was quiet, uncomfortably quiet, strangely quiet. I mean really strange.” Humans only realize how much they crave the recognition of the world when that recognition is withheld, and when it is, they crawl inward.
The stressors build up: bad at school, bad at work, humiliating encounters with others. It feels shameful to be so unworthy of human attention. We see ourselves as others see us, and when no one sees us, our sense of self disintegrates. They are ill equipped to deal with their pain.
Many contemplate suicide. This is a key point. Mass murder is often a form of suicide and can be treated as akin to suicide. In their despair many seem to have what almost amounts to an identity crisis. Is it my fault or is it the world’s fault? Am I a loser or are they losers?
And here’s where victimhood turns into villainy. The ones who become mass shooters decide they are Superman, and it is the world that is full of ants. They decide to commit suicide in a way that will selfishly give them what they crave most: to be known, to be recognized, to be famous.
They craft a narrative in which they are the hero. The world is evil, and they will stand up to the world. Or the world is in catastrophic danger. The Blacks/Jews/women are destroying us, and they will strike back. These internet-fueled narratives have an arousing power. They make them feel righteous, strong and significant. People whose lives are dissolving into chaos will grasp any black-and-white story that provides order and purpose.
Of course, the narratives are all malicious lunacy. “Loneliness obfuscates,” Giovanni Frazzetto wrote in his book “Together, Closer.” “It becomes a deceiving filter through which we see ourselves, others, and the world.”
The guns seem to have some sort of psychological effect, too. For people who have felt impotent all their lives, the guns seem to provide an almost narcotic sense of power. Perhaps it is the pleasure they feel posing with their guns that pushes some of them over the edge. The guns are like serpents in the trees, whispering to them.
By this point their image of ideal human relationships is diseased. It is not friend-friend. It is star-fan. The only form of human companionship they can envision is themselves broadcast on a screen and the faceless crowds watching and reposting.
They begin plotting their rampage. It is a theatrical performance. They want it to be as public and spectacular as possible. Many are not secretive about this. They tell people. They post videos. They count themselves members of the brotherhood of killers and wallow in delusions of grandeur. But even at the last minute, especially among the younger ones, there’s often a last-minute cry for help. They want somebody to tell them, You don’t have to do this.
The most affecting article I read while researching this column was written by Tom Junod in Esquire in 2014. He interviewed a young man who prosecutors said set out to commit a mass shooting but was caught before he was able to get started. (The man pleaded guilty to carjacking and served time for it.)
When he got out of prison, he looked at his old high school yearbook and was shocked. Fellow students had signed it, offering to get together over the summer. People were reaching out, but he had been too self-involved to see.
On the day he set out armed with guns, ammunition and machete, he didn’t want to do it. It was like some painful duty. He told Junod: “I wanted attention. If someone would have come up to me and said, ‘You don’t have to do this, you don’t have to have this strange strength, we accept you,’ I would have broken down and given up.”
These things are evil but not inevitable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Re: Social Evils
UK sanctions controversial Sindh cleric
Atika Rehman Published December 10, 2022 Updated 2 days ago
LONDON: A controversial pir from Sindh was placed on the British government’s sanctions list on Friday, making Pakistan one of 11 countries where rights violators will be punished.
In a comment to Dawn, the British High Commission said: “The UK takes freedom of religion or belief very seriously and is committed to protecting minorities around the world. The new package of sanctions targets those violating fundamental freedoms. This includes Mian Abdul Haq, a cleric of the Bharchundi Sharif shrine in Ghotki, Sindh, who is responsible for forced marriages and forced religious conversions of non-Muslims and minors. This sanctions package does not include any other Pakistani national.”
The sanctions effectively mean that designated individuals will be unable to do any business or undertake economic activity with UK citizens or businesses, and that they will be denied entry to the UK.
The pir, popularly known as Mian Mithu, is notorious in upper Sindh for his alleged involvement in the forced conversion and marriages of minor Hindu girls. He has denied the allegations on several occasions and even claimed to have promoted religious harmony in Sindh.
Mr Mithu came in the spotlight after he allegedly converted a Hindu girl, Rinkle Kumari, who was later renamed Faryal, to Islam in February 2012, before her marriage to a local Muslim, Naveed Shah.
The conversion, Mian Mithu had claimed, was not forced. He found himself in the news yet again in September this year.
He made headlines when he reportedly led a large number of people who took to the streets in protest against an alleged incident of blasphemy.
In 2008, the pir won a National Assembly seat on a PPP ticket, but the party denied him a ticket in 2012.
In 2015, Imran Khan attempted to invite him into the party fold but was forced to disassociate himself with the cleric after protests from the Hindu community.
In 2021, activists on Twitter called out the PTI government after Mian Mithu was invited by the Council of Islamic Ideology to deliberate on legislation around forced conversion.
Clerics expressed reservations on a draft bill, and a parliamentary panel ultimately rejected the bill despite protest from minority lawmakers.
The cleric is one of 30 individuals who have been sanctioned in total. Of these, 18, including Mr Mithu, have been targeted for “violations and abuses of human rights”.
Meanwhile, sources in the Pakistan government expressed dismay over Pakistan’s name being tarnished because of this individual.
Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2022
https://www.dawn.com/news/1725577/uk-sa ... ndh-cleric
Atika Rehman Published December 10, 2022 Updated 2 days ago
LONDON: A controversial pir from Sindh was placed on the British government’s sanctions list on Friday, making Pakistan one of 11 countries where rights violators will be punished.
In a comment to Dawn, the British High Commission said: “The UK takes freedom of religion or belief very seriously and is committed to protecting minorities around the world. The new package of sanctions targets those violating fundamental freedoms. This includes Mian Abdul Haq, a cleric of the Bharchundi Sharif shrine in Ghotki, Sindh, who is responsible for forced marriages and forced religious conversions of non-Muslims and minors. This sanctions package does not include any other Pakistani national.”
The sanctions effectively mean that designated individuals will be unable to do any business or undertake economic activity with UK citizens or businesses, and that they will be denied entry to the UK.
The pir, popularly known as Mian Mithu, is notorious in upper Sindh for his alleged involvement in the forced conversion and marriages of minor Hindu girls. He has denied the allegations on several occasions and even claimed to have promoted religious harmony in Sindh.
Mr Mithu came in the spotlight after he allegedly converted a Hindu girl, Rinkle Kumari, who was later renamed Faryal, to Islam in February 2012, before her marriage to a local Muslim, Naveed Shah.
The conversion, Mian Mithu had claimed, was not forced. He found himself in the news yet again in September this year.
He made headlines when he reportedly led a large number of people who took to the streets in protest against an alleged incident of blasphemy.
In 2008, the pir won a National Assembly seat on a PPP ticket, but the party denied him a ticket in 2012.
In 2015, Imran Khan attempted to invite him into the party fold but was forced to disassociate himself with the cleric after protests from the Hindu community.
In 2021, activists on Twitter called out the PTI government after Mian Mithu was invited by the Council of Islamic Ideology to deliberate on legislation around forced conversion.
Clerics expressed reservations on a draft bill, and a parliamentary panel ultimately rejected the bill despite protest from minority lawmakers.
The cleric is one of 30 individuals who have been sanctioned in total. Of these, 18, including Mr Mithu, have been targeted for “violations and abuses of human rights”.
Meanwhile, sources in the Pakistan government expressed dismay over Pakistan’s name being tarnished because of this individual.
Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2022
https://www.dawn.com/news/1725577/uk-sa ... ndh-cleric
Re: Social Evils
Associated Press
Pakistan police allege 2 clerics raped boy in seminary
Sun, April 30, 2023 at 6:59 AM CDT
MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani police arrested two Muslim clerics for allegedly raping a 10-year-old boy in a religious school in eastern Punjab province, officials said Sunday.
Chaudhry Imran, a spokesman for the Khanewal district police, said the attack happened Saturday when the boy's uncle went to visit his nephew and arrived to find him being raped by a cleric in a side room of the school while another cleric waited.
Imran said a complaint was filed by the boy's uncle alleging the 10-year-old was abused by two clerics in the seminary where he has been studying for the last year.
Imran said police did an initial investigation and then arrested two suspects. He said the boy was admitted to a local hospital suffering trauma and physical injuries.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually abused.
Police would not allow an AP reporter to seek comment from the two clerics citing an ongoing investigation. The two men had not yet found legal representation, police said.
Child sex abuse in Pakistan’s religious schools is prevalent and complaints from parents and relatives rarely lead to the arrest of accused religious clerics.
An investigation by The Associated Press in May 2020 found dozens of police reports alleging sexual harassment, rape and physical abuse by Islamic clerics teaching in madrassas, or religious schools, throughout Pakistan. Many of the students who study in the madrassas are poor.
Many families, overcome by shame and fear that the stigma of being sexually abused will follow a child into adulthood, choose instead to drop the charges or are often coerced into “forgiving” clerics.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/pa ... 58079.html
Pakistan police allege 2 clerics raped boy in seminary
Sun, April 30, 2023 at 6:59 AM CDT
MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani police arrested two Muslim clerics for allegedly raping a 10-year-old boy in a religious school in eastern Punjab province, officials said Sunday.
Chaudhry Imran, a spokesman for the Khanewal district police, said the attack happened Saturday when the boy's uncle went to visit his nephew and arrived to find him being raped by a cleric in a side room of the school while another cleric waited.
Imran said a complaint was filed by the boy's uncle alleging the 10-year-old was abused by two clerics in the seminary where he has been studying for the last year.
Imran said police did an initial investigation and then arrested two suspects. He said the boy was admitted to a local hospital suffering trauma and physical injuries.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually abused.
Police would not allow an AP reporter to seek comment from the two clerics citing an ongoing investigation. The two men had not yet found legal representation, police said.
Child sex abuse in Pakistan’s religious schools is prevalent and complaints from parents and relatives rarely lead to the arrest of accused religious clerics.
An investigation by The Associated Press in May 2020 found dozens of police reports alleging sexual harassment, rape and physical abuse by Islamic clerics teaching in madrassas, or religious schools, throughout Pakistan. Many of the students who study in the madrassas are poor.
Many families, overcome by shame and fear that the stigma of being sexually abused will follow a child into adulthood, choose instead to drop the charges or are often coerced into “forgiving” clerics.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/pa ... 58079.html
Middle-Aged Adults Are Binge Drinking and Using Marijuana at Record Levels
The News
Binge drinking among adults aged 35 to 50 occurred at record prevalence in 2022, according to research funded by the National Institutes of Health. A new study found that nearly 30 percent of people in this age group reported binge drinking in 2022, continuing a consistent upward trend in the behavior. In 2012, 23 percent of such adults reported binge drinking.
Use of marijuana in this group also reached historical levels, with 28 percent reporting the behavior, up from 13 percent in 2012. In 2022, 4 percent of adults in this group reported using a hallucinogen, double the figure in 2021.
The survey also looked at behavior among adults 19 to 30 years old. For this group, use of marijuana in 2022 was significantly greater, at 44 percent, up from 28 percent in 2012. But their self-reported binge drinking had fallen to 30.5 percent, down from 35.2 percent a decade earlier.
ImageA row of customers sit at a bar with a wall of bottles behind it. A bartender pours a beer from a tap.
A recent study found that alcohol-related deaths among women are rising at a faster rate than among men.Credit...Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press
Why It Matters: Alcohol-related deaths have risen among people 65 and older.
Different generations use different drugs and at different levels. “Drug use trends evolve over decades and across development, from adolescent to adulthood,” said Megan Patrick, a research professor at the University of Michigan and principal investigator on the study, known as Monitoring the Future.
The research has been supported since 1975 by the National Institutes of Drug Abuse, or NIDA, which is a part of the N.I.H. NIDA typically draws attention for its study of behavior and drug use patterns among young people in middle and high school. But the research also follows people throughout their lives, looking at the use of alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes and other substances.
“It’s important to track this so that public health professionals and communities can be prepared to respond,” Dr. Patrick said.
The implications of what drugs a generation tends to use can be significant. For instance, a recent study found that alcohol-related deaths continued to increase among people 65 and older, with deaths among women in this age group rising at a faster rate than among men.
What’s Next
The study suggests that substance-use behavior is heavily influenced by the culture of a generation and the legal status of various drugs at various periods of life. For instance, among the adults aged 35 to 50, the 50-year-olds had tried marijuana the least — only 68 percent of them reported having used it sometime in their life. “These respondents graduated from high school in 1990, when marijuana and other drugs were at or near historical lows across the past four decades, suggesting a cohort effect,” the study noted.
Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, said in a news release that the data from this study and others like it can inform how health officials and individuals address the risks posed at different life stages. “We want to ensure that people from the earliest to the latest stages in adulthood are equipped with up-to-date knowledge to help inform decisions related to substance abuse,” Dr. Volkow said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/heal ... drugs.html
Binge drinking among adults aged 35 to 50 occurred at record prevalence in 2022, according to research funded by the National Institutes of Health. A new study found that nearly 30 percent of people in this age group reported binge drinking in 2022, continuing a consistent upward trend in the behavior. In 2012, 23 percent of such adults reported binge drinking.
Use of marijuana in this group also reached historical levels, with 28 percent reporting the behavior, up from 13 percent in 2012. In 2022, 4 percent of adults in this group reported using a hallucinogen, double the figure in 2021.
The survey also looked at behavior among adults 19 to 30 years old. For this group, use of marijuana in 2022 was significantly greater, at 44 percent, up from 28 percent in 2012. But their self-reported binge drinking had fallen to 30.5 percent, down from 35.2 percent a decade earlier.
ImageA row of customers sit at a bar with a wall of bottles behind it. A bartender pours a beer from a tap.
A recent study found that alcohol-related deaths among women are rising at a faster rate than among men.Credit...Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press
Why It Matters: Alcohol-related deaths have risen among people 65 and older.
Different generations use different drugs and at different levels. “Drug use trends evolve over decades and across development, from adolescent to adulthood,” said Megan Patrick, a research professor at the University of Michigan and principal investigator on the study, known as Monitoring the Future.
The research has been supported since 1975 by the National Institutes of Drug Abuse, or NIDA, which is a part of the N.I.H. NIDA typically draws attention for its study of behavior and drug use patterns among young people in middle and high school. But the research also follows people throughout their lives, looking at the use of alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes and other substances.
“It’s important to track this so that public health professionals and communities can be prepared to respond,” Dr. Patrick said.
The implications of what drugs a generation tends to use can be significant. For instance, a recent study found that alcohol-related deaths continued to increase among people 65 and older, with deaths among women in this age group rising at a faster rate than among men.
What’s Next
The study suggests that substance-use behavior is heavily influenced by the culture of a generation and the legal status of various drugs at various periods of life. For instance, among the adults aged 35 to 50, the 50-year-olds had tried marijuana the least — only 68 percent of them reported having used it sometime in their life. “These respondents graduated from high school in 1990, when marijuana and other drugs were at or near historical lows across the past four decades, suggesting a cohort effect,” the study noted.
Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, said in a news release that the data from this study and others like it can inform how health officials and individuals address the risks posed at different life stages. “We want to ensure that people from the earliest to the latest stages in adulthood are equipped with up-to-date knowledge to help inform decisions related to substance abuse,” Dr. Volkow said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/heal ... drugs.html
Re: Social Evils
The consequence of alcohol consumption...
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan: The fall of a qawwali king
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan
By: Asjad Nazir
THE late great singer Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan took qawwali to unimaginable heights before he prematurely passed away aged 48 in 1997.
After his death, there was a void that had to be filled. His nephews, Rizwan and Muazzam, headed a qawwali group that should have been the natural successor – they took the same starmaking steps as Nusrat with a performance at Womad festival, along with getting the influential record label Real World to sign them up. Despite being truly talented, the young maestros were thrown into the deep end too early and were not able to capitalise on those early breaks.
Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Meanwhile, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, who had been performing with Nusrat since a teenager, saw himself as a natural successor. But, he struggled to make a mark, despite working with many of his late uncle’s group members.
Rahat would regularly perform concerts at smaller venues for negligible remuneration.
Then, one day, his career changed course when actress turned film producer Pooja Bhatt signed him to sing for her directorial debut Paap in 2003.
This was followed by her father, Mahesh Bhatt, giving him the chance to sing the super-hit song Jiya Dhadak Dhadak for his film Kalyug two years later.
After that there was no looking back, as he became hot property in Hindi cinema and delivered a string of successful songs. Bollywood raising his profile saw him performing at prestigious venues.
He then teamed up with big-thinking promotor Salman Ahmed and went from performing to relatively small crowds to delivering sold-out shows at arenas around the world. Even when Bollywood put a ban on Pakistani singers, he still had enough songs to sell out shows globally. The singer who once performed for a few thousand pounds became a multi-millionaire.
Despite the presence of more talented qawwali singers, the global fame meant he became the natural successor to his late uncle Nusrat despite having just a fraction of his creative ability. What most people didn’t see, and some only got glimpses of, was the dark side to the singer’s personality.
I remember going to see him at a major Pakistani concert at Wembley arena and subsequently writing about how he seemed to be clearly intoxicated on stage. He struggled to mime to his own song and slurred his words. Within music and media circles there was always talk about his heavy consumption of alcohol. Then, with the advent of social media, people started getting glimpses of him being allegedly intoxicated via embarrassing videos.
A basic online search using the query ‘Rahat Fateh Ali Khan drunk’ will reveal numerous videos and news articles depicting him in an alleged intoxicated state. In Islam, alcohol is strictly prohibited, especially for Sufi singers due to their spiritual practices.
Thus, his alleged regular consumption of alcohol brought disgrace to the esteemed reputation of his uncle, whom he was expected to succeed as the heir apparent, as well as to his family’s musical lineage spanning centuries.
This leads to what happened recently. Shortly after announcing he was terminating a long-term partnership with his international tour manager, another embarrassing video went viral on social media, where he can be seen beating up a staff member for losing a ‘bottle’. It was widely reported that he was drunk and angry that his liquor had been misplaced. Those who listen to the way his words are slurred in the video would likely agree.
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan
Rahat then shared a video with the man he was shown beating and denied all the allegations. He gave the most laughable explanation about the bottle in the video being spiritual water and said he had apologised to the man whom he had assaulted. The staff member backed up the account.
But it was hard to find anyone who believed him and not surprisingly, he was once again heavily trolled. After realising his explanation was utterly ridiculous, Rahat released another video where he asked for forgiveness from everyone, including his fans, family, god, and females he had worked with, for any bad behaviour. He promised to never put himself in such compromising situations again. The apology was undone, however, with him admitting that more embarrassing videos from the past might turn up. Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency has also reportedly initiated a money-laundering and tax evasion inquiry against him.
What has been clear is that Rahat Fateh Ali Khan has balanced his talent, stardom, and opportunities with shameful behaviour on a regular basis. His illustrious uncle has never faced accusations of being in a drunken rage, assaulting staff members, performing intoxicated on stage, or undergoing investigation for serious tax evasion and money laundering.
However, a Google search reveals that Rahat has consistently been the target of such damaging allegations.
Those who believe there is no smoke without fire, will agree that he doesn’t deserve to wear the crown of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He has regularly shamed himself and his family that has proudly carried the torch of spiritual Sufi music across different generations.
Him promising to do better, won’t undo shameful behaviour that has lasted so many years.
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan: The fall of a qawwali king
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan
By: Asjad Nazir
THE late great singer Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan took qawwali to unimaginable heights before he prematurely passed away aged 48 in 1997.
After his death, there was a void that had to be filled. His nephews, Rizwan and Muazzam, headed a qawwali group that should have been the natural successor – they took the same starmaking steps as Nusrat with a performance at Womad festival, along with getting the influential record label Real World to sign them up. Despite being truly talented, the young maestros were thrown into the deep end too early and were not able to capitalise on those early breaks.
Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Meanwhile, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, who had been performing with Nusrat since a teenager, saw himself as a natural successor. But, he struggled to make a mark, despite working with many of his late uncle’s group members.
Rahat would regularly perform concerts at smaller venues for negligible remuneration.
Then, one day, his career changed course when actress turned film producer Pooja Bhatt signed him to sing for her directorial debut Paap in 2003.
This was followed by her father, Mahesh Bhatt, giving him the chance to sing the super-hit song Jiya Dhadak Dhadak for his film Kalyug two years later.
After that there was no looking back, as he became hot property in Hindi cinema and delivered a string of successful songs. Bollywood raising his profile saw him performing at prestigious venues.
He then teamed up with big-thinking promotor Salman Ahmed and went from performing to relatively small crowds to delivering sold-out shows at arenas around the world. Even when Bollywood put a ban on Pakistani singers, he still had enough songs to sell out shows globally. The singer who once performed for a few thousand pounds became a multi-millionaire.
Despite the presence of more talented qawwali singers, the global fame meant he became the natural successor to his late uncle Nusrat despite having just a fraction of his creative ability. What most people didn’t see, and some only got glimpses of, was the dark side to the singer’s personality.
I remember going to see him at a major Pakistani concert at Wembley arena and subsequently writing about how he seemed to be clearly intoxicated on stage. He struggled to mime to his own song and slurred his words. Within music and media circles there was always talk about his heavy consumption of alcohol. Then, with the advent of social media, people started getting glimpses of him being allegedly intoxicated via embarrassing videos.
A basic online search using the query ‘Rahat Fateh Ali Khan drunk’ will reveal numerous videos and news articles depicting him in an alleged intoxicated state. In Islam, alcohol is strictly prohibited, especially for Sufi singers due to their spiritual practices.
Thus, his alleged regular consumption of alcohol brought disgrace to the esteemed reputation of his uncle, whom he was expected to succeed as the heir apparent, as well as to his family’s musical lineage spanning centuries.
This leads to what happened recently. Shortly after announcing he was terminating a long-term partnership with his international tour manager, another embarrassing video went viral on social media, where he can be seen beating up a staff member for losing a ‘bottle’. It was widely reported that he was drunk and angry that his liquor had been misplaced. Those who listen to the way his words are slurred in the video would likely agree.
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan
Rahat then shared a video with the man he was shown beating and denied all the allegations. He gave the most laughable explanation about the bottle in the video being spiritual water and said he had apologised to the man whom he had assaulted. The staff member backed up the account.
But it was hard to find anyone who believed him and not surprisingly, he was once again heavily trolled. After realising his explanation was utterly ridiculous, Rahat released another video where he asked for forgiveness from everyone, including his fans, family, god, and females he had worked with, for any bad behaviour. He promised to never put himself in such compromising situations again. The apology was undone, however, with him admitting that more embarrassing videos from the past might turn up. Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency has also reportedly initiated a money-laundering and tax evasion inquiry against him.
What has been clear is that Rahat Fateh Ali Khan has balanced his talent, stardom, and opportunities with shameful behaviour on a regular basis. His illustrious uncle has never faced accusations of being in a drunken rage, assaulting staff members, performing intoxicated on stage, or undergoing investigation for serious tax evasion and money laundering.
However, a Google search reveals that Rahat has consistently been the target of such damaging allegations.
Those who believe there is no smoke without fire, will agree that he doesn’t deserve to wear the crown of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He has regularly shamed himself and his family that has proudly carried the torch of spiritual Sufi music across different generations.
Him promising to do better, won’t undo shameful behaviour that has lasted so many years.
Re: Social Evils
Gambia Moves Toward Overturning Landmark Ban on Female Genital Cutting
Lawmakers in the West African country voted to advance a bill repealing a 2015 ban. If it passes the final round of voting, Gambia will become the first nation to roll back protections against the practice.
Protesters outside the National Assembly in the capital of Gambia on Monday hold signs asking legislators not to repeal the law banning female genital cutting.Credit...Malick Njie/Reuters
Gambian lawmakers have voted to advance a measure revoking a ban on female genital cutting by removing legal protections for millions of girls, raising fears that other countries could follow suit.
Of the 47 members of the Gambia National Assembly present on Monday, 42 voted to send a bill to overturn the ban onward to a committee for consideration before a final vote. Human rights experts, lawyers and women’s and girls’ rights campaigners say that overturning the ban would undo decades of work to end female genital cutting, a centuries-old ritual tied up in ideas of sexual purity, obedience and control.
If the bill passes the final stages, the small West African nation of Gambia will become the first nation globally to roll back protections against cutting.
Government committees will be able to propose amendments before it comes back to Parliament for a final reading in about three months — but analysts say that it has now passed the key stage: Its proponents will gain momentum and it will probably become law.
Gambia banned cutting in 2015 but did not enforce the ban until last year, when three practitioners were given hefty fines. An influential imam in the Muslim-majority country took up the cause and has been leading calls to repeal the ban, claiming that cutting — which in Gambia usually involves removing the clitoris and labia minora of girls between the ages of 10 and 15 — is a religious obligation and important culturally.
Anti-cutting campaigners gathered outside Parliament in Banjul, Gambia’s capital, on Monday morning, but police set up barricades and prevented many from getting inside — while allowing in the religious leaders who advocate cutting and their supporters, according to Fatou Baldeh, one of Gambia’s leading opponents of genital cutting.
“It was very sad to witness the whole debate, and men trying to justify why this would continue,” Ms. Baldeh said after the vote. She said she feared that if the men leading the charge — whom she described as extremists — succeeded, they would next try to roll back other laws, like one banning child marriage.
Inside Parliament, lawmakers — all of them men — traded arguments.
“If people are being arrested for practicing F.G.M., then that means they are being deprived of their right to practice religion,” one member of parliament, Lamin Ceesay, said, according to Parliament Watch, a project that promotes parliamentary transparency and accountability.
“Let’s protect our women,” another, Gibbi Mballow, said. “I am a father, and I can’t support such a bill.” He added, “Religion says we should not harm women.”
Image
A big crowd of people at a demonstration, mostly men but some women, holding up their hands and fists.
Demonstrators who support repealing the ban on female genital cutting rallied in Banjul on Monday as parliament debated the issue. Credit...Malick Njie/Reuters
Cutting takes different forms and is most common in Africa, though it is also widespread in parts of Asia and the Middle East. Internationally recognized as a gross violation of human rights, it frequently leads to serious health issues, like infections, hemorrhages and severe pain, and it is a leading cause of death in the countries where it is practiced.
Worldwide, genital cutting is increasing despite campaigns to stop it — mainly because of population growth in the countries where it is common. More than 230 million women and girls have undergone it, according to UNICEF — an increase of 30 million people since the last time the agency made an estimate, in 2016.
Four lawmakers voted against advancing the bill and one abstained on Monday. Only five of Gambia’s 58 lawmakers are women, meaning men are spearheading a discussion on a practice that is forced on young girls.
“They have no say,” said Emmanuel Joof, head of Gambia’s National Human Rights Commission.
Repealing the ban will pose “serious, life-threatening consequences for the health and well-being of Gambia’s women and girls,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, the U.S. ambassador at large for global women’s issues.
From 1994 until 2016, Gambia was led by one of the region’s most notorious dictators, Yahya Jammeh, who, a truth commission found in 2021, had people tortured and killed by a hit squad, raped women and threw many people in jail for no reason. He called those fighting to end female genital mutilation, often known by its acronym, F.G.M., “enemies of Islam.”
Image
A Black man in white clothing and cap sits on a green couch with armed guards and others behind him.
As president, Yahya Jammeh, shown in 2016, banned female genital cutting after previously supporting it.Credit...Jerome Delay/Associated Press
So it came as a shock to many Gambian opponents of cutting when, in 2015, Mr. Jammeh banned the practice — something many observers attributed to the influence of his Moroccan wife.
The new law was hailed as a watershed moment in Gambia, where three-quarters of women and girls are cut. But the law was not enforced, and this emboldened pro-cutting imams who are “hellbent on having a theocratic state” to try to repeal it, according to Mr. Joof.
Clerics in the Muslim world disagree on whether cutting is Islamic, but it is not in the Quran. The most vocal of the Gambian imams, Abdoulie Fatty, has argued that “circumcision makes you cleaner” and has said the husbands of women who have not been cut suffer because they cannot meet their wives’ sexual appetites. Many Gambians accused Mr. Fatty of being a hypocrite, pointing out that when Mr. Jammeh banned cutting, Mr. Fatty was the presidential imam but apparently said nothing.
At the bill’s first reading two weeks ago, Mr. Fatty bused in a group of young women to chant pro-cutting slogans outside Parliament. Their faces veiled — which is unusual in Gambia — they sang and waved pink posters that read: “Female circumcision is our religious beliefs.”
Ms. Baldeh, the opponent of genital cutting, was 8 years old when she was pinned down and cut. But when she first heard the term “female genital mutilation,” when she was studying for a master’s degree in sexual and reproductive health, she didn’t recognize it as something she had been through, because she saw it as part of her culture, not something violent that harmed women. Her own grandmother, a traditional birth attendant, was involved in cutting.
After reading and speaking to other women, though, Ms. Baldeh realized what she had been subjected to and started speaking out against cutting — first by trying to change her own family members’ minds. She became one of the most prominent voices speaking out against cutting in Gambia.
Cutting could be ended within a generation, if there were the will to do it, Ms. Baldeh said.
“If you don’t cut a girl, she’s not going to cut her future daughters,” she said.
On March 4, Ms. Baldeh was at the White House with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jill Biden, the first lady, receiving an International Women of Courage award for her work against cutting. But that same day Gambian lawmakers were listening to the first reading of the bill to overturn the cutting ban — one that would unravel the legal gains Ms. Baldeh and other opponents of cutting had made.
Image
Fatou Baldeh, in a pale lavender dress with wide sleeves, holding an award, flanked by Jill Biden in a deep purple dress and Antony J. Blinken in a dark suit.
Fatou Baldeh, a leading opponent in Gambia of female genital cutting, being honored this month at the White House, flanked by Jill Biden and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.Credit...Nathan Howard/Getty Images
She and other observers said that most Gambian lawmakers did not necessarily believe in cutting but were in favor of the bill because they were afraid of losing their parliamentary seats.
“The saddest part is the silence from the government,” she said.
This silence extends even to the ministry charged with protecting women and children, which is headed by Fatou Kinteh, who previously was the United Nations Population Fund’s coordinator in Gambia for gender-based violence and female genital mutilation. Reached by phone on Saturday, Ms. Kinteh refused to comment on a possible overturn of the cutting ban, saying she would call back later. She never did.
Ms. Baldeh said the imams’ recent rhetoric in support of cutting had spread to many Gambian men, who have unleashed a torrent of online abuse on women who speak out against the practice, undermining what had been a flourishing movement to increase women’s and girls’ rights in Gambia. But she said the online abuse would not derail their efforts.
“If this law gets repealed, we know they’re coming for more,” Ms. Baldeh said. “So we will fight it to the end.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Lawmakers in the West African country voted to advance a bill repealing a 2015 ban. If it passes the final round of voting, Gambia will become the first nation to roll back protections against the practice.
Protesters outside the National Assembly in the capital of Gambia on Monday hold signs asking legislators not to repeal the law banning female genital cutting.Credit...Malick Njie/Reuters
Gambian lawmakers have voted to advance a measure revoking a ban on female genital cutting by removing legal protections for millions of girls, raising fears that other countries could follow suit.
Of the 47 members of the Gambia National Assembly present on Monday, 42 voted to send a bill to overturn the ban onward to a committee for consideration before a final vote. Human rights experts, lawyers and women’s and girls’ rights campaigners say that overturning the ban would undo decades of work to end female genital cutting, a centuries-old ritual tied up in ideas of sexual purity, obedience and control.
If the bill passes the final stages, the small West African nation of Gambia will become the first nation globally to roll back protections against cutting.
Government committees will be able to propose amendments before it comes back to Parliament for a final reading in about three months — but analysts say that it has now passed the key stage: Its proponents will gain momentum and it will probably become law.
Gambia banned cutting in 2015 but did not enforce the ban until last year, when three practitioners were given hefty fines. An influential imam in the Muslim-majority country took up the cause and has been leading calls to repeal the ban, claiming that cutting — which in Gambia usually involves removing the clitoris and labia minora of girls between the ages of 10 and 15 — is a religious obligation and important culturally.
Anti-cutting campaigners gathered outside Parliament in Banjul, Gambia’s capital, on Monday morning, but police set up barricades and prevented many from getting inside — while allowing in the religious leaders who advocate cutting and their supporters, according to Fatou Baldeh, one of Gambia’s leading opponents of genital cutting.
“It was very sad to witness the whole debate, and men trying to justify why this would continue,” Ms. Baldeh said after the vote. She said she feared that if the men leading the charge — whom she described as extremists — succeeded, they would next try to roll back other laws, like one banning child marriage.
Inside Parliament, lawmakers — all of them men — traded arguments.
“If people are being arrested for practicing F.G.M., then that means they are being deprived of their right to practice religion,” one member of parliament, Lamin Ceesay, said, according to Parliament Watch, a project that promotes parliamentary transparency and accountability.
“Let’s protect our women,” another, Gibbi Mballow, said. “I am a father, and I can’t support such a bill.” He added, “Religion says we should not harm women.”
Image
A big crowd of people at a demonstration, mostly men but some women, holding up their hands and fists.
Demonstrators who support repealing the ban on female genital cutting rallied in Banjul on Monday as parliament debated the issue. Credit...Malick Njie/Reuters
Cutting takes different forms and is most common in Africa, though it is also widespread in parts of Asia and the Middle East. Internationally recognized as a gross violation of human rights, it frequently leads to serious health issues, like infections, hemorrhages and severe pain, and it is a leading cause of death in the countries where it is practiced.
Worldwide, genital cutting is increasing despite campaigns to stop it — mainly because of population growth in the countries where it is common. More than 230 million women and girls have undergone it, according to UNICEF — an increase of 30 million people since the last time the agency made an estimate, in 2016.
Four lawmakers voted against advancing the bill and one abstained on Monday. Only five of Gambia’s 58 lawmakers are women, meaning men are spearheading a discussion on a practice that is forced on young girls.
“They have no say,” said Emmanuel Joof, head of Gambia’s National Human Rights Commission.
Repealing the ban will pose “serious, life-threatening consequences for the health and well-being of Gambia’s women and girls,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, the U.S. ambassador at large for global women’s issues.
From 1994 until 2016, Gambia was led by one of the region’s most notorious dictators, Yahya Jammeh, who, a truth commission found in 2021, had people tortured and killed by a hit squad, raped women and threw many people in jail for no reason. He called those fighting to end female genital mutilation, often known by its acronym, F.G.M., “enemies of Islam.”
Image
A Black man in white clothing and cap sits on a green couch with armed guards and others behind him.
As president, Yahya Jammeh, shown in 2016, banned female genital cutting after previously supporting it.Credit...Jerome Delay/Associated Press
So it came as a shock to many Gambian opponents of cutting when, in 2015, Mr. Jammeh banned the practice — something many observers attributed to the influence of his Moroccan wife.
The new law was hailed as a watershed moment in Gambia, where three-quarters of women and girls are cut. But the law was not enforced, and this emboldened pro-cutting imams who are “hellbent on having a theocratic state” to try to repeal it, according to Mr. Joof.
Clerics in the Muslim world disagree on whether cutting is Islamic, but it is not in the Quran. The most vocal of the Gambian imams, Abdoulie Fatty, has argued that “circumcision makes you cleaner” and has said the husbands of women who have not been cut suffer because they cannot meet their wives’ sexual appetites. Many Gambians accused Mr. Fatty of being a hypocrite, pointing out that when Mr. Jammeh banned cutting, Mr. Fatty was the presidential imam but apparently said nothing.
At the bill’s first reading two weeks ago, Mr. Fatty bused in a group of young women to chant pro-cutting slogans outside Parliament. Their faces veiled — which is unusual in Gambia — they sang and waved pink posters that read: “Female circumcision is our religious beliefs.”
Ms. Baldeh, the opponent of genital cutting, was 8 years old when she was pinned down and cut. But when she first heard the term “female genital mutilation,” when she was studying for a master’s degree in sexual and reproductive health, she didn’t recognize it as something she had been through, because she saw it as part of her culture, not something violent that harmed women. Her own grandmother, a traditional birth attendant, was involved in cutting.
After reading and speaking to other women, though, Ms. Baldeh realized what she had been subjected to and started speaking out against cutting — first by trying to change her own family members’ minds. She became one of the most prominent voices speaking out against cutting in Gambia.
Cutting could be ended within a generation, if there were the will to do it, Ms. Baldeh said.
“If you don’t cut a girl, she’s not going to cut her future daughters,” she said.
On March 4, Ms. Baldeh was at the White House with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jill Biden, the first lady, receiving an International Women of Courage award for her work against cutting. But that same day Gambian lawmakers were listening to the first reading of the bill to overturn the cutting ban — one that would unravel the legal gains Ms. Baldeh and other opponents of cutting had made.
Image
Fatou Baldeh, in a pale lavender dress with wide sleeves, holding an award, flanked by Jill Biden in a deep purple dress and Antony J. Blinken in a dark suit.
Fatou Baldeh, a leading opponent in Gambia of female genital cutting, being honored this month at the White House, flanked by Jill Biden and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.Credit...Nathan Howard/Getty Images
She and other observers said that most Gambian lawmakers did not necessarily believe in cutting but were in favor of the bill because they were afraid of losing their parliamentary seats.
“The saddest part is the silence from the government,” she said.
This silence extends even to the ministry charged with protecting women and children, which is headed by Fatou Kinteh, who previously was the United Nations Population Fund’s coordinator in Gambia for gender-based violence and female genital mutilation. Reached by phone on Saturday, Ms. Kinteh refused to comment on a possible overturn of the cutting ban, saying she would call back later. She never did.
Ms. Baldeh said the imams’ recent rhetoric in support of cutting had spread to many Gambian men, who have unleashed a torrent of online abuse on women who speak out against the practice, undermining what had been a flourishing movement to increase women’s and girls’ rights in Gambia. But she said the online abuse would not derail their efforts.
“If this law gets repealed, we know they’re coming for more,” Ms. Baldeh said. “So we will fight it to the end.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Re: Social Evils
No country for children: The not-so-hidden horrors of child sexual abuse in Pakistan
Are religious institutions shielding predators? Delve into the harrowing truth of systemic child abuse in Pakistan, where clerical influence and misguided donor efforts perpetuate a cycle of silence and impunity.
Afiya S. Zia Published April 24, 2024
Recent reports of sexual molestation of children by clerics and incriminating videos of corporal punishment of madrassa students are neither new discoveries, nor particular to Pakistan.
Globally, totalitarian institutions — seminaries, the Vatican, and even lay establishments like boarding schools, military barracks, orphanages, and shelters — have long records of systemic abuse. However, the power of clerical lobbies in Pakistan often secures impunity for religious institutions and only the high risks taken by whistleblowers, fearless activists, and survivors result in any kind of justice.
Unfortunately, over the past 20 years, the more temporal approaches to social development in Pakistan have been displaced by a generation convinced that sacralising development is appropriate for Muslim sensibilities. This has complicated pre-existing challenges in Pakistan’s colonial and Islamic hybrid legal regime, deepened the shame and stigma associated with concepts of gender and sex, and privileged clerical authority over human rights advocacy.
Vocational sex abuse
According to data gathered by Sahil, an NGO working on cases of child sexual abuse, the overwhelming majority of abusers are acquaintances or neighbours in communities or family members. At the same time, the data also shows that institutionally, the highest number of complaints emerge against religious teachers or clerics — more so than police, school-teachers, or nuclear family members.
In 2020, the Associated Press documented several cases of sexual abuse in madrassas, including the case of 8-year-old Yaous in Mansehra, where despite the arrest of the offender, Qari Shamsuddin, fellow clerics and worshippers at the mosque disputed the charges, terming him innocent and a ‘victim of anti-Islamic elements in the country’. The cleric was later sentenced to 16.5 years imprisonment.
Primary data remains limited and organisations rely on media reports and police complaints but the trend over the past 20 years shows the gender divide of abused girls in madrassas is slightly higher than that of boys (‘Cruel Numbers’). The recent case of Qari Abubakar Muaviyah’s alleged rape of a 12-year-old boy in Shahdara initially looked like a lost cause due to the usual clerical pressure for the survivor to resile.
Under the amended anti-rape law, the police and prosecutors are duty bound to continue investigation and judicial hearing, even if the survivor resiles, yet they prefer compromises. The difficulty of obtaining DNA forensics is another escape route in many cases. In the end, it was only social media pressure over the Muaviyah case that resulted in a political and legal response against powerful religious lobbies.
Over the years, there have also been several reports of gang rapes in such seminaries. In very rare cases do children fight their rapists off and where parents are resilient in their pursuit for justice.
The madrassa reform debacle
Historically, Pakistani madrassas have been subject to cycles of reorganisation and reform but only over curricula or funding and not institutional accountability.
In 2003, at the peak of the ‘war on terror’, a new form of war anthropology and research methods emerged, relying on fixers, handlers, translators, NGO research and No Objection Certificates awarded by the military authorities at their discretion. This new paradigm produced a body of newly minted ‘experts’ on Islam, terrorism, jihad, security and conflict studies and now, Islam and development, as funded by British and American governments under the pretext of Muslim exceptionalism (especially, Muslim women and the poor).
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) implemented a five-year, $100 million bilateral agreement in 2002. Another multi-million pound religions and research project was spearheaded by DFID in 2008, paving the way for faith-based approaches to social change in Pakistan. With the help of overseas Pakistani consultants, they found that religion can be valuable in terms of providing organisational resources for social movements, with religious leaders and Muslim NGOs as ‘partners’.
Policy briefs from such projects stressed on the need to review and include religion into the mainstream of development research and policy itself, including support to madrassas and to encourage women’s religious leadership as alternatives to Western feminism.
At the time, Gen Musharraf’s US-compliant government was facing domestic resistance for registering madrassas as suspected support bases and havens for terrorists. The top-down consultant policy briefs insisted on the kind of reform that was acceptable to the undefined “Ulema” and ignored the experiences of civil society on the subject by dismissing any critique of faith-based development by feminists as ‘western and liberal-secular orientalism’.
The experts producing such research rode the crest of Gen Musharaff’s duplicitous project of enlightened moderation and recommended the inclusion of madrassas and clerical leaders into the social development sector. Even those claiming radical credentials, and who were critical of the binaries of western secular departure from religious-based education, invested hope in the role of madrassas as some decolonising, non-Western social safety nets for children from impoverished backgrounds and in women’s empowerment through mosque and madrassa piety.
These researchers and studies completely ignored — as some orientalist presumption — the history of corporal punishment and child sexual abuse at mosques and madrassas that human rights activists had been documenting for at least a decade. This was a revealing and damaging missed opportunity.
This ‘partnership’ between donors and clerics has empowered the latter as community gate-keepers (especially, in projects related to education, vaccination, child protection committees and labour). Recent cases have shown, however, that some of these clerics, who are now power brokers, may pressurise victims to resile charges of sex abuse in communities and madrassas, and who facilitate compromise and settling cases outside of courts, especially when it involves fellow clerics.
Law as protection, not a right
Research studies, academic theses and donor reports continue to recommend that Pakistan’s government should make genuine efforts to understand how the madrassa leadership perceives reform and modernisation, and for involvement in social development projects without any caution for regulation of widespread allegations of physical or sexual abuses.
Every other sector of reform is subjected to correction as a constitutional and moral imperative (especially, the ‘corrupt’ bureaucracy and judiciary) but the one sector where appeasement by government and donors remains consistent is religion and its institutional influence. This extends and sustains moral and legal impunity to the priestly classes and prevents rights-based progress.
In the first instance, legal reform has managed to chip at some religious exemption by way of releasing rape and honour crimes from the Qisas and Diyat loophole. It took 30 years of consistent advocacy from women’s rights activists and not the route of some decolonial thesis, nor due to reinterpretive exegesis. The amendments to many discriminatory laws have been rationalised by liberal appeal and universalising influences within the Constitution and while some opportunist clerics and politicians have been ‘encouraged’ to curb their opposition, this does not count as ‘success’ of ecclesiastical partnerships.
Secondly, many gender and religious biases are underwritten in family laws which prevent consensus or consistency on matters of sexual maturity and underage marriage. Over 18 per cent of girls and 4 pc of boys in Pakistan are married before the age of 18 and prevention is complicated by our dual legal regime and by societal trends of forced conversions of girls from religious minorities. If marriage remains an unequal legal arrangement for all women, and an economic safety net for the poor and a social status for the rich, girls will remain devalued for just their labour and reproductive worth and their virginities and sexual purity will serve as premiums.
Third, overwhelmingly, cases of any but especially child sexual abuse continue to be subject to attrition where survivors or victims’ families resile under counsel and social pressure from community, police or clerical leaders. As human rights lawyers point out, as long as the judicial process privileges ocular evidence over corroborative forms and courts are unwilling to try cases despite resiling, sex crimes will not be subject to justice.
Beyond legal recourse, social protection for Pakistani children remains precarious due to misguided beliefs and flawed remedies.
The first myth that family, marriage, and community are safe havens encourage private settlements in sex abuse cases and perpetuate lifelong generational trauma. The second damaging myth is that biology is the driver of sexual violence instead of unequal power relations, especially between genders.
Feminists have countered both these fallacies. They refute the notion that sex abuse is a private matter by insisting that the personal is political and risk their lives to speak out on the commonality of violence in families and marriages. The Aurat March movement has expanded this cause with many members narrating their own experiences of sexual offences and providing ventilation for other survivors. Stigmatising sex education, or underplaying abuse on the pretext of immorality or false respectability, disarms the potential victim from self-defence — silence and shame is the paedophile’s best alibi.
Glorifying the virtues of domesticated pious women and obedient children justifies discipline and decision-making as the male guardian’s natural right. Feminists contend that it is not biology but elite capture of social, economic, political resources that buys impunity for powerful abusive men. They also point out that while there is significant challenge in addressing attitudes within clerical, judicial, and political circles where some may justify male privilege, dismiss allegations of sex crimes, or blame victims, such figures often remain in positions of leadership and trust.
Despite these conceits of legal, social and sexual inequalities, the self-defeating solutions continue to fixate on laws, liberation theology, and male allies — but each needs reconsideration.
Pakistan has no standard legal definition of a child — ages for voting, marriage, sex crime, factory work, succession age, or as a juvenile liable to criminal proceedings — vary considerably across the country and provinces. Addressing sex crimes either involves deferring responsibility to communities and families, which may perpetuate abuse, or relying on technological solutions as a last resort.
There are at least 17 officially listed helplines for children-related complaints, yet members of Sahil say that hardly any child uses the helplines to complain (it is mostly parents or other adults who use the referral system). The high profile and politicised Zainab Alert App for missing children offers lopsided results nationwide and reports more abduction of boys than girls in every province, offering no analysis.
Most laws and policies on women’s and children’s rights are missing data or evaluation, yet random remedies continue to sink the country’s global ranking. The girl-child has been the poster figure for the UN and donor organisations that have sponsored efforts to change the fate of generations of stunted, anaemic, illiterate Pakistani girls from growing into disenfranchised, disinherited, dependent and vulnerable adult women.
But the hubris that has insisted on religious inclusivity in donor programming over the past 20 years, has escalated faith-based approaches to girls’ and women’s development and which essentially bribe male religious leaders to approve projects that deliver basic rights. This approach has reinforced the role of clerics as gatekeepers in community programmes —officials note a variety of specialised roles among clerics, including those focusing on polio, family planning, and gender issues.
Those who defended piety politics and appealed for faith appropriate alternatives to ‘Western’ rights have subdued radical resistance into reformative donor projects and culture festivals. This has also trapped the Aurat March movement, since pietist women oppose the demands for sexual equality in a not-so-docile manner.
Improving conviction rates for sex offences is important but castration or cajoling male allies to detox their masculinities is not going to end sex abuse. The only proven difference is when women and children refuse to remain silent; instead, they subvert and challenge all disparities, insist on equal educational, inheritance, marital, and professional rights, rather than constantly bargain with patriarchy or plead with its institutional representatives.
Rather than pouring resources into Sisyphean programmes for community behavioural change, perhaps, it is time to empower the child directly. This could involve implementing rights-based approaches and providing information and leadership to diminish the influence of community leaders, guardians, and traditional intermediaries. Such measures would help restore a sense of balance while ensuring the safety and self-reliance of children.
As long as academics sanitise religious institutions and activists promote faith-based laws and rights as decolonial tools; as long as newspapers refuse to carry ‘sensitive’ discussions on religion or sex, and feminists wait politely on the good will of male allies to introspect and lose their privileges; as long as governments continue to appease the political clerical classes while donors continue their paradoxical faith based social development, the country will fail to secure the godliness that is, a safe childhood.
Dr Afiya Shehrbano Zia is a feminist scholar, activist and author of Faith and Feminism in Pakistan: Religious Agency or Secular Autonomy? (2018)
https://www.dawn.com/news/1828006/no-co ... n-pakistan
Are religious institutions shielding predators? Delve into the harrowing truth of systemic child abuse in Pakistan, where clerical influence and misguided donor efforts perpetuate a cycle of silence and impunity.
Afiya S. Zia Published April 24, 2024
Recent reports of sexual molestation of children by clerics and incriminating videos of corporal punishment of madrassa students are neither new discoveries, nor particular to Pakistan.
Globally, totalitarian institutions — seminaries, the Vatican, and even lay establishments like boarding schools, military barracks, orphanages, and shelters — have long records of systemic abuse. However, the power of clerical lobbies in Pakistan often secures impunity for religious institutions and only the high risks taken by whistleblowers, fearless activists, and survivors result in any kind of justice.
Unfortunately, over the past 20 years, the more temporal approaches to social development in Pakistan have been displaced by a generation convinced that sacralising development is appropriate for Muslim sensibilities. This has complicated pre-existing challenges in Pakistan’s colonial and Islamic hybrid legal regime, deepened the shame and stigma associated with concepts of gender and sex, and privileged clerical authority over human rights advocacy.
Vocational sex abuse
According to data gathered by Sahil, an NGO working on cases of child sexual abuse, the overwhelming majority of abusers are acquaintances or neighbours in communities or family members. At the same time, the data also shows that institutionally, the highest number of complaints emerge against religious teachers or clerics — more so than police, school-teachers, or nuclear family members.
In 2020, the Associated Press documented several cases of sexual abuse in madrassas, including the case of 8-year-old Yaous in Mansehra, where despite the arrest of the offender, Qari Shamsuddin, fellow clerics and worshippers at the mosque disputed the charges, terming him innocent and a ‘victim of anti-Islamic elements in the country’. The cleric was later sentenced to 16.5 years imprisonment.
Primary data remains limited and organisations rely on media reports and police complaints but the trend over the past 20 years shows the gender divide of abused girls in madrassas is slightly higher than that of boys (‘Cruel Numbers’). The recent case of Qari Abubakar Muaviyah’s alleged rape of a 12-year-old boy in Shahdara initially looked like a lost cause due to the usual clerical pressure for the survivor to resile.
Under the amended anti-rape law, the police and prosecutors are duty bound to continue investigation and judicial hearing, even if the survivor resiles, yet they prefer compromises. The difficulty of obtaining DNA forensics is another escape route in many cases. In the end, it was only social media pressure over the Muaviyah case that resulted in a political and legal response against powerful religious lobbies.
Over the years, there have also been several reports of gang rapes in such seminaries. In very rare cases do children fight their rapists off and where parents are resilient in their pursuit for justice.
The madrassa reform debacle
Historically, Pakistani madrassas have been subject to cycles of reorganisation and reform but only over curricula or funding and not institutional accountability.
In 2003, at the peak of the ‘war on terror’, a new form of war anthropology and research methods emerged, relying on fixers, handlers, translators, NGO research and No Objection Certificates awarded by the military authorities at their discretion. This new paradigm produced a body of newly minted ‘experts’ on Islam, terrorism, jihad, security and conflict studies and now, Islam and development, as funded by British and American governments under the pretext of Muslim exceptionalism (especially, Muslim women and the poor).
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) implemented a five-year, $100 million bilateral agreement in 2002. Another multi-million pound religions and research project was spearheaded by DFID in 2008, paving the way for faith-based approaches to social change in Pakistan. With the help of overseas Pakistani consultants, they found that religion can be valuable in terms of providing organisational resources for social movements, with religious leaders and Muslim NGOs as ‘partners’.
Policy briefs from such projects stressed on the need to review and include religion into the mainstream of development research and policy itself, including support to madrassas and to encourage women’s religious leadership as alternatives to Western feminism.
At the time, Gen Musharraf’s US-compliant government was facing domestic resistance for registering madrassas as suspected support bases and havens for terrorists. The top-down consultant policy briefs insisted on the kind of reform that was acceptable to the undefined “Ulema” and ignored the experiences of civil society on the subject by dismissing any critique of faith-based development by feminists as ‘western and liberal-secular orientalism’.
The experts producing such research rode the crest of Gen Musharaff’s duplicitous project of enlightened moderation and recommended the inclusion of madrassas and clerical leaders into the social development sector. Even those claiming radical credentials, and who were critical of the binaries of western secular departure from religious-based education, invested hope in the role of madrassas as some decolonising, non-Western social safety nets for children from impoverished backgrounds and in women’s empowerment through mosque and madrassa piety.
These researchers and studies completely ignored — as some orientalist presumption — the history of corporal punishment and child sexual abuse at mosques and madrassas that human rights activists had been documenting for at least a decade. This was a revealing and damaging missed opportunity.
This ‘partnership’ between donors and clerics has empowered the latter as community gate-keepers (especially, in projects related to education, vaccination, child protection committees and labour). Recent cases have shown, however, that some of these clerics, who are now power brokers, may pressurise victims to resile charges of sex abuse in communities and madrassas, and who facilitate compromise and settling cases outside of courts, especially when it involves fellow clerics.
Law as protection, not a right
Research studies, academic theses and donor reports continue to recommend that Pakistan’s government should make genuine efforts to understand how the madrassa leadership perceives reform and modernisation, and for involvement in social development projects without any caution for regulation of widespread allegations of physical or sexual abuses.
Every other sector of reform is subjected to correction as a constitutional and moral imperative (especially, the ‘corrupt’ bureaucracy and judiciary) but the one sector where appeasement by government and donors remains consistent is religion and its institutional influence. This extends and sustains moral and legal impunity to the priestly classes and prevents rights-based progress.
In the first instance, legal reform has managed to chip at some religious exemption by way of releasing rape and honour crimes from the Qisas and Diyat loophole. It took 30 years of consistent advocacy from women’s rights activists and not the route of some decolonial thesis, nor due to reinterpretive exegesis. The amendments to many discriminatory laws have been rationalised by liberal appeal and universalising influences within the Constitution and while some opportunist clerics and politicians have been ‘encouraged’ to curb their opposition, this does not count as ‘success’ of ecclesiastical partnerships.
Secondly, many gender and religious biases are underwritten in family laws which prevent consensus or consistency on matters of sexual maturity and underage marriage. Over 18 per cent of girls and 4 pc of boys in Pakistan are married before the age of 18 and prevention is complicated by our dual legal regime and by societal trends of forced conversions of girls from religious minorities. If marriage remains an unequal legal arrangement for all women, and an economic safety net for the poor and a social status for the rich, girls will remain devalued for just their labour and reproductive worth and their virginities and sexual purity will serve as premiums.
Third, overwhelmingly, cases of any but especially child sexual abuse continue to be subject to attrition where survivors or victims’ families resile under counsel and social pressure from community, police or clerical leaders. As human rights lawyers point out, as long as the judicial process privileges ocular evidence over corroborative forms and courts are unwilling to try cases despite resiling, sex crimes will not be subject to justice.
Beyond legal recourse, social protection for Pakistani children remains precarious due to misguided beliefs and flawed remedies.
The first myth that family, marriage, and community are safe havens encourage private settlements in sex abuse cases and perpetuate lifelong generational trauma. The second damaging myth is that biology is the driver of sexual violence instead of unequal power relations, especially between genders.
Feminists have countered both these fallacies. They refute the notion that sex abuse is a private matter by insisting that the personal is political and risk their lives to speak out on the commonality of violence in families and marriages. The Aurat March movement has expanded this cause with many members narrating their own experiences of sexual offences and providing ventilation for other survivors. Stigmatising sex education, or underplaying abuse on the pretext of immorality or false respectability, disarms the potential victim from self-defence — silence and shame is the paedophile’s best alibi.
Glorifying the virtues of domesticated pious women and obedient children justifies discipline and decision-making as the male guardian’s natural right. Feminists contend that it is not biology but elite capture of social, economic, political resources that buys impunity for powerful abusive men. They also point out that while there is significant challenge in addressing attitudes within clerical, judicial, and political circles where some may justify male privilege, dismiss allegations of sex crimes, or blame victims, such figures often remain in positions of leadership and trust.
Despite these conceits of legal, social and sexual inequalities, the self-defeating solutions continue to fixate on laws, liberation theology, and male allies — but each needs reconsideration.
Pakistan has no standard legal definition of a child — ages for voting, marriage, sex crime, factory work, succession age, or as a juvenile liable to criminal proceedings — vary considerably across the country and provinces. Addressing sex crimes either involves deferring responsibility to communities and families, which may perpetuate abuse, or relying on technological solutions as a last resort.
There are at least 17 officially listed helplines for children-related complaints, yet members of Sahil say that hardly any child uses the helplines to complain (it is mostly parents or other adults who use the referral system). The high profile and politicised Zainab Alert App for missing children offers lopsided results nationwide and reports more abduction of boys than girls in every province, offering no analysis.
Most laws and policies on women’s and children’s rights are missing data or evaluation, yet random remedies continue to sink the country’s global ranking. The girl-child has been the poster figure for the UN and donor organisations that have sponsored efforts to change the fate of generations of stunted, anaemic, illiterate Pakistani girls from growing into disenfranchised, disinherited, dependent and vulnerable adult women.
But the hubris that has insisted on religious inclusivity in donor programming over the past 20 years, has escalated faith-based approaches to girls’ and women’s development and which essentially bribe male religious leaders to approve projects that deliver basic rights. This approach has reinforced the role of clerics as gatekeepers in community programmes —officials note a variety of specialised roles among clerics, including those focusing on polio, family planning, and gender issues.
Those who defended piety politics and appealed for faith appropriate alternatives to ‘Western’ rights have subdued radical resistance into reformative donor projects and culture festivals. This has also trapped the Aurat March movement, since pietist women oppose the demands for sexual equality in a not-so-docile manner.
Improving conviction rates for sex offences is important but castration or cajoling male allies to detox their masculinities is not going to end sex abuse. The only proven difference is when women and children refuse to remain silent; instead, they subvert and challenge all disparities, insist on equal educational, inheritance, marital, and professional rights, rather than constantly bargain with patriarchy or plead with its institutional representatives.
Rather than pouring resources into Sisyphean programmes for community behavioural change, perhaps, it is time to empower the child directly. This could involve implementing rights-based approaches and providing information and leadership to diminish the influence of community leaders, guardians, and traditional intermediaries. Such measures would help restore a sense of balance while ensuring the safety and self-reliance of children.
As long as academics sanitise religious institutions and activists promote faith-based laws and rights as decolonial tools; as long as newspapers refuse to carry ‘sensitive’ discussions on religion or sex, and feminists wait politely on the good will of male allies to introspect and lose their privileges; as long as governments continue to appease the political clerical classes while donors continue their paradoxical faith based social development, the country will fail to secure the godliness that is, a safe childhood.
Dr Afiya Shehrbano Zia is a feminist scholar, activist and author of Faith and Feminism in Pakistan: Religious Agency or Secular Autonomy? (2018)
https://www.dawn.com/news/1828006/no-co ... n-pakistan
Re: Social Evils
Iran arrests over 250 in raid on ‘satanist network’
AFP Published May 17, 2024 Updated about 13 hours ago
Iranian police announced on Friday they arrested more than 250 people, including three foreigners, over promoting “satanism” west of the capital Tehran, state media reported.
“The Police Information Centre announced the identification, dismantling, and widespread arrest of members of the satanist network,” the IRNA state news agency reported, citing a police statement.
Police arrested “146 men and 115 women who were in an undesirable and obscene condition with emblems, signs, and symbols of satanism on their clothes, head, face, and hair”, the statement said.
“Three European citizens” were also arrested during the police operation in Shahryar City, west of Tehran, on Thursday night.
“Symbols of satanism, alcoholic beverages and psychoactive substances along with 73 vehicles were seized” during the raid, police added in the statement.
Raids on so-called “satanist” gatherings are not uncommon in the deeply conservative country, often targeting parties or concerts with alcohol consumption, which is largely banned in Iran.
In July 2009, police arrested three people in the northwestern province of Ardebil over “satan worship”.
In May of the same year, Iranian media said 104 “Satan-worshippers” were arrested in a raid on a concert in the southern city of Shiraz where people were purportedly drinking alcohol and “sucking blood”.
In 2007, police arrested 230 people in a raid on an illegal rock concert in a garden near Tehran. Authorities have in the past branded rock and heavy metal music concerts as satanist gatherings.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1834082/iran- ... st-network
AFP Published May 17, 2024 Updated about 13 hours ago
Iranian police announced on Friday they arrested more than 250 people, including three foreigners, over promoting “satanism” west of the capital Tehran, state media reported.
“The Police Information Centre announced the identification, dismantling, and widespread arrest of members of the satanist network,” the IRNA state news agency reported, citing a police statement.
Police arrested “146 men and 115 women who were in an undesirable and obscene condition with emblems, signs, and symbols of satanism on their clothes, head, face, and hair”, the statement said.
“Three European citizens” were also arrested during the police operation in Shahryar City, west of Tehran, on Thursday night.
“Symbols of satanism, alcoholic beverages and psychoactive substances along with 73 vehicles were seized” during the raid, police added in the statement.
Raids on so-called “satanist” gatherings are not uncommon in the deeply conservative country, often targeting parties or concerts with alcohol consumption, which is largely banned in Iran.
In July 2009, police arrested three people in the northwestern province of Ardebil over “satan worship”.
In May of the same year, Iranian media said 104 “Satan-worshippers” were arrested in a raid on a concert in the southern city of Shiraz where people were purportedly drinking alcohol and “sucking blood”.
In 2007, police arrested 230 people in a raid on an illegal rock concert in a garden near Tehran. Authorities have in the past branded rock and heavy metal music concerts as satanist gatherings.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1834082/iran- ... st-network
Re: Social Evils
How to Stop Child Marriage? Punish Husbands, Parents and Wedding Guests.
A new law in the West African country of Sierra Leone allows child brides to annul their marriages and be financially compensated.
Mariama, a pregnant child bride, in Koidu, Sierra Leone, in 2020. She had married a 28-year-old man that year. Credit...Leo Correa/Associated Press
The president of the small West African country of Sierra Leone signed a law on Tuesday that banned marriage for children age 18 and younger and would impose steep fines on adult spouses. The move was a victory for activists who had long fought to eradicate the widespread practice.
The new legislation goes further than many other similar laws in Africa, experts said, by penalizing people who enable the marriage — like the parents, the officiant and even the wedding guests — in addition to the husband.
There were about 800,000 girls under the age of 18 who were married in Sierra Leone, UNICEF reported in 2020, which is about a third of the girls in the country. Half had been married by the time they turned 15. About 4 percent of boys are wedded by 18, according to Human Rights Watch.
Under the new law, those married as children can seek financial compensation. They also have a path out of their marriages: petitioning for an annulment.
Betty Kabari, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who focuses on women’s rights and sexual health in Africa, praised the approach of penalizing those who abet the marriage, saying, “The strongest aspect, to me, is noting that a child does not get married in isolation.”
How widespread is child marriage?
Every year, at least 12 million girls under the age of 18 marry, according to the United Nations. More than 650 million girls and women were married as children.
South Asia has the largest number of child brides, about 290 million people, or 45 percent of the global total. Sub-Saharan Africa follows with about 127 million people, 20 percent.
Image
Two women and a man walk in the street, past a sign that reads “Save the Children.” One of the women is carrying a child.
A billboard warning against child marriage in Rajbiraj, Nepal, in 2019.Credit...Lauren DeCicca for The New York Times
According to a map of child marriages maintained by Girls Not Brides, a global organization that works to end the practice, 16 of the 20 countries with the highest rates are in Africa.
A report published this year by Equality Now looking at 20 countries in Africa found that only a few countries had full bans — and that many did not adequately enforce them.
What problems can come from marrying so young?
Child marriage often leads to girls leaving school. Pregnancies at a young age can cause long-term injuries and trauma.
Sierra Leone is one of the deadliest places to give birth, which is even more dangerous for teenagers.
“They are forced to be adults before they are adults,” said Kadijatu Barrie, 26, a student and a program coordinator with Strong Girls Evolution, a networking organization for Sierra Leonean women, among other groups.
Ms. Barrie said that her family had begun pressuring her to marry when she was 10, and that she was disowned by her father when she was 15 for refusing. She said that she had worried that she would have to drop out of school.
“We have less educated women because of all of this,” she said.
Many face additional complications from another widespread cultural practice in the country: female genital cutting, which is considered a human rights violation by the World Health Organization. About 61 percent of girls in Sierra Leone aged 15 to 19 have undergone female genital cutting, which can cause serious difficulties in childbirth.
How does the ban in Sierra Leone’s work?
Under the new legislation, which went into effect on Tuesday, people who marry children can be imprisoned for 15 years or over $5,000. That is a stiff penalty in a country where the gross domestic product per capita is about $433 in 2023, according to World Bank data.
The law does not just apply to marriage. It also prohibits cohabitation in which adults live with and have a sexual relationship with children.
Parents are also not allowed to consent to a child’s marriage. Officiants cannot preside over one. Guests cannot attend a ceremony. In fact, anyone who “aids or abets” the marriage can face a 10-year sentence or a fine of about $2,500, or both.
The ban aligns with a broad initiative in Sierra Leone to promote the rights of girls by keeping them in school and protecting them from genital cutting.
Image
A man in glasses and a dark suit at a marble lectern. A guard in a mask stands behind him.
President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone at the United Nations General Assembly in 2022.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
President Julius Maada Bio put 22 percent of the national budget into education and brought more women into government. He and his wife, Fatima Bio, pushed for the child marriage ban.
“I have always believed that the future of Sierra Leone is female,” Mr. Bio posted on social media after signing the law with his young daughter at his side.
Nerida Nthamburi, the head of Africa engagement for Girls Not Brides, said, “We want to look at Sierra Leone as being a leader on the continent that can influence other countries.”
What are the obstacles to the ban?
In other countries, criminalizing child marriage has driven the practice underground, Ms. Nthamburi said, leading communities to close ranks and girls to have even fewer protections against the practice.
For the law to have any real impact, researchers and experts said, Sierra Leone’s officials will have to build sustained relationships with communities — especially in the rural areas, where child marriage is more common.
That would mean addressing poverty, which can lead families to marry their daughters off as children. It also means expanding efforts to educate communities about sexual and reproductive health.
Many women and girls would still have to go against their neighbors, their husbands and their families to refuse a marriage, petition to end one or seek compensation.
Ms. Barrie was ostracized for refusing pressure from her family. “All of them came together and went against me,” she said. “I became the worst person to them.”
She said that she had tried to stop her younger sister from marrying at age 14. But she had heard the way that Ms. Barrie was vilified in the community. Her sister, talented at drawing, had wanted to be a fashion designer.
“I couldn’t save her,” Ms. Barrie said. “It’s still something I cry about.”
Image
Three pink schoolgirl uniforms hang on a laundry line.
School uniforms drying in a slum of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/worl ... 778d3e6de3
A new law in the West African country of Sierra Leone allows child brides to annul their marriages and be financially compensated.
Mariama, a pregnant child bride, in Koidu, Sierra Leone, in 2020. She had married a 28-year-old man that year. Credit...Leo Correa/Associated Press
The president of the small West African country of Sierra Leone signed a law on Tuesday that banned marriage for children age 18 and younger and would impose steep fines on adult spouses. The move was a victory for activists who had long fought to eradicate the widespread practice.
The new legislation goes further than many other similar laws in Africa, experts said, by penalizing people who enable the marriage — like the parents, the officiant and even the wedding guests — in addition to the husband.
There were about 800,000 girls under the age of 18 who were married in Sierra Leone, UNICEF reported in 2020, which is about a third of the girls in the country. Half had been married by the time they turned 15. About 4 percent of boys are wedded by 18, according to Human Rights Watch.
Under the new law, those married as children can seek financial compensation. They also have a path out of their marriages: petitioning for an annulment.
Betty Kabari, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who focuses on women’s rights and sexual health in Africa, praised the approach of penalizing those who abet the marriage, saying, “The strongest aspect, to me, is noting that a child does not get married in isolation.”
How widespread is child marriage?
Every year, at least 12 million girls under the age of 18 marry, according to the United Nations. More than 650 million girls and women were married as children.
South Asia has the largest number of child brides, about 290 million people, or 45 percent of the global total. Sub-Saharan Africa follows with about 127 million people, 20 percent.
Image
Two women and a man walk in the street, past a sign that reads “Save the Children.” One of the women is carrying a child.
A billboard warning against child marriage in Rajbiraj, Nepal, in 2019.Credit...Lauren DeCicca for The New York Times
According to a map of child marriages maintained by Girls Not Brides, a global organization that works to end the practice, 16 of the 20 countries with the highest rates are in Africa.
A report published this year by Equality Now looking at 20 countries in Africa found that only a few countries had full bans — and that many did not adequately enforce them.
What problems can come from marrying so young?
Child marriage often leads to girls leaving school. Pregnancies at a young age can cause long-term injuries and trauma.
Sierra Leone is one of the deadliest places to give birth, which is even more dangerous for teenagers.
“They are forced to be adults before they are adults,” said Kadijatu Barrie, 26, a student and a program coordinator with Strong Girls Evolution, a networking organization for Sierra Leonean women, among other groups.
Ms. Barrie said that her family had begun pressuring her to marry when she was 10, and that she was disowned by her father when she was 15 for refusing. She said that she had worried that she would have to drop out of school.
“We have less educated women because of all of this,” she said.
Many face additional complications from another widespread cultural practice in the country: female genital cutting, which is considered a human rights violation by the World Health Organization. About 61 percent of girls in Sierra Leone aged 15 to 19 have undergone female genital cutting, which can cause serious difficulties in childbirth.
How does the ban in Sierra Leone’s work?
Under the new legislation, which went into effect on Tuesday, people who marry children can be imprisoned for 15 years or over $5,000. That is a stiff penalty in a country where the gross domestic product per capita is about $433 in 2023, according to World Bank data.
The law does not just apply to marriage. It also prohibits cohabitation in which adults live with and have a sexual relationship with children.
Parents are also not allowed to consent to a child’s marriage. Officiants cannot preside over one. Guests cannot attend a ceremony. In fact, anyone who “aids or abets” the marriage can face a 10-year sentence or a fine of about $2,500, or both.
The ban aligns with a broad initiative in Sierra Leone to promote the rights of girls by keeping them in school and protecting them from genital cutting.
Image
A man in glasses and a dark suit at a marble lectern. A guard in a mask stands behind him.
President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone at the United Nations General Assembly in 2022.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
President Julius Maada Bio put 22 percent of the national budget into education and brought more women into government. He and his wife, Fatima Bio, pushed for the child marriage ban.
“I have always believed that the future of Sierra Leone is female,” Mr. Bio posted on social media after signing the law with his young daughter at his side.
Nerida Nthamburi, the head of Africa engagement for Girls Not Brides, said, “We want to look at Sierra Leone as being a leader on the continent that can influence other countries.”
What are the obstacles to the ban?
In other countries, criminalizing child marriage has driven the practice underground, Ms. Nthamburi said, leading communities to close ranks and girls to have even fewer protections against the practice.
For the law to have any real impact, researchers and experts said, Sierra Leone’s officials will have to build sustained relationships with communities — especially in the rural areas, where child marriage is more common.
That would mean addressing poverty, which can lead families to marry their daughters off as children. It also means expanding efforts to educate communities about sexual and reproductive health.
Many women and girls would still have to go against their neighbors, their husbands and their families to refuse a marriage, petition to end one or seek compensation.
Ms. Barrie was ostracized for refusing pressure from her family. “All of them came together and went against me,” she said. “I became the worst person to them.”
She said that she had tried to stop her younger sister from marrying at age 14. But she had heard the way that Ms. Barrie was vilified in the community. Her sister, talented at drawing, had wanted to be a fashion designer.
“I couldn’t save her,” Ms. Barrie said. “It’s still something I cry about.”
Image
Three pink schoolgirl uniforms hang on a laundry line.
School uniforms drying in a slum of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Re: Social Evils
Gambia Votes to Keep Ban on Female Genital Cutting, in Dramatic Reversal
Lawmakers in the West African country had supported overturning the prohibition, but changed course on Monday after a vociferous campaign led by women.
Gambian National Assembly members voted to continue the ban on female genital mutilation on Monday. Credit...Malick Njie/Reuters
Lawmakers who had been moving toward repealing Gambia’s landmark ban on female genital cutting overwhelmingly changed course on Monday, voting instead to keep the legislation in place after women staged an intense three-month campaign.
Gambia, a sliver of a country on the west coast of Africa, had grabbed international attention earlier this year as it appeared headed to becoming the world’s first nation to roll back protections against cutting.
“It would have faced pariah status,” said Satang Nabaneh, a Gambian legal scholar focused on sexual and reproductive rights and women’s rights.
Of the 53 members of Gambia’s National Assembly present on Monday, 34 voted to keep the ban, and 19 to overturn it. In March, when 47 members were present, 42 of them voted to overturn the ban.
Women’s rights campaigners, many of whom were in the National Assembly in Banjul, Gambia’s capital, to hear the ruling, greeted it with jubilation and relief. Their lobbying of politicians and efforts to educate communities about the harmful effects of cutting — which in Gambia usually means removing the clitoris and labia minora — had paid off.
“We did everything we could collectively to ensure the law stays,” said Jaha Dukureh, an anti-cutting campaigner.
As it is, the ruling maintains legal safeguards for Gambian girls, who are usually cut as young teenagers, and also affects girls in the wider West African region, as girls are often taken across borders to be cut.
“This is a significant win for women and girls in The Gambia but also beyond,” Ms. Nabaneh said.
Three-quarters of Gambian girls and women of reproductive age have been cut, according to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, and two-thirds of girls and women in the nation think cutting should continue.
“I don’t believe that female circumcision is dangerous at all,” said Kaddy Sanno, one of dozens of Muslim women protesting the decision outside the National Assembly building in Banjul on Monday.
Vocal imams and some lawmakers in the overwhelmingly Muslim country led moves to repeal the ban, which had been initiated in 2015 by Gambia’s autocratic former president, Yahya Jammeh. Some lawmakers supported the ban’s repeal because it played to their voting base, analysts said.
Many Muslims in Gambia believe that cutting is an Islamic practice — a claim made by some religious leaders in the country but disputed by many Muslim scholars.
Although the ban remains in theory, many Gambians are waiting to see whether in practice it will be enforced. Last year saw the first ever prosecutions under the 2015 law, with three women convicted of violating it. But proponents of cutting used the women’s convictions to stir up opposition to the ban, claiming that cutting is important culturally and that its outlawing was an imposition of the West.
Since the ban came under threat almost a year ago, there have been more instances of cutting, said Fatou Baldeh, a survivor of cutting and an anti-cutting campaigner who has won a string of high-profile prizes for her work.
People in some communities felt that while the fate of the ban was uncertain, it was acceptable to cut their girls, she said, and she heard of several mass cuttings in rural areas. The police did not react even when they were informed that girls were being cut, she added.
Despite her relief that the ban was still in place, Ms. Baldeh said that she was sad that the protection and health of women and girls had been put on the line.
“This bill could have gone any way,” she said. “And that is scary.”
Matty Jobe contributed reporting from Banjul, Gambia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/worl ... tting.html
Lawmakers in the West African country had supported overturning the prohibition, but changed course on Monday after a vociferous campaign led by women.
Gambian National Assembly members voted to continue the ban on female genital mutilation on Monday. Credit...Malick Njie/Reuters
Lawmakers who had been moving toward repealing Gambia’s landmark ban on female genital cutting overwhelmingly changed course on Monday, voting instead to keep the legislation in place after women staged an intense three-month campaign.
Gambia, a sliver of a country on the west coast of Africa, had grabbed international attention earlier this year as it appeared headed to becoming the world’s first nation to roll back protections against cutting.
“It would have faced pariah status,” said Satang Nabaneh, a Gambian legal scholar focused on sexual and reproductive rights and women’s rights.
Of the 53 members of Gambia’s National Assembly present on Monday, 34 voted to keep the ban, and 19 to overturn it. In March, when 47 members were present, 42 of them voted to overturn the ban.
Women’s rights campaigners, many of whom were in the National Assembly in Banjul, Gambia’s capital, to hear the ruling, greeted it with jubilation and relief. Their lobbying of politicians and efforts to educate communities about the harmful effects of cutting — which in Gambia usually means removing the clitoris and labia minora — had paid off.
“We did everything we could collectively to ensure the law stays,” said Jaha Dukureh, an anti-cutting campaigner.
As it is, the ruling maintains legal safeguards for Gambian girls, who are usually cut as young teenagers, and also affects girls in the wider West African region, as girls are often taken across borders to be cut.
“This is a significant win for women and girls in The Gambia but also beyond,” Ms. Nabaneh said.
Three-quarters of Gambian girls and women of reproductive age have been cut, according to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, and two-thirds of girls and women in the nation think cutting should continue.
“I don’t believe that female circumcision is dangerous at all,” said Kaddy Sanno, one of dozens of Muslim women protesting the decision outside the National Assembly building in Banjul on Monday.
Vocal imams and some lawmakers in the overwhelmingly Muslim country led moves to repeal the ban, which had been initiated in 2015 by Gambia’s autocratic former president, Yahya Jammeh. Some lawmakers supported the ban’s repeal because it played to their voting base, analysts said.
Many Muslims in Gambia believe that cutting is an Islamic practice — a claim made by some religious leaders in the country but disputed by many Muslim scholars.
Although the ban remains in theory, many Gambians are waiting to see whether in practice it will be enforced. Last year saw the first ever prosecutions under the 2015 law, with three women convicted of violating it. But proponents of cutting used the women’s convictions to stir up opposition to the ban, claiming that cutting is important culturally and that its outlawing was an imposition of the West.
Since the ban came under threat almost a year ago, there have been more instances of cutting, said Fatou Baldeh, a survivor of cutting and an anti-cutting campaigner who has won a string of high-profile prizes for her work.
People in some communities felt that while the fate of the ban was uncertain, it was acceptable to cut their girls, she said, and she heard of several mass cuttings in rural areas. The police did not react even when they were informed that girls were being cut, she added.
Despite her relief that the ban was still in place, Ms. Baldeh said that she was sad that the protection and health of women and girls had been put on the line.
“This bill could have gone any way,” she said. “And that is scary.”
Matty Jobe contributed reporting from Banjul, Gambia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/worl ... tting.html
Re: Social Evils
‘She Didn’t Deserve This’: Husband Accused of Raping Wife Testifies in French Court
Dominique Pelicot, who is accused of inviting strangers to rape his wife while she was drugged and unconscious, took the stand for the first time.
Gisèle Pelicot, center, the ex-wife of Dominique Pelicot, arriving at the Avignon courthouse with her lawyers on Tuesday.Credit...Christophe Simon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Testifying for the first time in a trial that has transfixed and horrified France, Dominique Pelicot said on Tuesday that he had “nothing but love” for his wife but a sex addiction controlled him, and he couldn’t stop himself from drugging her and raping her, and bringing other men into their home to rape her along with him while she was unconscious.
Mr. Pelicot, 71, added that his illness was created by traumatic episodes in his childhood, notably a sexual assault he said he suffered at age 9, when he was admitted to hospital with a head injury, and a nurse sexually assaulted him. His wife, he said, had saved him from that horror for a long time.
“She didn’t deserve this, I recognize that,” he said in tears sitting on the stand, his voice so weak that the court strained to hear him.
“I regret what I did and ask for forgiveness, even if it unforgivable,” he said later, addressing his ex-wife, Gisèle Pelicot, who stood in the middle of the court and looked directly at him as he testified.
Including Mr. Pelicot, some 51 men are on trial together, mostly on charges of the aggravated rape of Ms. Pelicot. One has pleaded guilty for similarly drugging his own wife to rape her and inviting Mr. Pelicot to their home to rape her while she was drugged.
Mr. Pelicot’s appearance on Tuesday came as a surprise. Just one week into the trial, he fell so ill that he missed four days of court, until the head judge finally postponed the hearing. Mr. Pelicot was diagnosed with kidney stones, a kidney infection and prostate problems.
After dispatching medical experts to assess him on Monday, the Avignon court’s head judge, Roger Arata, ruled Mr. Pelicot was well enough to attend, seated in a comfortable chair and given regular breaks to rest.
//France Confronts Horror of Rape and Drugging Case
// A Harrowing Testimony: Gisèle Pelicot spoke of the horror of being told by the police that they had evidence her husband had drugged her for years and brought men into their home to join him in raping her. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/05/worl ... imony.html
// A Daughter’s Torment: Caroline Darian, Pelicot’s daughter, said in court that she was traumatized not only by what prosecutors said happened to her mother, but also by fear that she herself might have been abused. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/fran ... imony.html
// 51 Men Go on Trial: A man is accused of drugging his wife and then inviting dozens of men to rape her over almost a decade. The questions raised by the case have unsettled the country. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/02/worl ... mazan.html
The accused men fill the benches of the court. Eighteen of them sit in two glass boxes, one built especially for the trial. The rest arrive daily, hiding their faces behind medical masks and baseball hats pulled low over their heads, walking past a growing line of journalists and spectators.
They are a cross-section of working- and middle-class rural France, ranging in age from 26 to 74; they include truck drivers, members of the military, a nurse, an IT specialist and a journalist. Most are accused of going to the retired couple’s house in the town of Mazan and raping Ms. Pelicot once. A handful are accused of returning and raping her repeatedly.
More than a dozen have admitted their guilt, including Mr. Pelicot. But lawyers for many others have argued that their clients did not intend to rape Ms. Pelicot. The lawyers for several have said that they were tricked into believing they were joining a sexual threesome among consenting adults and that she was only pretending to sleep.
Over the past two weeks, many of the more than 40 lawyers in the courtroom have painted Mr. Pelicot as a master manipulator — overseeing the bedroom scene like a film director, coaxing the men, lying to them and urging them on.
“Without the intention to commit it, there is no rape,” Guillaume De Palma, a lawyer representing six of the accused, said in an interview. His clients, he said, had all gone to the Pelicots’ house just once, believing Ms. Pelicot was consenting. None of them knew she had been drugged, he said.
“They were being filmed. So there was no reason to think it was a rape,” he said, adding that the idea of agreeing to being filmed while committing a rape was “surreal.”
In a voice that grew stronger as the morning proceeded, Mr. Pelicot addressed his fellow accused.
“Today I maintain that I am a rapist, like those in this room,” he said, dressed in gray jacket zipped all the way up. “They all knew her condition before they came, they knew everything. They cannot say otherwise.”
Later, his words caused a gasp in the courtroom among lawyers and defendants: “They came looking for me. I was asked, I said yes. They accepted, they came. I did not handcuff anybody to make them come to my place.”
Until the shock of Mr. Pelicot’s arrest, the family considered themselves very close, often visiting and vacationing together. By their descriptions, no one suspected anything. Mr. Pelicot agreed that it was “an ideal family,” and added “It was just me that wasn’t.”
He flatly refuted allegations made earlier, by his daughter and the former wife of his youngest son, that he had ever improperly touched — or attempted to touch — his daughter or grandchildren.
“When you suffered as a child what I suffered, you are not at all tempted by that kind of thing,” he said. “I have never touched a child. I would never touch one.”
As a teenager, he also was forced to witness a gang rape while working as an apprentice electrician on a construction site, he said. “I’m not looking for excuses, but these are the facts,” he said.
Prosecutors pieced the case together after Mr. Pelicot was arrested in September 2020 for filming up the skirts of women shopping in a grocery store. The police seized his electronic devices and a laptop from his home, discovering a first batch of videos and photos, which led to his arrest that November for the broader crimes.
Eventually the police discovered more than 20,000 videos and photos on Mr. Pelicot’s computers and hard drives, many of them dated and labeled, in a folder titled “abuse.” Some of the videos are expected to be shown during the trial as evidence.
Explaining why he had taken the videos, edited them in a giant digital library and titled them all, Mr. Pelicot said: “Part pleasure but also, part insurance. Because of that, we could find all those who participated.”
Ms. Pelicot, who has divorced Mr. Pelicot and renounced her former surname but is using it in court during the trial, was entitled under French law to remain anonymous and have the case tried privately. Instead, she made the relatively rare decision to ask that it be public.
She wanted to shift the shame to the accused, her lawyers said, and she stated that she hoped her story would help other victims of drugging and abuse.
During her own harrowing testimony, Ms. Pelicot described her former husband as the love of her life. They met at 19 and soon built a life together, having three children and then seven grandchildren, who often visited. She said she had no idea that she had been drugged or abused.
On Tuesday, she sat in court and listened, often putting on her sunglasses to hide her emotion. When asked if she wanted to respond to her ex-husband’s testimony, she again took the stand and told the court that she found it all difficult to hear. They had been together for 50 years, she said, and “could never have imagined for a single second he could commit these acts of rape.”
“I had total trust in this man,” she added.
She had, however, suffered disturbing symptoms for many years that led her to fear she had a brain tumor or was developing Alzheimer’s: hair and weight loss, and large gaps in her memory, with whole days and nights blacked out.
As a result of her decision to testify publicly, she has become a feminist icon and hero of sexual assault survivors in France. Thousands of women rallied in her support over the weekend at events across France. Posters and street paintings celebrating her have gone up not only in Avignon, but elsewhere in the country.
Each day, so many people arrive at the courthouse to watch that there is regularly a lineup outside the door of a second overflow room, where the proceedings are shown on a large television screen. On Tuesday, they lined the path between the courtroom and the exit at lunch to applaud and cheer Ms. Pelicot as she walked by.
Earlier this week, Ms. Pelicot stopped briefly to acknowledge the support.
“Thanks to all of you, I have the strength to fight this battle to the end,” she told a battery of cameras and outstretched microphones. She offered a message to victims of sexual violence around the world.
“Look around you,” she said. “You are not alone.”
Rape Trial in France
Husband on Trial in Rape and Drugging Case in France Is Taken to a Hospital https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/worl ... latedLinks
Sept. 10, 2024
With Her Father Accused of Raping Her Mother, a Daughter Talks of Torment https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/fran ... latedLinks
Sept. 6, 2024
Woman in France Testifies Against Husband Accused of Bringing Men to Rape Her https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/05/worl ... latedLinks
Sept. 5, 2024
France Confronts Horror of Rape and Drugging Case as 51 Men Go on Trial https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/02/worl ... latedLinks
Sept. 2, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/worl ... _id=178035
Dominique Pelicot, who is accused of inviting strangers to rape his wife while she was drugged and unconscious, took the stand for the first time.
Gisèle Pelicot, center, the ex-wife of Dominique Pelicot, arriving at the Avignon courthouse with her lawyers on Tuesday.Credit...Christophe Simon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Testifying for the first time in a trial that has transfixed and horrified France, Dominique Pelicot said on Tuesday that he had “nothing but love” for his wife but a sex addiction controlled him, and he couldn’t stop himself from drugging her and raping her, and bringing other men into their home to rape her along with him while she was unconscious.
Mr. Pelicot, 71, added that his illness was created by traumatic episodes in his childhood, notably a sexual assault he said he suffered at age 9, when he was admitted to hospital with a head injury, and a nurse sexually assaulted him. His wife, he said, had saved him from that horror for a long time.
“She didn’t deserve this, I recognize that,” he said in tears sitting on the stand, his voice so weak that the court strained to hear him.
“I regret what I did and ask for forgiveness, even if it unforgivable,” he said later, addressing his ex-wife, Gisèle Pelicot, who stood in the middle of the court and looked directly at him as he testified.
Including Mr. Pelicot, some 51 men are on trial together, mostly on charges of the aggravated rape of Ms. Pelicot. One has pleaded guilty for similarly drugging his own wife to rape her and inviting Mr. Pelicot to their home to rape her while she was drugged.
Mr. Pelicot’s appearance on Tuesday came as a surprise. Just one week into the trial, he fell so ill that he missed four days of court, until the head judge finally postponed the hearing. Mr. Pelicot was diagnosed with kidney stones, a kidney infection and prostate problems.
After dispatching medical experts to assess him on Monday, the Avignon court’s head judge, Roger Arata, ruled Mr. Pelicot was well enough to attend, seated in a comfortable chair and given regular breaks to rest.
//France Confronts Horror of Rape and Drugging Case
// A Harrowing Testimony: Gisèle Pelicot spoke of the horror of being told by the police that they had evidence her husband had drugged her for years and brought men into their home to join him in raping her. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/05/worl ... imony.html
// A Daughter’s Torment: Caroline Darian, Pelicot’s daughter, said in court that she was traumatized not only by what prosecutors said happened to her mother, but also by fear that she herself might have been abused. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/fran ... imony.html
// 51 Men Go on Trial: A man is accused of drugging his wife and then inviting dozens of men to rape her over almost a decade. The questions raised by the case have unsettled the country. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/02/worl ... mazan.html
The accused men fill the benches of the court. Eighteen of them sit in two glass boxes, one built especially for the trial. The rest arrive daily, hiding their faces behind medical masks and baseball hats pulled low over their heads, walking past a growing line of journalists and spectators.
They are a cross-section of working- and middle-class rural France, ranging in age from 26 to 74; they include truck drivers, members of the military, a nurse, an IT specialist and a journalist. Most are accused of going to the retired couple’s house in the town of Mazan and raping Ms. Pelicot once. A handful are accused of returning and raping her repeatedly.
More than a dozen have admitted their guilt, including Mr. Pelicot. But lawyers for many others have argued that their clients did not intend to rape Ms. Pelicot. The lawyers for several have said that they were tricked into believing they were joining a sexual threesome among consenting adults and that she was only pretending to sleep.
Over the past two weeks, many of the more than 40 lawyers in the courtroom have painted Mr. Pelicot as a master manipulator — overseeing the bedroom scene like a film director, coaxing the men, lying to them and urging them on.
“Without the intention to commit it, there is no rape,” Guillaume De Palma, a lawyer representing six of the accused, said in an interview. His clients, he said, had all gone to the Pelicots’ house just once, believing Ms. Pelicot was consenting. None of them knew she had been drugged, he said.
“They were being filmed. So there was no reason to think it was a rape,” he said, adding that the idea of agreeing to being filmed while committing a rape was “surreal.”
In a voice that grew stronger as the morning proceeded, Mr. Pelicot addressed his fellow accused.
“Today I maintain that I am a rapist, like those in this room,” he said, dressed in gray jacket zipped all the way up. “They all knew her condition before they came, they knew everything. They cannot say otherwise.”
Later, his words caused a gasp in the courtroom among lawyers and defendants: “They came looking for me. I was asked, I said yes. They accepted, they came. I did not handcuff anybody to make them come to my place.”
Until the shock of Mr. Pelicot’s arrest, the family considered themselves very close, often visiting and vacationing together. By their descriptions, no one suspected anything. Mr. Pelicot agreed that it was “an ideal family,” and added “It was just me that wasn’t.”
He flatly refuted allegations made earlier, by his daughter and the former wife of his youngest son, that he had ever improperly touched — or attempted to touch — his daughter or grandchildren.
“When you suffered as a child what I suffered, you are not at all tempted by that kind of thing,” he said. “I have never touched a child. I would never touch one.”
As a teenager, he also was forced to witness a gang rape while working as an apprentice electrician on a construction site, he said. “I’m not looking for excuses, but these are the facts,” he said.
Prosecutors pieced the case together after Mr. Pelicot was arrested in September 2020 for filming up the skirts of women shopping in a grocery store. The police seized his electronic devices and a laptop from his home, discovering a first batch of videos and photos, which led to his arrest that November for the broader crimes.
Eventually the police discovered more than 20,000 videos and photos on Mr. Pelicot’s computers and hard drives, many of them dated and labeled, in a folder titled “abuse.” Some of the videos are expected to be shown during the trial as evidence.
Explaining why he had taken the videos, edited them in a giant digital library and titled them all, Mr. Pelicot said: “Part pleasure but also, part insurance. Because of that, we could find all those who participated.”
Ms. Pelicot, who has divorced Mr. Pelicot and renounced her former surname but is using it in court during the trial, was entitled under French law to remain anonymous and have the case tried privately. Instead, she made the relatively rare decision to ask that it be public.
She wanted to shift the shame to the accused, her lawyers said, and she stated that she hoped her story would help other victims of drugging and abuse.
During her own harrowing testimony, Ms. Pelicot described her former husband as the love of her life. They met at 19 and soon built a life together, having three children and then seven grandchildren, who often visited. She said she had no idea that she had been drugged or abused.
On Tuesday, she sat in court and listened, often putting on her sunglasses to hide her emotion. When asked if she wanted to respond to her ex-husband’s testimony, she again took the stand and told the court that she found it all difficult to hear. They had been together for 50 years, she said, and “could never have imagined for a single second he could commit these acts of rape.”
“I had total trust in this man,” she added.
She had, however, suffered disturbing symptoms for many years that led her to fear she had a brain tumor or was developing Alzheimer’s: hair and weight loss, and large gaps in her memory, with whole days and nights blacked out.
As a result of her decision to testify publicly, she has become a feminist icon and hero of sexual assault survivors in France. Thousands of women rallied in her support over the weekend at events across France. Posters and street paintings celebrating her have gone up not only in Avignon, but elsewhere in the country.
Each day, so many people arrive at the courthouse to watch that there is regularly a lineup outside the door of a second overflow room, where the proceedings are shown on a large television screen. On Tuesday, they lined the path between the courtroom and the exit at lunch to applaud and cheer Ms. Pelicot as she walked by.
Earlier this week, Ms. Pelicot stopped briefly to acknowledge the support.
“Thanks to all of you, I have the strength to fight this battle to the end,” she told a battery of cameras and outstretched microphones. She offered a message to victims of sexual violence around the world.
“Look around you,” she said. “You are not alone.”
Rape Trial in France
Husband on Trial in Rape and Drugging Case in France Is Taken to a Hospital https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/worl ... latedLinks
Sept. 10, 2024
With Her Father Accused of Raping Her Mother, a Daughter Talks of Torment https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/fran ... latedLinks
Sept. 6, 2024
Woman in France Testifies Against Husband Accused of Bringing Men to Rape Her https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/05/worl ... latedLinks
Sept. 5, 2024
France Confronts Horror of Rape and Drugging Case as 51 Men Go on Trial https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/02/worl ... latedLinks
Sept. 2, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/worl ... _id=178035
How we can empower over 12 million girls this year
"This year alone, more than 12 million girls will become child brides. That equates to a girl every three seconds."
LISTEN HERE https://drmindypelz.com/ep256/
EPISODE 256 FEATURING CLAY DUNN (VOW FOR GIRLS)
This episode is all about how to support girls with no rights, resources, or choice.
In this episode of The Resetter Podcast, Clay Dunn, CEO of Vow for Girls, is here to discuss the global issue of child marriage.
Clay reveals that over 12 million girls will become child brides this year, with significant concentrations in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. Child marriage is also legal in over 30 U.S. states.
Clay explains that child marriage often stems from gender inequality and poverty, with parents marrying off girls to protect them. Vow for Girls supports local leaders to change community norms and empower girls through education and economic opportunities.
If you are able to, please consider donating here. https://drmindypelz.com/vowpod
In this podcast, you'll learn:
That approximately 12 million girls are married off before the age of 18
How child marriage is not only occurring in developing countries but also in the United States
How you can help break the cycle of disempowerment with women around the world
Ways to support girls and promote equality through initiatives like International Day of the Girl
P.S. Don't miss out on the Eat Like a Girl Masterclass! https://www.discover.hayhouse.com/eat-l ... ntent=9801 When you pre order your copy of Eat Like a Girl today, you'll get your free VIP ticket to this transformative event on October 26th, 2024, from 12PM-3PM ET.
Enjoy cooking demos from my new cookbook, learn to boost your GLP-1 hormone, cut toxins, balance hormones, and master metabolic switching for weight loss.
Secure your spot here https://www.discover.hayhouse.com/eat-l ... ntent=9801 and join us for a life-changing day!
LISTEN HERE https://drmindypelz.com/ep256/
EPISODE 256 FEATURING CLAY DUNN (VOW FOR GIRLS)
This episode is all about how to support girls with no rights, resources, or choice.
In this episode of The Resetter Podcast, Clay Dunn, CEO of Vow for Girls, is here to discuss the global issue of child marriage.
Clay reveals that over 12 million girls will become child brides this year, with significant concentrations in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. Child marriage is also legal in over 30 U.S. states.
Clay explains that child marriage often stems from gender inequality and poverty, with parents marrying off girls to protect them. Vow for Girls supports local leaders to change community norms and empower girls through education and economic opportunities.
If you are able to, please consider donating here. https://drmindypelz.com/vowpod
In this podcast, you'll learn:
That approximately 12 million girls are married off before the age of 18
How child marriage is not only occurring in developing countries but also in the United States
How you can help break the cycle of disempowerment with women around the world
Ways to support girls and promote equality through initiatives like International Day of the Girl
P.S. Don't miss out on the Eat Like a Girl Masterclass! https://www.discover.hayhouse.com/eat-l ... ntent=9801 When you pre order your copy of Eat Like a Girl today, you'll get your free VIP ticket to this transformative event on October 26th, 2024, from 12PM-3PM ET.
Enjoy cooking demos from my new cookbook, learn to boost your GLP-1 hormone, cut toxins, balance hormones, and master metabolic switching for weight loss.
Secure your spot here https://www.discover.hayhouse.com/eat-l ... ntent=9801 and join us for a life-changing day!