NOVANEWS
Bill Shows Commitment to End Violence Against Women
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One day when Dashty (right) was 12, her mother told her to expect company. Expecting friends, she was shocked when she saw the midwife enter her house. After Dashty resisted, her mother beat her as other women held her down. She said she spent 20 days recovering in bed from the traumatic operation. “Since that day, my personality has changed and I’m depressed,” says Dashty, 32, who lives close to her sister Sara (left), 30, in their village of Meer Ghasem. “I’ve lost my love for this world because of what happened at the hands of people I trusted.”
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Many women and girls in Iraq’s Kurdish region are subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). A new report from Human Rights Watch says the local government isn’t doing enough to stop this dangerous and debilitating practice. With HRW’s Samer Muscati and a report from the ground.
By passing this law, the Kurdistan regional government has shown its resolve to end female genital mutilation and to protect the rights of women and girls. But the government needs a long-term strategy to deal with this harmful practice because criminalizing it is not enough.
Nadya Khalife, Middle East women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch