COVID-19: Lockdown as a safety risk
April 10th, 2020
Guest post by Fadziso Fadzisai Mawunganidze. Photo by Sandie Clarke on Unsplash. Content warning: Contains references to sexual violence, including child sexual abuse. Imagine a young girl staying with her rapist for 24 hours a day, without the freedom she used to enjoy when she went to school or played with her friends. In […]
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COVID-19: Capitalism’s mask has slipped
March 19th, 2020
By Nine It’s Thursday in Kuala Lumpur, the second day of the ‘restricted movement’ which was announced by Malaysia’s new government on Monday night. There has been confusion among the public about whether or not this is the same as a lockdown. On Tuesday night, upon hearing that permits would be required for interstate travel, […]
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“The police are our real pimps”: Violence against sex workers in the Philippines
December 17th, 2019
On the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers (17 December), Sharmila Parmanand discusses the intersections of violence in the Philippines against sex workers and against people who use drugs. Sex workers in the Philippines experience many harmful effects of the war on drugs. It has increased the power of the police over sex […]
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When illegality is the starting point: Refugees and domestic violence in Malaysia
August 21st, 2019
“She showed up with fresh, open wounds. She’d been beaten really badly … but we couldn’t do much. We gave her immediate medical treatment, but then we had to send her back where she came from,” my friend said to me, recalling one of the more disillusioning moments of his time spent volunteering with UNHCR’s […]
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Go there to come back: Reflections from Botswana’s CEDAW review
May 9th, 2019
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” – Terry Pratchett The crisp winter morning […]
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The long road to workers’ rights: The struggle for unionisation in Bangladesh
May 1st, 2019
To improve conditions and benefits for staff, workers at Hoplun Apparels in Gazipur, Bangladesh, needed to register their union. But by law, at least 30 percent of the factory’s 6000-strong workforce needed to join it, with documents submitted to the Department of Labour. (In September 2018, this threshold was cut to 20 percent.) Nazma Akter, […]
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What do we mean when we talk about trafficking?
April 5th, 2019
By Ishita Dutta In January 2019 in Bangkok, I had the privilege of meeting with and learning from the experiences of 40 experts invested in ending trafficking in women. They represented over 25 countries but, as happens often in ‘global’ advocacy spaces, we had one expert carrying all of Latin America on their back […]
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Post-Bali reflections: The insider strategy
November 29th, 2018
IWRAW Asia Pacific executive director Priyanthi Fernando looks back on her participation at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meeting and considers the pros and cons of engaging with neoliberal institutions. (Read her initial post from Bali: Saying It Loud and Clear.) In the hotel in Benoa, Bali, where I stayed with other Civil Society Forum participants, […]
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Care is an economic issue: Addressing gender inequalities in care work
October 11th, 2018
Ipek Ilkkaracan is Professor of Economics at Istanbul Technical University, a founding member of Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR) – New Ways and a member of IWRAW Asia Pacific’s advisory committee. She coined the term ‘purple economy’ to convey the need for an economic model which recognises care work. Without it, the sustainability of […]
Read MoreDispatch from Bali: Saying it loud and clear
October 8th, 2018
Embed from Getty Images Writing from the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in Bali, our executive director Priyanthi Fernando reflects on two very different perspectives on the state of today’s world. In Christine Lagarde’s curtain raiser speech for the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings being held this week in Bali, the message is that the sun is […]
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