U.S. police arrest May Day protester in Oakland, California. Credit: Judith Scherr/IPS
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, June 22, 2015 (IPS) - Democracy is on the retreat and authoritarianism is on the rise in more than 96 of the U.N.’s 193 member states, according to a new report released here.
The two regions of “highest concern” for defenders of civic space are Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa, which between them account for over half of the countries counted.
These violations are increasing not only in countries perceived to be democratic but also in countries with blatantly repressive regimes.
“The widespread systematic attack on these core civil society liberties has taken many forms, including assault, torture, kidnapping and assassination,” says the CIVICUS Civil Society Watch Report.
Yung, Corey Rayburn
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol 21(1), Feb 2015, 1-9.
This study tests whether there is substantial undercounting of sexual assault by universities. It compares the sexual assault data submitted by universities while being audited for Clery Act violations with the data from years before and after such audits. If schools report higher rates of sexual assault during times of higher regulatory scrutiny (audits), then that result would support the conclusion that universities are failing to accurately tally incidents of sexual assault during other time periods. The study finds that university reports of sexual assault increase by approximately 44% during the audit period. After the audit is completed, the reported sexual assault rates drop to levels statistically indistinguishable from the pre-audit time frame. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the ordinary practice of universities is to undercount incidents of sexual assault.
UN Human Rights Council Session 29 Passed Resolution on PROTECTION OF THE FAMILY
United Nations A/HRC/29/L.25
General Assembly
Distr.: Limited - 1 July 2015
Human Rights Council
Twenty-ninth session
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development
Algeria (on behalf of the Group of African States), Bahrain,* Bangladesh, Belarus,* Bosnia and Herzegovina,* Botswana, Burkina Faso,* China, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti,* Egypt,* El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea*, Jordan,* Kuwait,* Lebanon, Malaysia,* Maldives, Mauritania,* Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan (on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation)**, Tunisia* (on behalf of the Group of Arab States), Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka,* Tunisia,* Zimbabwe:* draft resolution
The three day COPASAH - South Asia Sharing and Documenting Information Communication Technologies (ICT’s) Experiences Workshop - Vadodra (Gujarat- India) July 2-4 2015 , through different COPASAH communication platforms. We bring to you the updates of the first day of the workshop which kickstarted on a very participatory note on July 2,2015 along with some interesting pictures of the proceedings of the day 1.
For more details visit:
http://www.copasah.net/uploads/1/2/6/4/12642634/copasasah_daily_post_3_july_2015.pdf
A shocking statistic has emerged, which reveals suicide has overtaken maternal mortality as the biggest killer of young women in the world
25 May 2015 - Towards the end of last year, a shocking statistic appeared deep in the pages of a World Health Organisation report. It was this: suicide has become the leading killer of teenage girls, worldwide.
More girls aged between 15 and 19 die from self-harm than from road accidents, diseases or complications of pregnancy.
For years, child-bearing was thought to cause the most deaths in this age group. But at some point in the last decade or so – statistics were last collected on this scale in 2000 - suicide took over. And, according to the WHO’s revised data for 2000, it had already just inched its way ahead of maternal mortality at the turn of the millennium.
Yet, somehow, we didn’t notice.
I heard the statistic from Sarah Degnan Kambou, President of the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), at a Gates Foundationbreakfast last month.
