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NEWS & LETTERS, June - July 2008
Women World Wide
by Mary Jo Grey
Eight-year-old Nojoud Muhammed Nasser filed a lawsuit in Yemen in April against her father who forced her to marry a 30-year-old man. She came to court by herself because no one in her family would support her, nor defend her against her abusive father and husband. The lawsuit is being used to push for legislation against such violence against children. More than 50% of Yemen's girls are forced into child marriages.
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Students at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., protested the granting of an honorary doctorate at the commencement ceremony to a most notorious alumna--right-wing, anti-woman speaker and author, Phyllis Schlafly. More than 1,000 people joined the Facebook protest group, set up by students not yet born during Schlafly's reign of terror. Mary Ann Dzuback, director of Women and Gender Studies at the university, maintained, "The university has completely disregarded the concerns about anybody who cares about full and equal rights for women."
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Poor women in the Philippines have sued the mayor of Manila over the city's eight-year ban on contraception. They asked the appeals court to repeal the local law banning access to condoms and birth control pills, saying it has severely and irreparably damaged the lives and health of the majority of women in Manila. "This ban is yet another abhorrent example of a larger global trend led by religiously motivated policy makers who adopt policies based on ideology instead of the health and well-being of the very people they are selected to serve," said Melissa Upreti, senior legal advisor for Asia at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
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A 22-year-old student, Amir Yaghoub-Ali, was sentenced in June to one year in prison by Iran's Revolutionary Court for petitioning for the One Million Signatures' Campaign for women's rights. Ali was found guilty of "actions against national security through the spreading of propaganda against the state." The ruling is being appealed.
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