Bible Verses About Love, relationships and weddings 💗

The bible provides wonderful verses about love. Take the opportunity to shine a spotlight on your relationship with Christ every day. Verses in scripture that relate to love will be the perfect way to reflect your devotion to not only each other but also, your faith. 

• Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
• And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13
• Do everything in love. 1 Corinthians 16:14
• Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Ephesians 4:2
• Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8 
• There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4: 18-19
• Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs. Proverbs 10:12
• Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:8
• Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Romans 12:9
• A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. Proverbs 17:17
• For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

Verses About Relationships 

• Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Ephesians 5:25
• However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:33
• With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:2-3
• Do to others as you would have them do to you. Luke 6:31
• I thank my God every time I think of you. Philippians 1:3
• But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you. Ruth 1:16-17
• So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Genesis 1:27-28
• Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Genesis 2:24
• Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. Mark 10:9
• Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Romans 13:8
• Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised. Song of Solomon 8:6-7
• There are three things that amaze me—no, four things that I don’t understand: how an eagle glides through the sky, how a snake slithers on a rock, how a ship navigates the ocean, how a man loves a woman. Proverbs 30:18-19
• Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. Proverbs 31:10
• Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Ecclesiastes 4:9

• Be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:32
• I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. Song of Solomon 2:16
• Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. Song of Solomon 8:7
• I have found the one whom my soul loves. Song of Solomon 3:4
• This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. John 15:12
• God has poured out his love into our hearts. Romans 5:5
• Love yesterday, today and forever. Jeremiah 31:3
• So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate. Matthew 19:6
• I hold you in my heart, for we have shared together God’s blessings. Philippians 1:7
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Bible Verses for Wedding Invitations

Your wedding invitations will allow guests a look into what your big day will be all about.

• Be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:32
• I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. Song of Solomon 2:16
• Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. Song of Solomon 8:7
• I have found the one whom my soul loves. Song of Solomon 3:4
• This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. John 15:12
• God has poured out his love into our hearts. Romans 5:5
• Love yesterday, today and forever. Jeremiah 31:3
• So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate. Matthew 19:6
• I hold you in my heart, for we have shared together God’s blessings. Philippians 1:7

‘Speak out:’ Biden, Harris decry racism during Atlanta visit

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris offered solace to Asian Americans and denounced the scourge of racism at times hidden “in plain sight” as they visited Atlanta, just days after a white gunman killed eight people, most of them Asian American women.

Addressing the nation after a roughly 80-minute meeting with Asian American state legislators and other leaders Friday, Biden said it was “heart-wrenching” to listen to their stories of the fear among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders amid what he called a “skyrocketing spike” of harassment and violence against them.

“We have to change our hearts,” he said. “Hate can have no safe harbor in America.”

Biden called on all Americans to stand up to bigotry when they see it, adding: “Our silence is complicity. We cannot be complicit.”

“They’ve been attacked, blamed, scapegoated and harassed; they’ve been verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, killed,” Biden said of Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.

The president also called the shootings an example of a “public health crisis of gun violence in this country,” as his administration has come under scrutiny from some in his own party for not moving as swiftly as promised on reforming the nation’s gun laws.

Harris, the first person of South Asian descent to hold national office, said that while the motive of the shooter remains under investigation, these facts are clear: Six of the eight killed were of Asian descent and seven of them were women.

“Racism is real in America. And it has always been. Xenophobia is real in America, and always has been. Sexism, too,” she said. “The president and I will not be silent. We will not stand by. We will always speak out against violence, hate crimes and discrimination, wherever and whenever it occurs.”

She added that everyone has “the right to be recognized as an American. Not as the other, not as them. But as us.”

Before leaving Washington, Biden declared his support for the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, a bill that would strengthen the government’s reporting and response to hate crimes and provide resources to Asian American communities.

Georgia state Rep. Marvin Lim, who was among a group of Asian American leaders who met with Biden and Harris in Atlanta, said the group “didn’t really talk about hate crime sentencing and all of these things there’s been a lot of discussion around.

“We really talked about the grief people are feeling, the fear people are feeling, the possible responses to that,” Lim said. “The discussion felt very affirming.”

State Sen. Michelle Au, a Chinese American Democrat who represents parts of Atlanta’s northern suburbs, was moved by the presence of Harris, saying: “Not only that she was there listening to us, but that she also understood these issues in a very intimate way, that in some ways you can’t teach, that you can’t teach that sort of lived experience. So we felt that she was going to be an incredible advocate on our behalf in the White House.”

Their trip was planned before the shooting, as part of a victory lap aimed at selling the benefits of pandemic relief legislation. But Biden and Harris instead spent much of their visit consoling a community whose growing voting power helped secure their victory in Georgia and beyond.

Activists have seen a rise of racist attacks. Nearly 3,800 incidents have been reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a California-based reporting center for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and its partner advocacy groups, since March 2020.

Biden and Harris both implicitly criticized former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus.”

“For the last year we’ve had people in positions of incredible power scapegoating Asian Americans,” said Harris, “people with the biggest pulpits, spreading this kind of hate.”

“We’ve always known words have consequences,” Biden said. “It is the ‘coronavirus.’ Full stop.”

In his first primetime address to the nation as president last Thursday — five days before the Atlanta killings at three metro-area massage businesses — Biden called attacks on Asian Americans “un-American.”

Biden also used the visit to tour the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he received a briefing on the state of the COVID-19 pandemic and delivered a pep talk to the agency’s scientists.

“We owe you a gigantic debt of gratitude and we will for a long, long, long time,” Biden said, adding that under his administration “science is back” driving policy to combat the virus.

Though the originally planned political event to tout the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill has been delayed, Biden still met with Georgia voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams, Democrats’ likely 2022 candidate for governor, as Republicans in the state legislature push several proposals to make it harder to vote in the state.

“The battle for the right to vote is never, ever over,” Biden said. “It’s not over here in this state of Georgia. So we’re gonna fight again.”

He also met with newly minted Democratic Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.

As the fastest-growing racial demographic in the U.S. electorate, Asian Americans are gaining political influence across the country. In California, two Korean American Republican women made history with their congressional victories. The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, typically dominated by Democrats, has its largest roster ever, including Asian American and Pacific Islander members and others who represent significant numbers of Asian Americans.

“We’re becoming increasingly more visible and active in the political ecosystem,” said Au, a Democrat who represents part of the growing, diversifying suburbs north of Atlanta. Yet, Au said, “What I’ve heard personally, and what I have felt, is that people sometimes don’t tend to listen to us.”

Au said a White House spotlight, especially amid tragedy, is welcomed by a community often overshadowed in national conversations about diversity. She noted Trump and other Republicans merely brushed off charges of racism when they dubbed the coronavirus the “China virus” because of its origins.

“To have them talk about it in this way, so publicly, and to say AAPI, or to note that our communities are going through difficult times, is huge,” Au said.

As he boarded Air Force One on Friday morning, Biden, who was wearing a mask, stumbled several times up the stairs to the aircraft, before saluting the military officer who greeted him on the tarmac. Jean-Pierre said Biden was “doing 100% fine.”

ATLANTA (AP) —

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SPACE ROCK REPORTEDLY HITS CUBA, LIGHTS UP NIGHT SKY, CAUSES EXPLOSIONS

SPACE ROCK REPORTEDLY HITS CUBA, LIGHTS UP NIGHT SKY, CAUSES EXPLOSIONS

 

 

Havana's Book Fair (Cuba)

The Caribbean island was previously hit by a meteorite in February 2019, with space rock fragments causing a sonic boom powerful enough to shatter windows in the city of Pinar del Rio in country’s west.

Seismologists in Cuba have tentatively attributed mysterious lights illuminating the night sky above the Moa seismological station in the country’s east to a meteorite.

At 10:06 pm, the station registered ‘several luminous phenomena’, with residents in multiple communities reporting spotting a red and white light followed by one or more explosions.

National Seismological Service Chief Enrique Arango Arias confirmed to CubaDebate that the agency believes the event was caused by a space rock.

A tweet by Elier Pila Farinas from the Institute of Meteorology of Cuba, explaining that the bright flash recorded by the GOES-East satellite over eastern Cuba was categorized as a lightning strike, despite lack of adverse weather activity in the area.

Hilario Quintana Charlot, an eyewitness in the nearby town of Jamaica, said he was outside when the suspected meteor came down, saying he saw a ball of light in the sky “which lit up everything, and then two or three minutes later, two explosions in a row”.

Another eyewitness, Luis Daniel Cano of Santiago de Cuba, said he spotted a fast-moving light across the sky, followed by a flash which he compared to a powerful bolt of lightning.

Local residents published images of the phenomena online, as well as footage of satellite equipment showing the flash of the possible meteorite. The amateur images have not been authenticated.

Cuba's size - just 110,000 square km, and the fact that it is surrounded on all sides by water, make meteorite strikes a relatively rare phenomenon on the island, with less than ten confirmed strikes reported in the past eighty-plus years. The most peculiar touchdown was a daytime strike in June 1994 of a rock weighing about 400 grams in the town of Lajas, central Cuba. The last confirmed meteorite strike hit the island on 1 February 2019.

Scientists estimate that the Earth is hit by about 6,100 meteors per year (i.e. about 17 per day). The vast majority is not detected, falling in uninhabited areas or oceans, and most are extremely small by the time they reach the ground. Meteorites have given astronomers important clues about life on other planets, the formation of the solar system, and even the origins of the universe.

Source: nation.com

ANGOLA MENTIONED AS MOST REFORMIST AFRICAN COUNTRY IN LAST FIVE YEARS

Luanda – Analyst Aurelien Mali, from Moody’s rating firm, has foreseen an improvement of Angola’s economic situation in the near future. The firm revised this week the country's growth forecast giving it an upturn trend, from 1.2% to 2.7%, possibly marking the end of five years of negative economic growth.

Aurelien Mali, senior analyst who follows the Angolan economy at the rating agency Moody's, has considered that Angola is the most reformist country in Africa and that the budgetary adjustment effort is "commendable".

 

"Among most African countries, Angola is probably the country that has undergone the most structural reforms in the last five years", Aurelien Mali said in an interview to the Portuguese “Lusa”, held by videoconference from Dubai, pointing to budgetary consolidation, the new budget law, the introduction of Value Added Tax (VAT) and adjustment of public finances as examples.

 

However, the analysts defended close attention to the country’s economic reality. "it is necessary to see what reality will be like" and underlined that, "for now, the risks reflected in the 'rating' are balanced and three months of positive environment is a short time frame to change the assessment of the quality of Angola's sovereign credit”.

 

In the interview, Aurelien Mali agrees that Angola should not need to seek debt relief beyond the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) and pointed out that the Angolan economy is in a very different situation compared to Zambia, Ethiopia and Chad, which requested adherence to the Common Framework for Debt Treatment in addition to the DSSI.

 

"When looking at the external debt service and financial aid package of international financial institutions and taking into account the adjustment that the country has already made, it shows that there is a possible way for the country not to need debt relief under the Common Framework ", he underlined.

 

Senegal’s COVID-19-related death toll tops 1,000

Senegal’s COVID-19-related deaths passed the 1,000 mark on Friday, the Senegalese Ministry of Health and Social Action announced on Friday in its daily update.

The African Regent Hotel

According to COVID-19 update published by the ministry, eight additional deaths have been recorded in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 1,003 deaths.

The country’s health ministry also reported 113 new infections and 288 recoveries during the same period.

Senegal has seen fewer new infections and deaths in the past few weeks.

The Senegalese authorities have eased the curfew which is from midnight to five in the morning to promote the resumption of night work and the revival of economic activity.

On Thursday, Senegalese President Macky Sall and members of the government took their second dose of COVID-19 vaccine from China’s Sinopharm.

He stressed that vaccines are the only solution to the COVID-19 pandemic in Senegal and around the world.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic in Senegal, the West African country has reported 37,541 positive cases, including 33,931 recoveries and 1,003 deaths. Senegal’s first case of COVID-19-related death was reported on March 31, 2020.

GNA

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Gunmen abduct five health workers in Burkina Faso

At least five health workers were abducted on Thursday evening in northern Yagha province of Burkina Faso, a security source told Xinhua on Friday in the capital Ouagadougou.

“Unidentified gunmen on Thursday evening abducted five workers at Mansila health center, on Seba-Mansila road axis. The research was initiated to locate them”, the security source told Xinhua.

A locally elected politician said aggressors first abducted seven people but released two women shortly after.

“Five people were still in the hands of the abductors”, the source stressed.

Until 12 o’clock (local time) on Friday, no-one claimed responsibility for the act in the jihadist-torn West-African country.

Since 2015, Burkina Faso has been plagued by a deteriorated security situation with multiple attacks on army positions as well as on civilians.

GNA

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Qatar says reforms to labour laws have ‘transformed’ the market

Qatar’s new minimum wage law, the latest in a series of recent labour reforms, comes into effect.

Recent reforms to Qatar’s labour laws have “transformed” the country’s labour market with the new non-discriminatory minimum wage providing additional financial security, Qatar’s government has said.

On Saturday, Qatar’s new minimum wage law came into effect, the latest in a series of reforms the country has implemented in recent years.

The new legislation ensures all employees receive a minimum monthly wage of 1,000 Qatari riyals ($275), as well as a minimum allowance of 300 riyals for food and 500 riyals for housing, unless their employer provides both.

Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers has been under the spotlight since it was awarded the hosting of football’s 2022 World Cup in 2010.

Under Qatar’s “kafala”, or sponsorship, system, migrant workers needed to obtain their employer’s permission before changing jobs – a law that rights activists said left employees dependent on the goodwill of their bosses, and often led to abuse and exploitation.

In August 2020, Qatar scrapped a rule requiring employers’ consent to change jobs.

However, migrant workers told Al Jazeera of their continued struggle while trying to change jobs, with the majority of those interviewed by Al Jazeera saying they experienced delays in the process as well as threats, harassment and exploitation by the sponsor, with some of the workers ending up in prison and eventually deported.

A Qatari government spokesperson told Al Jazeera in a statement that “in the final quarter of 2020 [when the laws were amended], the new system contributed to over 78,000 successful job transfers”.

“The most significant development has been the dismantling of the ‘Kafala’ system, which contractually tied workers to their employer,” the statement said. “The impact of these reforms cannot be underestimated. They have transformed our labour market.

“On the health and safety front, we have introduced new measures and raised standards. Modern accommodations have been built across the country to improve the living conditions for thousands of workers, and the capacity of labour inspectors has been strengthened to monitor accommodation and working conditions, and crackdown on violators which often leads to jail time.”

Qatar’s labour ministry has maintained it welcomes workers lodging their complaints, but most of the workers Al Jazeera spoke to said they refrained for fear of repercussions – including abscondment cases – from their employers, having witnessed several examples of the power imbalance first-hand.

“Most workers don’t have the knowledge or support system to stand up to powerful employers and challenge these false charges,” Vani Saraswathi, director of projects at Migrant-Rights.Org, told Al Jazeera. “All of this serves to harass workers and discourage others from changing jobs.”

The government statement added: “We know that implementation and enforcement are critical if the reforms are to be a success, and we also know that some companies will try to bypass the changes, as they have in the past. It is our job to stop them.

“Each year, our labour inspectors carry out thousands of inspections at work and accommodation sites across the country. Violations of the law are recorded, and penalties are handed down through the courts. In the final quarter of 2020, over 7,000 penalties were issued, ranging from minor offences to more serious offences that have resulted in hefty fines and jail time.”

SOURCE : AL JAZEERA

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As vaccinations lag, Italy’s elderly again pay a price

 One year ago, Bergamo’s state-of-the-art Pope John XXIII Hospital verged on collapse as doctors struggled to treat 600 patients, with 100 of them in intensive care. Army trucks ferried the dead from the city’s overtaxed crematorium in images now seared into the collective pandemic memory.

The picture is much improved now: The hospital is treating fewer than 200 virus patients, just one quarter of whom require intensive care.

But still unchanged as Italy’s death rate pushes upward once again is that the victims remain predominantly elderly, with inoculation drives stumbling in the country and elsewhere in Europe.

“No, this thing, alas, I was not able to protect the elderly, to make clear how important it would be to protect the elderly,” said Dr. Luca Lorini, head of intensive care at the hospital named for the mid-20th century pope born in Bergamo. “If I have 10 elderly people over 80 and they get COVID, in their age group, eight out of 10 die.”

That was true in the first horrifying wave and remained “absolutely the same” in subsequent spikes, he said.

Promises to vaccinate all Italians over 80 all by the end of March have fallen woefully short, amid well-documented interruptions of vaccine supplies and organizational shortfalls. Just a third of Italy’s 7.3 million doses administered so far have gone to that age group, with more than half of those who carry memories of World War II still awaiting their first jab.

“We should have already finished with this,” Lorini told The Associated Press.

Italy’s new premier, Mario Draghi, pledged during a visit to Bergamo on Thursday that the vaccine campaign would be accelerated. His remarks came as he inaugurated a park to honor Italy’s over 104,000 dead. Through early March, two-thirds of those deaths have been among those over 80.

“We are here to promise our elderly that it will never happen again that fragile people are not adequately helped and protected. Only like this will we respect those who have left us,” Draghi said on the anniversary of the first army convoy carrying the virus dead from Bergamo.

Italy can hope to see its future by looking to Britain, the first country in Europe to authorize widespread vaccinations. More than 38% of the U.K. population has been inoculated since early December, starting with those over 70, health care workers and staff of care homes.

Britain, which leads Europe in virus deaths, has seen the percentage of fatalities among those over 75 diminish from 75% of the total before the vaccination campaign to 64% in the week ending March 5. Deaths across Britain have dropped from an average of 128 a day in the most recent seven-day period, from a high of 1,248 in the week ended Jan. 20 — also thanks to lockdown measures.

Along with health care workers, Spain, France and Italy prioritized vaccinating residents of nursing homes, by far the single hardest-hit population in the spring surge. They account for nearly a third of the dead in Italy’s first wave, and a third of France’s pandemic death toll of nearly 91,100.

In France, COVID-19 infections and deaths in care homes have been steadily trending downward as the numbers of vaccinated has climbed, with 85% having received at least one shot. Early signs are that the proportion of ICU patients aged 75 and older has also started to decline since February, with nearly half in this age group at least partially vaccinated. The improved picture for residents of care homes comes despite a renewed worsening of France’s outbreak.

Spain has seen a huge drop in infections and deaths in nursing homes, following the first phase of its vaccination program, with a significant decline in deaths.

In Italy, where vaccinations of nursing home residents got under way in January, compared with mid-February for other elderly, lower infection rates in nursing homes have been declared “an early success.”

“We cannot count it as a victory, absolutely not, of the vaccine strategy,” Dr. Giovanni Rezza, director of infectious diseases at the Health Ministry, acknowledged recently.

Rezza said Friday that they aim to double the 200,000 daily vaccinations now that the AstraZeneca shot is being used again. Its use was suspended briefly after reports of blood clots in some recipients of the vaccine, even though international health agencies urged governments to press ahead with the shot, saying the benefits outweighed the risks.

With Italy’s infection rate up for the seventh straight week propelled by the fast-moving U.K. variant, more than 2.5 million Italians over 80 are awaiting their shots. What’s worse, many still have no indication when they might get them.

Luca Fusco founded a group to remember the dead and advocate for justice in their memory after his father died of COVID-19 on March 11, 2020.

His mother, who celebrated her 83rd birthday on the anniversary of her husband’s death, still hasn’t received an appointment to be vaccinated more than a month after submitting a request. Fusco said that was true for most of the several hundred elderly in their small town near Bergamo, noting they were being required to travel 30 miles (20 kilometers) to get each shot, a burden for many.

Italy’s aim is to vaccinate 80% of the population by September, and Draghi has appointed an army general to relaunch the campaign. Fusco said his group, “Noi Denunceremo,” (“We Will Denounce”) will act as a watchdog on the issue.

“Draghi said that by September, we will all be vaccinated. Perfect,” Fusco said. “We have taken note of it. If this is not true, we will make our voices heard … and we will ask Draghi for explanations.”

BERGAMO, Italy (AP) —

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Turkey withdraws from European treaty protecting women

Turkey has withdrawn from a landmark European treaty protecting women from violence that it was the first to sign 10 years ago and that bears the name of its largest city.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decree early Saturday annulling Turkey’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention is a blow to women’s rights advocates, who say the agreement is crucial to combating domestic violence.

The Council of Europe’s Secretary General, Marija Pejčinović Burić, called the decision “devastating.”

“This move is a huge setback to these efforts and all the more deplorable because it compromises the protection of women in Turkey, across Europe and beyond,” she said.

The Istanbul Convention states that men and women have equal rights and obliges state authorities to take steps to prevent gender-based violence against women, protect victims and prosecute perpetrators.

Some officials from Erdogan’s Islam-oriented party have advocated a review of the agreement, arguing it encourages divorce and undermines the traditional family, which they say are contrary to the country’s conservative values. Critics also claim the treaty promotes homosexuality through the use of categories like gender, sexual orientation and gender identity. They see that as a threat to Turkish families. Hate speech has been on the rise in Turkey, including the interior minister who described LGBT people as “perverts” in a tweet.

Women’s groups and their allies who have been protesting to keep the convention intact immediately called for demonstrations across the country Saturday under the slogan “Withdraw the decision, apply the treaty.”

Violence against and killing of women is on the rise in Turkey, according to rights groups.

A total of 77 women have been killed since the start of the year, according to the We Will Stop Femicide Platform. At least 409 women were killed in 2020, according to the group.

Turkey’s minister for family, labor and social policies tweeted that women’s rights are still protected by Turkish laws and the judicial system is “dynamic and strong enough” to enact new regulations. Zehra Zumrut Selcuk also tweeted that violence against women is a crime against humanity and the government would continue to have “zero tolerance” for it.

Turkey was the first country to sign the Council of Europe’s “Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence” at a committee of ministers meeting in Istanbul in 2011. The law came into force in 2014 and Turkey’s constitution says international agreements have the force of law.

Some lawyers claimed Saturday that the treaty is still active, arguing the president cannot withdraw from it without the approval of parliament, which ratified it in 2012.

But Erdogan gained sweeping powers with his re-election in 2018, setting in motion the change in Turkey from a parliamentary system to an executive presidency.

ISTANBUL (AP) —

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Nigeria launches action plan on gender, climate change

The Nigerian government on Thursday inaugurated a National Action Plan on Gender and Climate Change (NAPGCC) to guide implementation of actions that mitigate climate change impacts on vulnerable groups including women.

The inauguration was for the good of the women and the country at large, said Muhammad Abubakar, the minister of environment, at the inauguration ceremony of the NAPGCC in Abuja, the country’s capital.

Abubakar said Nigeria developed its National Action Plan on Gender and Climate in 2020 and was approved by the Federal Executive Council that same year.

He said the main goal of the action plan was to ensure that national climate change processes in Nigeria mainstream gender considerations.

The Minister said the essence was to guarantee inclusivity of all demographics in the formulation and implementation of climate change initiatives, programs and policies.

Abubakar mentioned the priority sectors covered by the action plan as agriculture, forestry and land use, food security, health, energy, transport, waste management, water and sanitation.

GNA

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