Female Genital Mutilation, or FGM, is an “abhorrent violation of fundamental human rights” said the UN Secretary-General on Monday, marking the International Day of Zero Tolerance against the scourge, which remains a threat for a staggering 4.2 million girls this year.
António Guterres said that the practice of genital cutting, prevalent in some cultures for more than a thousand years, causes lifelong damage to both the physical and mental health of women and girls.
‘Vicious manifestation of the patriarchy’
“It is one of the most vicious manifestations of the patriarchy that permeates our world”, he added.
With more than four million girls at risk this year alone from the pernicious act of gender-based violence, urgent investment together with action is needed, so the world can reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target of eliminating female genital mutilation by 2030, the UN chief said.
He added that the practice was “rooted in the same gender inequalities and complex social norms that limit women’s participation and leadership and restrict their access to education and employment.
“This discrimination damages the whole of society, and we need urgent action by the whole of society to end it.”
As part of that, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency UNFPA, is partnering this year with UN Children’s Fund UNICEF on eliminating FGM in a campaign themed, Partnership with Men and Boys to transform Social and gender Norms to End FGM.
The agencies are calling for the international community to foster male engagement on just how harmful FGM is and uplift the voices of women and girls.
‘Surge’ of allies against FGM
Initiatives already underway by the UN and NGO partners have already resulted “in a surge of male allies such as religious and traditional leaders, health workers, law enforcement officials, members of civil society and grassroots organisations”, the UN said, “and have led to notable achievements in the protection of women and girls.”
The Secretary-General called on men and boys “everywhere to join me in speaking out and stepping forward to end female genital mutilation, for the benefit of all.”
What is most needed is a commitment to social change, and strong partnerships, to end FGM, once and for all, he concluded.
The UNFPA and UNICEF joint programme to accelerate the elimination of FGM has been running since 2008, and focuses on 17 countries in Africa and the Middle East, and also supports regional and global initiatives.
Support for millions
Through the support of the programme, more than six million girls and women have received prevention, protection and care services, while around 45 million people have made public declarations to abandon FGM practices.
According to UNFPA’s annual report on FGM for 2021, more than 532,000 girls have been prevented from undergoing FGM.
However, UNFPA also estimates that there may be as many as two million cases of FGM by 2030, that would otherwise have been averted, attributable to the regressive nature of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s still the case that around one in four girls and women worldwide – or 52 million people – have experienced FGM performed by health personnel, pointing to “an alarming trend in the medicalization of female genital mutilation”, according to a UNICEF analysis in 2020.
The Muslim pilgrims were travelling to a religious ceremony in Senegal through conflict hotspots in northern Burkina Faso and central Mali.
At least 15 Nigerian Muslim pilgrims on their way to Senegal were killed when gunmen in Burkina Faso attacked the buses transporting them, Nigeria’s presidency said on Monday.
“President Muhammadu Buhari has received the tragic news of the murder,” the State House said in a statement, without providing further details on the attack.
A Nigerian presidency spokesperson told Reuters via WhatsApp that the death toll stood at 15 “so far”.
According to a Senegalese religious order, unidentified assailants attacked the convoy of buses on Wednesday and killed 18 passengers.
The pilgrims were on their way to a religious ceremony in Senegal from Niger and Nigeria, a trip that involves crossing conflict hotspots in northern Burkina Faso and central Mali.
“Eighteen passengers lost their lives during these attacks, and most of the survivors were robbed,” the Medina Baye Mosque in Kaolack, the Senegalese town where the victims were headed, said in a statement on Saturday.
Nigeria’s presidency said in the statement that it was in touch with Burkinabe authorities and awaiting the outcome of their investigation into the incident.
Burkina Faso’s foreign affairs minister Olivia Rouamba met with Nigeria’s ambassador to the country on Monday to discuss the killings.
“For the time being there is no concrete information or element picked up on the field that proves the veracity of these facts,” Rouamba said in a statement after the meeting.
She added that authorities had strongly discouraged travel through the north due to “huge risks” of attacks.
Burkina Faso is battling armed groups with links to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.
Rebel fighters have spread over the tri-border area between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger and encroached on coastal West African states despite costly international efforts to stop them.
Regular attacks on towns and villages, army posts and United Nations peacekeepers have caused thousands of deaths, displaced more than two million people across the Sahel and aggravated food insecurity.
Months-old protest becomes a ‘fight for survival’ as mainly marginalised residents of eight villages resist government’s move.
Azamgarh, India – Cradling her toddler in one arm, Arti Sharma adjusts her saree with another as she picks up the placard that says: “Zameen nahi denge, jaan bhi nahi denge [We will neither give our land nor our lives].”
It is a placard her husband Deepak Sharma had made, days before he succumbed to a heart attack at 31.
Oblivious to the reality, the toddler tries to wipe his mother’s tears as she marches to Khiria Bagh in Uttar Pradesh state’s Azamgarh district, where a protest against the acquisition of land for expansion of an airport has been going on for months.
Arti clutches the placard close to her chest. “It keeps our struggle warm with his memories,” she tells Al Jazeera.
Tens of thousands of people residing in eight villages of Azamgarh call their protest a “fight for survival” and it looks like one. On January 26, as India celebrated its 74th Republic Day which marks the adoption of its constitution in 1950, hundreds of villagers were protesting at Khiria Bagh park.
A 90-year-old man, his frail legs shivering with cold, held a small tricolour – the national flag – in his hand as he declared, “We will fight till our last breath. We won’t move until they bring the bulldozer and run it over us.”
There was an air of desperation at the park. A man in his 30s dragged his wheelchair with a tricolour tied to its handle. A woman held a placard as she ran barefoot on the damp mud. A handful of coins clunk to the walls of the rusty tin box meant to collect donations for the protest – meagre savings from meals skipped to feed the movement.
Children had skipped school, women left their chores half-done, daily wage workers who had not earned for months, farmers forced to postpone weeding of their crops – all stood under the sea of tricolours waving over their heads, protesting against the land acquisition for the proposed international airport at Azamgarh.
In 2004, an airstrip was built in this eastern district of Uttar Pradesh. It was not used until November 2018 when state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced its expansion and building of an international airport under an ambitious scheme aimed at upgrading India’s underserved air routes.
A budget of nearly $2.4m was allocated the following year for the proposed airport. According to the statements by Vishal Bharadwaj, the district magistrate of Azamgarh, about 270 hectares (670 acres) of land were meant to be acquired from eight villages – Gadanpur, Hichchanpatti, Jigna Karmanpur, Jamua Hariram, Jamua Jolha, Hasanpur, Kadipur Harikesh, Jehra Pipri, Manduri, and Baldev Manduri – for the project.
Of the residents facing displacement due to the project, an overwhelming 90 percent belong to the Dalit and Other Backward Castes (OBCs) communities with an average family of five earning less than $1,200 annually. Dalits, the former “untouchables”, and OBCs fall at the bottom of India’s complex caste hierarchy and have been historically marginalised.
The area is also the basin of the Tamsa River and is known for its diverse crops, including mangoes, high-quality pulses, jackfruit, potato and pigeon peas.
India’s Land Acquisition Act, 2013 recommends a social impact assessment before any land is acquired by the government. After the local government’s approval of the project, a notification regarding the acquisition is published in the official gazette and in at least two local newspapers.
The elected members of local village councils are then notified of the proposed acquisition, and at least 60 days are given to people to raise their objections. After the physical survey of the land, claims regarding the acquisition are addressed and a report is submitted to the government.
But the Azamgarh administration bypassed all these procedures on October 12 last year as district officials, accompanied by armed police, barged into one of the villages without any prior notice to the village head, activist Rajiv Yadav of local NGO Rihai Manch told Al Jazeera.
Since then, the area has been on a boil.
Sunita Bharti, a 22-year-old resident of Jamua Hariram village protesting at Khiria Bagh, recalled the horror.
“They claimed they had come to check the quality of crops. When I asked why they had brought chains and measuring tapes, the subdivisional magistrate shouted at me: ‘Which caste are you from?’”
Bharti, the only person in the eight villages to have reached post-graduation, said she stood her ground.
“I said ‘I am a chamaar, sir’,” she recalled, referring to a social group within Dalits, who are also known as Jatavs.
“To this, he replied, ‘Being a chamaar, you have the audacity to talk to me?’ I was dragged into the police van, threatened and abused. I want to remind him today that it was a Dalit who gave India its constitution.”
India’s first law minister, Bhimrao Ambedkar, who was born a Dalit but converted to Buddhism in his last days in protest against the caste system, is hailed as the architect of the country’s constitution.
Kismatti, 46, from Jigna Karmanpur village, said the villagers were beaten by the police when they protested against the measuring of their land.
“They fractured the hand of a 65-year-old and broke the legs of another man. Four pradhans [village heads] were picked up and falsely charged with consumption of drugs,” she alleged.
Vikas, a high school student from Hasanpur, said he had a message for the district magistrate. “You must have read the constitution. If you had really believed in it, you wouldn’t have done this to us.”
“The district magistrate says the survey was done via drones and official land records. This is completely unlawful,” activist Yadav told Al Jazeera.
District Magistrate Bharadwaj denied the allegations, calling them “concocted”.
“People are putting all these allegations without any proof. It is something they might have now come up with. The survey was conducted only to find out how much, whose and what type of land is required as per the master plan of the airport authority,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We have made it very clear that no one’s land or property will be taken without their consent. There is no need for people to agitate.”
The protests in Azamgarh saw some of India’s prominent activists, including farmer leader Rakesh Tikait, anti-big dam crusader Medha Patkar and Ramon Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey, extending their support.
“This is vinash [destruction] in the name of vikas [development]. It is a blatant abuse of power by the government which is trying to snatch away the land of poor farmers,” Patkar told Al Jazeera.
“Despite two-three international airports being close to Azamgarh, this project is being forced upon the people … Why this sudden need for an international airport?” she asked.
Azamgarh is about 260km (160 miles) from Uttar Pradesh’s capital Lucknow and nearly 800km (500 miles) from the national capital of New Delhi.
Yadav said activist Pandey was detained on December 24 during a march from Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi town to Azamgarh.
“When we were returning from Varanasi, my brother and I got down to drink water near the Cholapur station. Some people in civil uniform attacked us, snatched our mobiles and dragged us into a numberless white Tata Sumo car. They were shouting, ‘Where is your pistol? Who funds you?’” he said.
“On the way, the kidnappers were receiving a call by the name ‘SSP Azamgarh’. We later got to know that they were from the Special Task Force, Crime Branch. I was dropped at Kandhrapur police station late at night,” he added.
On February 2, two activists belonging to the Purvanchal Farmers Union were attacked by goons who pointed a gun at them. “They said, ‘You are farm leaders. We will kill you,’” the activists said.
So far, three rounds of talks with the administration have remained inconclusive. Also, the police have not registered any report against the attackers.
In a speech on November 22, local parliamentarian Dinesh Lal Yadav “Nirahua”, belonging to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said the people of Azamgarh “have lost their minds”.
“There are only three ways to deal with them: fracture their knees, jail them or kill them,” he allegedly said.
Arti recalled her husband Deepak listening to the speech and struggling to control his anxiety over the loss of his land. “He used to say if they take our land, where will we go? We will be forced to beg,” she said.
Devi (name changed), Deepak’s neighbour, added: “When he went to sleep, he felt immense chest pain. He couldn’t move his limbs. We rushed him to the hospital but lost him on the way.”
“Today, the family is dependent on Deepak’s father’s meagre pension of 1,000 rupees [$12]. All they have is 2.5 biswa [0.07748 acres] of land. If the government snatches it, all of them will die of starvation.”
Residents say at least 20 people from the eight villages, including seven women, have succumbed to the shock and pain of losing their land and livelihoods since October.
“We will die if they snatch our land. Then why not die fighting for it? We are farmers. Land is our first love. They are demanding that we, the poorest of the poor, sacrifice our land. How dare they?” Devi said.
As the dusk fell at Khiria Bagh, Bharti, the postgraduate student, was seen painting a placard that read: “Naari shakti aayi hai, nayi roshni laayi hai [The woman power is here, it has brought a new light].”
“Since I am at the forefront of the protest, my mother worries about my marriage,” she said. “I don’t care about marriage. I have to save my land, my rights and most importantly, my people.”
More than 30 followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church have been killed over the last several days by security forces in the Oromia region amidst tension sparked by a breakaway faction, the privately owned Borkena news site reports.
The church’s leadership had called on followers to dress in black and observe three days of fasting and prayers after three archbishops in Oromia region dissented and announced the formation of a “new holy synod”.
This new synod went ahead and anointed 26 bishops in Oromia.
More than 20 priests and those supporting the position of the main church were arrested in Oromia region’s Arsi Negele Zone, privately owned Addis Maleda online TV reported on Monday.
The main church has sued the Oromia regional government, the federal and Oromia police commissions to stop the setting up of a separate holy synod.
A federal court is expected to make a ruling on Wednesday over the matter.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has also accused the government of “meddling” in its internal affairs after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed instructed his cabinet ministers to keep out of the matter, saying the church should solve the problem through its internal mechanisms.
The church had wanted the government to take its side.
There is anxiety about the future of one of the world’s oldest churches, as both the holy synod and the breakaway group have called for separate rallies in the capital, Addis Ababa, next Sunday.
In the southern province of Hatay, the Reuters news agency reported that a woman’s voice was heard calling for help under a pile of rubble.
“They’re making noises, but nobody is coming,” a resident who gave his name as Deniz said while weeping.
“We’re devastated, we’re devastated. My God… They’re calling out. They’re saying, ‘Save us,’ but we can’t save them. How are we going to save them? There has been nobody since the morning.”
In the Turkish city of Osmaniye, near the epicentre, pouring rain hampered rescuers. The city was without power as the cold and rain set in.
One family camped on the street, scared of the aftershocks – despite the freezing temperatures. Every time they felt an aftershock, the family moved closer into the middle of the street.
A hotel owner in the city told the BBC that of 14 guests staying that night, only seven had been found.
Countries around the world are sending support to help the rescue efforts, including specialist teams, sniffer dogs and equipment.
But the earthquake has caused significant damage to three airports across Turkey, also creating challenges for aid deliveries.
At least 1,400 people are now known to have been killed in Syria, where millions of refugees live in camps on the Turkish border.
Following an international appeal for help, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 45 countries had offered support.
The European Union is sending search and rescue teams to Turkey, while rescuers from the Netherlands and Romania are already on their way. The UK has said it will send 76 specialists, equipment and rescue dogs.
France, Germany, Israel and the US have also pledged to help. Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered help to both Turkey and Syria, as has Iran.
Turkey lies in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones.
In 1999 a quake killed more than 17,000 in the north-west, while in 1939, 33,000 people died in the eastern province of Erzincan.
This earthquake was powerful enough to be felt as far away as Cyprus, Lebanon and Israel.
By Quentin Sommerville in Adana and Anna Foster in Maras area
A Kenyan court has sentenced to death a former Kenyan policeman for the killing of a prominent human rights lawyer and two other people more than six years ago.
Two other ex-policemen and a civilian were sentenced to between 15 and 39 years in prison for the murder of lawyer Willie Kimani, his client and a taxi driver in June 2016.
The four were last year each found guilty of three counts including murder.
All the four can appeal their conviction and sentencing within 14 days.
In her judgement, Justice Jessie Lessit said evidence produced during the trial had shown that the murders were premeditated and the victims brutally tortured and killed.
The bodies of Willie Kimani, Josephat Mwendwa and Joseph Muiruri were found after they had been dumped in a river on the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi.
Mr Kimani was defending motorbike taxi driver Josephat Mwenda who had accused policeman Fredrick Leliman – one of the three officers found guilty – of shooting him for no reason at a traffic stop in 2015.
Mr Kimani, Mr Mwenda and their taxi driver Joseph Muiruri were last seen on 23 June 2016 at a police station.
Their mutilated bodies were recovered two weeks later in a river almost 100km (62 miles) from the city.
The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has disowned two letters making the rounds among social media users in Nigeria on the alleged activities of presidential candidate Bola Tinubu.
The agency said the two letters were forgeries.
The first letter surfaced on Twitter in late January and is a purported reply to an enquiry to the agency on the alleged activities of Mr Tinubu.
It was viewed hundreds of thousands of times by Twitter users in the country.
The NCA told the BBC that it had denied the letter when it was drawn to their attention.
The second letter appeared to “challenge” the first letter.
It suggested that the NCA was threatening to take legal action against a rival presidential campaign team, which it claimed, forged the first letter.
The NCA has confirmed to the BBC that the second letter did not come from them.
The NCA is a law enforcement agency in the UK that focuses on local and international cybercrime, human trafficking, drug trafficking, organised crime, economic crime and weapons trafficking.
A recent investigation by the BBC disinformation unit found that political parties and campaigns in Nigeria were using social media influencers to spread disinformation to discredit their political rivals.
Nigerians will go to the polls on 25 February to elect a new president.
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