Women's Rights

Imagine walking for days and nights to escape gunfire. You carry your child in your arms, guiding them through the darkness to avoid drone attacks. You have no food, no water, and nowhere safe to go.

This is the reality for families in Darfur and across Sudan, where civilians are being trapped, targeted, and terrorised as the country’s brutal war enters its third year. In el-Fasher and other parts of Darfur, entire communities have been besieged. Those who try to flee are attacked; those who remain face starvation, violence, and disease.

Behind these headlines are women and children who are suffering the most. Sexual violence is being used systematically to punish, to terrorise, and to destroy. Women and girls are abducted, forced to work for armed groups during the day, and then assaulted at night, often in front of others. Many survivors are children themselves. Some of the girls who have become pregnant through rape are so young and malnourished that they are unable to feed their babies.

Perpetrators no longer attempt to hide their crimes. Violence has become so widespread that recording or documenting cases can cost you your life. In Tawila, North Darfur, only one clinic run by Doctors Without Borders can provide care for rape survivors.

Boys are also being drawn into the conflict. Over the past 10 days, three trucks filled with children were reported heading towards Nyala, while in South Darfur, children are being armed and sent to fight. Families are disappearing without a trace.

Aid workers are also targeted. They are being kidnapped for ransom, assaulted, sometimes killed, and targeted because armed groups believe humanitarian organisations can pay. Many of those delivering aid are Sudanese women who risk their lives every day to bring food, water, and protection services to others.

Violence has also taken on an ethnic dimension. One displaced person told us, “I cannot go back, they will know by my skin colour which tribe I am from, and they will kill me.”

Sudan is now the world’s largest displacement crisis and one of its most severe humanitarian emergencies. More than 30 million people need urgent assistance. Fifteen million have been forced from their homes. Hunger and cholera are spreading fast. Clinics have been destroyed, schools are closed, and 13 million children are out of school, their education and futures slipping away.

Yet even amid this devastation, Sudanese women’s organisations are leading the response. They are running safe spaces, supporting survivors of violence, and keeping children learning where they can. They know their communities and continue their work despite constant danger. Their courage deserves not only recognition but also support.

The humanitarian response, however, remains catastrophically underfunded. Only about a quarter of what is needed has been received. Without immediate resources, millions will be left without food, medical care, or shelter as famine looms. Funding protection and psychosocial support for women and children is not optional. It is life-saving.

And this is not only a crisis of violence but also a crisis of indifference. Each day the world looks away, more lives are lost and more futures erased. The international community must support investigations into war crimes, including sexual violence, ethnic killings, and attacks on aid workers. Silence is not neutrality. Silence gives a blank cheque for horror to continue.

We must act now, urgently. Governments and donors must fully fund the humanitarian response and ensure access for those delivering aid. They must press all parties to immediately stop attacks on civilians, guarantee safe passage for those fleeing, and allow relief operations to reach those cut off by the fighting.

Humanitarian workers and grassroots organisations are risking their lives so that others might live. The world must match their courage with urgent action.

Above all, Sudan’s women and girls must be part of shaping peace. They are already leading by organising, sheltering, and rebuilding amid the chaos. Their courage offers a glimpse of the country Sudan could still become.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Sheinbaum calls for nationwide review of sexual harassment laws, as attack shines light on Mexico’s poor record on women’s safety.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has called for sexual harassment to be made a crime nationwide after being groped on the street while greeting supporters near the presidential palace in Mexico City.

Sheinbaum, 63, said on Wednesday that she had pressed charges against the man and would review nationwide legislation on sexual harassment following the attack by a drunk man who put his arm around her shoulder, and with the other hand touched her hip and chest, while attempting to kiss her neck.

Mexico’s first woman president removed the man’s hands before a member of her staff stepped between them. The president’s security detail did not appear to be nearby at the moment of the attack, which was caught on camera.

The man was later arrested.

“My thinking is: If I don’t file a complaint, what becomes of other Mexican women? If this happens to the president, what will happen to all the women in our country?” Sheinbaum told her regular morning news conference on Wednesday.

In a post on social media, the president said the attack was “something that many women experience in the country and in the world”.

Presenté una denuncia por el episodio de acoso que viví ayer en la Ciudad de México. Debe quedar claro que, más allá de ser presidenta, esto es algo que viven muchas mujeres en el país y en el mundo; nadie puede vulnerar nuestro cuerpo y espacio personal.

Revisaremos la… pic.twitter.com/jcs6FweI6q

— Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (@Claudiashein) November 5, 2025

Translation: I filed a complaint for the harassment episode that I experienced yesterday in Mexico City. It must be clear that, beyond being president, this is something that many women experience in the country and in the world; no one can violate our body and personal space. We will review the legislation so that this crime is punishable in all 32 states.

Sheinbaum explained that the incident occurred when she and her team had decided to walk from the National Palace to the Education Ministry to save time. She said they could walk the route in five minutes, rather than taking a 20-minute car ride.

She also called on states across Mexico to look at their laws and procedures to make it easier for women to report such assaults and said Mexicans needed to hear a “loud and clear, no, women’s personal space must not be violated”.

Mexico’s 32 states and Mexico City, which is a federal entity, all have their own criminal codes, and not all states consider sexual harassment a crime.

“It should be a criminal offence, and we are going to launch a campaign,” Sheinbaum said, adding that she had suffered similar attacks in her youth.

The incident has put the focus on Mexico’s troubling record on women’s safety, with sexual harassment commonplace and rights groups warning of a femicide crisis, and the United Nations reporting that an average of 10 women are murdered every day in the country.

About 70 percent of Mexican women aged 15 and over will also experience at least one incident of sexual harassment in their lives, according to the UN.

The attack also focused criticism on Sheinbaum’s security detail and on her insistence on maintaining a degree of intimacy with the public, despite Mexican politicians regularly being a target of cartel violence.

But Sheinbaum dismissed any suggestion that she would increase her security or change how she interacts with people following the incident.

At nationwide rallies in September to mark her first year in power, the president allowed supporters to embrace her and take selfies.

Growing up in Rawalpindi, a city adjacent to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, Mahnoor Omer remembers the shame and anxiety she felt in school when she had periods. Going to the toilet with a sanitary pad was an act of stealth, like trying to cover up a crime.

“I used to hide my pad up my sleeve like I was taking narcotics to the bathroom,” says Omer, who comes from a middle-class family – her father a businessman and her mother a homemaker. “If someone talked about it, teachers would put you down.” A classmate once told her that her mother considered pads “a waste of money”.

“That’s when it hit me,” says Omer. “If middle-class families think this way, imagine how out of reach these products are for others.”

Now 25, Omer has gone from cautious schoolgirl to national centrestage in a battle that could reshape menstrual hygiene in Pakistan, a country where critics say economics is compounding social stigma to punish women – simply for being women.

In September, Omer, a lawyer, petitioned the Lahore High Court, challenging what she and many others say is effectively a “period tax” imposed by Pakistan on its more than 100 million women.

Pakistani governments have, under the Sales Tax Act of 1990, long charged an 18 percent sales tax on locally manufactured sanitary pads and a customs tax of 25 percent on imported ones, as well as on raw materials needed to make them. Add on other local taxes, and UNICEF Pakistan says that these pads are often effectively taxed at about 40 percent.

Omer’s petition argues that these taxes – which specifically affect women – are discriminatory, and violate a series of constitutional provisions that guarantee equality and dignity, elimination of exploitation and the promotion of social justice.

In a country where menstruation is already a taboo subject in most families, Omer and other lawyers and activists supporting the petition say that the taxes make it even harder for most Pakistani women to access sanitary products. A standard pack of commercially branded sanitary pads in Pakistan currently costs about 450 rupees ($1.60) for 10 pieces. In a country with a per capita income of $120 a month, that’s the cost of a meal of rotis and dal for a low-income family of four. Cut the cost by 40 percent – the taxes – and the calculations become less loaded against sanitary pads.

At the moment, only 12 percent of Pakistani women use commercially produced sanitary pads, according to a 2024 study by UNICEF and the WaterAid nonprofit. The rest improvise using cloth or other materials, and often do not even have access to clean water to wash themselves.

“If this petition goes forward, it’s going to make pads affordable,” says Hira Amjad, the founder and executive director of Dastak Foundation, a Pakistani nonprofit whose work is focused on promoting gender equality and combating violence against women.

And that, say lawyers and activists, could serve as a spark for broader social change.

The court docket describes the case as Mahnoor Omer against senior officials of the government of Pakistan. But that’s not what it feels like to Omer.

“It feels like women versus Pakistan.”

‘It’s not shameful’

Bushra Mahnoor, founder of Mahwari Justice, a Pakistani student-led organisation whose name translates to “menstrual justice”, realised early just how much of a struggle it could be to access sanitary pads.

Mahnoor – no relation to Omer – grew up in Attock, a city in the northwestern part of Pakistan’s Punjab province, with four sisters. “Every month, I had to check if there were enough pads. If my period came when one of my sisters had hers too,” finding a pad was a challenge, she says.

The struggle continued in school, where, as was the case with Omer, periods were associated with shame. A teacher once made one of her classmates stand for two entire lectures because her white uniform was stained. “That was dehumanising,” she says.

Mahnoor was 10 when she had her first period. “I didn’t know how to use a pad. I stuck it upside down; the sticky side touched my skin. It was painful. No one tells you how to manage it.”

She says that shame was never hers alone, but it’s part of a silence which starts at home and accompanies girls into adulthood. A study on menstrual health in Pakistan shows that eight out of 10 girls feel embarrassed or uncomfortable when talking about periods, and two out of three girls report never having received information about menstruation before it began. The findings, published in the Frontiers in Public Health journal in 2023, link this silence to poor hygiene, social exclusion and missed school days.

In 2022, when floods devastated Pakistan, Mahnoor began Mahwari Justice to ensure that relief camps did not overlook the menstrual needs of women. “We began distributing pads and later realised there’s so much more to be done,” she says. Her organisation has distributed more than 100,000 period kits – each containing pads, soap, underwear, detergent and painkillers – and created rap songs and comics to normalise conversations about menstruation. “When you say the word ‘mahwari’ out loud, you’re teaching people it’s not shameful,” she says. “It’s just life.”

The same floods also influenced Amjad, the Dastak Foundation founder, though her nonprofit has been around for a decade now. Its work now also includes distributing period kits during natural disasters.

But the social stigma associated with menstruation is also closely tied to economics in the ways in which its impact plays out for Pakistani women, suggests Amjad.

“In most households, it’s the men who make financial decisions,” she says. “Even if the woman is bringing the money, she’s giving it to the man, and he is deciding where that money needs to go.”

And if the cost of women’s health feels too high, that’s often compromised. “[With] the inflated prices due to the tax, there is no conversation in many houses about whether we should buy pads,” she says. “It’s an expense they cannot afford organically.”

According to the 2023 study in the Frontiers in Public Health, over half of Pakistani women are not able to afford sanitary pads.

If the taxes are removed, and menstrual hygiene becomes more affordable, the benefits will extend beyond health, says Amjad.

School attendance rates for girls could improve, she said. Currently, more than half of Pakistan’s girls in the five to 16 age group are not in school, according to the United Nations. “We will have stress-free women. We will have happier and healthier women.”

‘Feeling of justice’

Omer says her interest in women’s and minority rights began early. “What inspired me was just seeing the blatant mistreatment every day,” she says. “The economic, physical, and verbal exploitation that women face, whether it’s on the streets, in the media, or inside homes, never sat right with me.”

She credits her mother for making her grow up to be an empathetic and understanding person.

After completing school, she worked as a gender and criminal justice consultant at Crossroads Consultants, a Pakistan-based firm that collaborates with NGOs and development partners on gender and criminal justice reform. At the age of 19, she also volunteered at Aurat March, an annual women’s rights movement and protest held across Pakistan on International Women’s Day – it’s a commitment she has kept up since then.

Her first step into activism came at 16, when she and her friends started putting together “dignity kits”, small care packages for women in low-income neighbourhoods of Islamabad. “We would raise funds with bake sales or use our own money,” she recalls.

The money she was able to raise enabled her to distribute about 300 dignity kits that she and her friends made themselves. They each contained pads, underwear, pain medication and wipes. But she wanted to do more.

She got a chance when she started working at the Supreme Court in early 2025, first as a law clerk. She’s currently pursuing postgraduate studies in gender, peace and security at the London School of Economics and says that she will go back to Pakistan to resume her practice after she graduates.

She became friends with fellow lawyer Ahsan Jehangir Khan, who specialises in taxation and constitutional law. The plan to challenge the “period tax” emerged from their conversations.

“He pushed me to file this petition and try to get justice instead of just sitting around.”

Khan, who is a co-petitioner in the case, says that fighting the taxes is about more than accessibility and affordability of sanitary pads – it’s about justice. “It’s a tax on a biological function,” he says.

Tax policies in Pakistan, he says, are written by “a privileged elite, mostly men who have never had to think about what this tax means for ordinary women”. The constitution, he adds, “is very clear that you cannot have anything discriminatory against any gender whatsoever”.

To Amjad, the Dastak Foundation founder, the fight for menstrual hygiene is closely tied to her other passion – the struggle against climate change. The extreme weather-related crisis, such as floods, that Pakistan has faced in recent times, she says, hit women particularly hard.

She remembers the trauma many women she worked with after the 2022 floods described to her. “Imagine that you are living in a tent and you have mahwari [menstruation] for the first time,” she says. “You are not mentally prepared for it. You are running for your life. You don’t have access to safety or security. That trauma is a trauma for life.”

As temperatures rise on average, women will need to change sanitary pads more frequently during their periods – and a lack of adequate access will prove an even bigger problem, Amjad warns. She supports the withdrawal of taxes on sanitary pads – but only those made from cotton, not plastic ones that “take thousands of years to decompose”.

Amjad is also campaigning for paid menstruation leave. “I have come across women who were fired because they had pain during periods and couldn’t work,” she says. “When you are menstruating, one part of your brain is on menstruation. You can’t really focus properly.”

Meanwhile, opponents of the taxes are hoping that Omer’s petition will pressure the Pakistani government to follow other nations such as India, Nepal and the United Kingdom that have abolished their period taxes.

Taking on that mantle against the government’s policies didn’t come easily to Omer. Her parents, she says, were nervous at first about their daughter going to court against the government. “They said it’s never a good idea to take on the state,” she says.

Now, they’re proud of her, she says. “They understand why this matters.”

To her, the case is not just a legal fight. “When I think of this case, the picture that comes to mind … It’s not a courtroom, it’s a feeling of justice,” she says. “It makes me feel a sense of pride to be able to do this and take this step without fear.”

In Kwara, a Muslim-majority state in north-central Nigeria where religious traditions govern daily life, some young women are defying cultural expectations through football.

They have discovered the camaraderie, competitive spirit, and emotional journey of the sport, while facing disapproval from those who question its appropriateness for modestly dressed women.

When 17-year-old Maryam Muhammed heads to practise at the Model Queens Football Academy in Ilorin, she endures the intense heat — made more challenging by her hijab and leggings — and community criticism.

“They tell me I will not achieve anything. But I believe I will achieve something big,” she says, despite regularly encountering taunts on her way to training.

Though sometimes uncomfortable, maintaining modest dress while playing is non-negotiable for her.

“Sometimes it feels like I want to open the hijab, but I must not expose my hair,” she explained. “I have to put it on as a good Muslim.”

FIFA initially banned hijabs in 2007 on safety grounds, resulting in Iran’s women’s team being excluded from a 2012 Olympic qualifier. The restriction was eased in 2012 and fully lifted in 2014. Morocco’s Nouhaila Benzina made history as the first hijab-wearing player at a senior women’s World Cup in 2023.

Kehinde Muhammed, Maryam’s mother, has weathered criticism for supporting her daughter’s passion. “So many people discouraged me,” she admitted. “But I respect my children’s decisions. I support her and keep praying for her.”

She creates custom hijabs matching team jerseys, emphasising: “I counsel her that this is the normal way you are supposed to be dressed as a Muslim.”

Model Queens coach Muyhideen Abdulwahab works to change community perceptions. “We go out to meet parents, to tell them there are laws in place for modest dressing,” he said. “Despite that, some still say no.”

Nineteen-year-old team member Bashirat Omotosho balances her love for football with family responsibilities. She often misses training to help her mother sell puff puff, a fried dough snack, at their roadside stall to support the family.

“Training is often in the morning, but I have to be here,” she explained while serving customers, watching her teammates sometimes jog past during practice. “I cannot leave my mum — this is how I earn money.”

Titilayo Omotosho, Bashirat’s mother, initially opposed her daughter’s athletic ambitions.

“Why would a lady choose football?” she questioned.

Omotosho’s stance softened after her husband’s approval and seeing successful Muslim players like Nigeria star Asisat Oshoala. “Seeing other Muslim girls succeed, like Asisat, encouraged us to let her play,” she said, referencing the record six-time African Women’s Footballer of the Year. Oshoala, who plays without a hijab, comes from Lagos in southwest Nigeria, where Islamic practices are less conservative.

According to local football administrator Ambali Abdulrazak, despite growing interest, female participation remains limited in Ilorin.

The Nigeria Women’s Football League (NWFL) ranks among Africa’s strongest, dominated by southern clubs from Lagos and Port Harcourt, where infrastructure and social support are more established. Northern and central regions face cultural and religious barriers, though grassroots initiatives are expanding.

Nationwide, women’s football is gaining popularity, driven by the national team’s success, increased sponsorships, and development programmes. Since 2020, NWFL viewership has increased by 40 percent, with match attendance rising 35 percent in 2024, according to Nigerian media company iTelemedia, which monitors audience trends across local leagues.

During a recent training session, Muhammed and her teammates practised on a sandy school pitch as the sun set, their voices mingling with the muezzin’s call to prayer from a nearby mosque.

On August 29, Muhammed captained the Model Queens in a youth tournament final, which they lost. She high-fived teammates and celebrated as they received runners-up medals, but later cried alone in her room over the defeat.

Her family’s support and faith sustain her determination. “I really love this sport. I have a passion for it,” she said. “Since my parents support me, there is nothing stopping me. Football is my dream.”

Banned from playing football at home, they’re now back on the world stage. For the first time since the Taliban regained power in 2021, Afghanistan’s women’s football team will compete in an official tournament, albeit under a different name. Samantha Johnson looks at the remarkable journey of a team seeking recognition

If bill is signed into law, Portugal would join several European countries which already have full or partial bans.

Portugal has approved a bill to ban face veils used for “gender or religious motives” in most public spaces that was proposed by the far-right Chega party and targets burqas and niqabs worn by Muslim women.

Under the bill, approved by parliament on Friday, proposed fines for wearing face veils in public would range from 200 to 4,000 euros ($234-$4,670). Forcing someone to wear one would be punishable with prison terms of up to three years.

Face veils would still be allowed in aeroplanes, diplomatic premises and places of worship.

According to local media reports, the bill is now set to be discussed in the parliamentary committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms, and Guarantees – a body responsible for reviewing legislation related to constitutional matters.

If signed into law, it would put Portugal alongside European countries, including France, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, which already have full or partial bans.

President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa could still veto the bill or send it to the Constitutional Court for checks.

During Friday’s parliamentary session, Chega leader Andre Ventura was confronted by several female lawmakers from left-wing parties who opposed the bill, but it passed with support from the centre-right coalition.

“We are today protecting female members of parliament, your daughters, our daughters, from having to use burqas in this country one day,” Ventura said.

In a post on X, he wrote: “Today is a historic day for our democracy and for the safeguarding of our values, our identity and women’s rights.”

Andreia Neto, a lawmaker from the ruling Social Democratic Party, said before the vote: “This is a debate on equality between men and women. No woman should be forced to veil her face.”

Two out of the 10 parties in parliament abstained from the vote – the People-Animals-Nature party, and the Together for the People party, according to local media reports.

The parties have suggested that the proposal incited discrimination.

Only a small minority of Muslim women in Europe cover their faces, and in Portugal such veils are very rare.

But full-face coverings such as niqabs and burqas have become a polarising issue across Europe, with some arguing that they symbolise gender discrimination or can represent a security threat and should be outlawed.

Police in Peru say they have arrested the main suspects in the murders of two women and a girl whose torture was streamed live on social media in Argentina, prompting outrage and mass protests.

At least 679 titles blacklisted, including texts on human rights, women’s rights and Western political thought.

Afghanistan‘s Taliban-run government plans to remove books written by women from university curricula.

A member of the committee reviewing textbooks confirmed the ban to BBC Afghan on Friday. The blacklisting is part of an educational decree that also prohibits education courses “deemed in conflict with Islamic Sharia”.

The committee member told BBC Afghanistan that “all books authored by women are not allowed to be taught.”

At least 679 titles were banned due to their “anti-Sharia and Taliban policies”, he added.

The books affected cover every field of study, including texts on constitutional law, Islamic political movements and the political system, as well as human rights, women’s studies and Western political thought.

A final list of banned books will be issued to universities at a later date.

A directive, which was seen by BBC Afghan, was signed by the Taliban’s deputy higher education minister, Ziaur Rahman Aryoubi, and the 50-page list of banned books was sent to Afghan universities at the end of last month.

Aryoubi said in a letter to the universities that the decisions had been taken by a panel of “religious scholars and experts” and that the banned books should be replaced with course materials that “do not conflict with Islam”.

The decree is the latest in a series of restrictions the Taliban has imposed since returning to power four years ago.

The Taliban has cracked down on many aspects of education, from firing hundreds of professors on the grounds that they “opposed” the group’s ideology to increasing mandatory religious coursework across all faculties.

Women have been particularly affected. They are no longer allowed to attend school past the sixth grade (age 12).

Universities have also been ordered to stop teaching 18 subjects, six of which are specifically about women, including gender and development. Another 201 courses were under review.

‘Misogynistic mindset’

Zakia Adeli, the former deputy minister of justice before the Taliban’s return in August 2021 and author of Political Terminology and International Relations, one of the banned books, told BBC Afghan that she was unsurprised by the move.

“Considering what the Taliban have done over the past four years, it was not far-fetched to expect them to impose changes on the curriculum,” said Adeli.

“Given the Taliban’s misogynistic mindset and policies, it is only natural that when women themselves are not allowed to study, their views, ideas and writings are also suppressed.”

Sources in the capital Kabul told the Independent Persian outlet that the ban on such a large number of textbooks would cripple the country’s higher education system, as universities will now have to dedicate significant resources to finding and acquiring replacements.

Alongside the female-authored books, a further 300 written by Iranian authors or issued by Iranian publishers are being targeted.

Sources, including one on the book review committee, said this was to “prevent the infiltration of Iranian content” into the country’s curriculum.

In recent years, the relationship between the two neighbouring countries has been strained, particularly over water rights. This tension has been further compounded by Iran’s ejection of more than 1.5 million Afghans who had been living in the country.

Melbourne, Australia – Lee Little recalls the phone call with her daughter in December 2017; it was just minutes before Alicia was killed.

“I spoke to her 15 minutes before she died,” Little told Al Jazeera.

“I asked her, was she OK? Did you want us to come up to pick you up? And she said, ‘No, I’ve got my car. I’m right, Mum, everything’s packed.’”

Alicia Little was on the verge of finally leaving an abusive four-and-a-half-year relationship.

Not only had Alicia rung her mother, but she had also called the police emergency hotline for assistance, as her fiance Charles Evans fell into a drunken rage.

Alicia knew what to expect from her partner: extreme violence.

Evans had a history of abuse towards Alicia, with her mother recounting to Al Jazeera the first time it occurred.

“The first time he actually bashed her, she was on the phone to me. And the next minute, I heard him come across and try to grab her phone,” Little said.

“I heard her say, ‘Get your hands off my throat. I can’t breathe.’ And the next minute, you hear him say, ‘You’re better off dead.’”

Little told how she had taken photos of her daughter’s terrible injuries.

“She had broken ribs. She had a broken cheekbone, broken jaw, black eyes, and where he’d had her around the throat, you could see his finger marks. It was a bruise, and where he’d give her a kick, and right down the side, you could see his foot marks.”

Like many abusive relationships, a pattern would emerge, whereby Alicia would leave temporarily, only to return after Evans promised to change his behaviour.

“This went on and off for the four and a half years,” Little said.

“He’d bash her, she’d come home, and then she’d say to me, ‘Mum, he’s told me that he’s gone and got help.’”

Yet the violence only escalated.

On the night Alicia decided to leave for good, Evans drove his four-wheel-drive at her, pinning her between the front of the vehicle and a water tank.

Alicia Little, aged 41 and a mother of two boys, died within minutes before the police she had called could arrive.

As she lay drawing her final breaths, security camera footage would later show her killer drinking beer at the local pub, where he drove to after running Alicia down.

Evans was arrested, and after initially being charged with murder, had his charges downgraded to dangerous driving causing death and failing to render assistance after a motor vehicle accident.

He would walk free from jail after only two years and eight months.

The statistics

Alicia Little is just one of the many women in Australia killed every year, in what activists such as The Red Heart Campaign’s Sherele Moody are saying is so prevalent that it amounts to a “femicide”: the targeted killing of women by men.

According to government data, one woman was killed in Australia every eight days on average between 2023-2024.

Moody, who documents the killings, contests those statistics, telling Al Jazeera they do not represent the true scale of deadly attacks on women in the country.

Government data records “domestic homicide”; women killed resulting in a conviction of murder or manslaughter.

As in the case of Alicia Little, the lesser charges her killer was convicted on related to motoring offences and do not amount to a domestic homicide under government reporting and are not reflected in the statistics.

“One of the key weapons that perpetrators use against women in Australia is vehicles,” Moody told Al Jazeera.

“They almost always get charged with dangerous driving, causing death. That is not a homicide charge. It doesn’t get counted despite it being a domestic violence act, an act of domestic violence perpetrated by a partner,” Moody said.

“The government underrepresents the epidemic of violence. And in the end, the numbers that they’re using influence their policy. It influences their funding decisions. It influences how they speak to us as a community about violence against women,” she said.

Moody said that between January 2024 and June this year, she had documented 136 killings of women; many – like Alicia Little – by their partners. “Ninety-six percent of the deaths I record are perpetrated by men.”

“Around 60 percent of the deaths are the result of domestic and family violence,” she said.

While much focus is on women’s safety in public spaces – for example, walking home alone at night – Moody said the least safe place for a woman is actually in her own home.

“The reality is that if you’re going to be killed, whether you’re a man or woman or a child, you’re going to be killed by someone you know,” she said.

Data shows that only about 10 percent of female victims are killed by strangers, deaths often sensationally covered by the media and prompting public debate about women’s safety.

“Yes, stranger killings do happen, and when they do, they get a lot of focus and a lot of attention, and it lulls people into a false sense of security about who is perpetrating the violence,” Moody said.

Male violence in Australia

Patty Kinnersly, CEO of Our Watch, a national task force to prevent violence against women, said attacks on women are the “most extreme outcome of broader patterns of gendered violence and inequality”.

“When we refer to the gendered drivers of violence, we are talking about the social conditions and power imbalances that create the environment where this violence occurs,” Kinnersly said.

“These include condoning or excusing violence against women, men’s control of decision-making, rigid gender stereotypes and dominant forms of masculinity, and male peer relations that promote aggression and disrespect towards women,” she said.

“Addressing the gendered drivers is vital because violence against women is not random; it reflects deeply entrenched inequalities and norms in society. If we do not address these root causes, we cannot achieve long-term prevention,” she added.

Patterns of male violence are deeply rooted in Australia’s colonial history, in which men are told they need to be physically and mentally tough, normalising male aggression, write authors Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson.

“For much of the 19th century, men far outnumbered women within the European population of the Australian colonies. This produced a culture that prized hyper-masculinity as a national ideal,” they write.

Colonial male aggression also resulted in extreme violence perpetrated on Indigenous women during the frontier times, through rape and massacres.

Misogyny and racism were also promoted in Australia’s parliament during the 20th century, as legislators crafted assimilationist laws aimed at controlling the lives of Indigenous women and removing their children as part of what has become known as the “Stolen Generations”.

Up to a third of Indigenous children were removed from their families as part of a suite of government policies between 1910 and 1970, resulting in widespread cultural genocide and intergenerational social, economic and health disparities.

This legacy of colonial racism and discrimination continues to play out in vast socioeconomic inequalities experienced by Indigenous people in the present day, including violence against women, activists say.

Recent government data shows that Indigenous women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised due to violence than non-Indigenous women in Australia and six times more likely to die as a result of family violence.

“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are among the most at-risk groups for family violence and intimate partner homicide in Australia,” First Nations Advocates Against Family Violence (FNAAFV) Chief Executive Officer Kerry Staines told Al Jazeera.

“These disproportionately high rates are the result of historical injustice and ongoing systemic failure,” Staines said, including forced displacement of Indigenous communities, child removals and the breakdown of family structures.

“Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have been affected by multigenerational trauma caused by institutional abuse, incarceration and marginalisation. When trauma is left unaddressed, and support services are inadequate or culturally unsafe, the risk of violence, including within relationships, increases,” she said.

Indigenous women are also the fastest-growing prison cohort in Australia.

On any given night, four out of 10 women in prison are Indigenous women, despite making up only 2.5 per cent of the adult female population.

Staines said there is a nexus between domestic violence and incarceration.

“There is a clear and well-documented relationship between the hyper-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the high rates of family violence experienced in our communities,” she said.

“The removal of parents and caregivers from families due to imprisonment increases the likelihood of child protection involvement, housing instability and intergenerational trauma, all of which are risk factors for both perpetration and victimisation of family violence.”

‘Toxic culture’

While Australia was one of the first Western countries to grant women voting rights, deeply rooted inequalities persisted through much of the 20th century, with women being excluded from much of public and civic life, including employment in the government sector and the ability to sit on juries, until the 1970s.

This exclusion from positions of authority – including the judicial system – allowed a culture of “victim blaming” to develop, particularly in instances of domestic abuse and sexual assault, activists say.

Rather than holding male perpetrators to account and addressing violence, focus remained on the actions of female victims: what they may have been wearing, where they had been, and prior sexual histories as a basis for apportioning blame to those who had suffered the consequences of gender-based violence.

Such was the case with Isla Bell, a 19-year-old woman from Melbourne, who police allege was beaten to death in October 2024.

Media reporting on Isla’s death focused largely on her personal life and provided graphic details about her death, while little attention was given to the two men who were charged with Isla’s alleged murder.

Isla’s mother, Justine Spokes, said the reporting “felt really abusive”.

“The way in which my daughter’s murder was reported on just highlights the pervasive toxic culture that is systemic in Australia,” said Spokes, describing a “victim-blaming narrative” around the killing of her daughter.

“It was written in a really biased way that felt really disrespectful, devaluing and dehumanising,” she said, adding that society had become desensitised to male violence against women in Australia.

“It’s just become so normalised, which I think is actually a sign of trauma, that we’re numb to it. It’s been pervasive for that long. If that’s the mainstream psyche in Australia, it’s just so dangerous,” she said.

“I really think that this pervasive, toxic, misogynistic culture, it’s definitely written into our law. It’s very colonial,” she added.

The Australian government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has committed to the ambitious task of tackling violence against women within a generation.

A spokesperson from the Department of Social Services told Al Jazeera the government has invested 4 billion Australian dollars ($2.59bn) to deliver on the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032.

“The Australian Government acknowledges the significant levels of violence against women and children including intimate partner homicides,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“Ending gender-based violence remains a national priority for the Australian Government. Our efforts to end gender based violence in one generation are not set-and-forget – we are rigorously tracking, measuring and assessing our efforts, and making change where we must,” the spokesperson added.

Yet for Lee Little, mother of Alicia Little who was killed in 2017, not enough is being done, and she does not feel justice was served in the case of her daughter, describing the killer’s light sentence as “gut-wrenching”.

Little is now petitioning for a national domestic violence database in a bid to hold perpetrators accountable and allow women to gain access to information regarding prior convictions.

“Our family would love a national database, because perpetrators, at this moment, anywhere in Australia, can do a crime in one state and move to another, and they’re not recognised” as offenders in their new location, she said.

Little said public transparency around prior convictions would protect women from entering into potentially abusive relationships in the first place.

Yet the Australian federal government has yet to implement such a database, in part due to the complexities of state jurisdictions.

The federal attorney-general’s office told Al Jazeera that “primary responsibility for family violence and criminal matters rests with the states and territories, with each managing their own law enforcement and justice systems”.

“Creation of a publicly accessible national register of perpetrators of family violence could only be implemented with the support of state and territory governments, who manage the requisite data and legislation.”

Despite the apparent intransigence in law, Little remains committed to calling out violence against women wherever she sees it.

“I’ve been to supermarkets where there’s been abuse in front of me, and I’ve stepped in,” she said.

“I will be a voice for Alicia and for a national database till my last breath,” she added.

On a recent evening in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, an imam named Ibrahima Diane explained to a group of men why they ought to be more involved in household chores.

“The prophet himself says that a man who does not help to support his wife and children is not a good Muslim,” said the 53-year-old, as he described bathing his baby and assisting his wife with other duties.

Some of the men chuckled, not entirely convinced, while others applauded.

Diane was participating in a “school for husbands”, a United Nations-backed initiative in which respected male community members learn about “positive masculinity” in relation to health and social issues, and promote these concepts within their communities.

In Senegal, as in many other West African countries with large rural or conservative populations, men often have the final say in major household decisions, including those related to health.

Women may require their husbands’ permission for life-changing decisions, such as accessing family planning or other reproductive health services, as well as hospital deliveries or prenatal care.

After attending the school for husbands, Diane regularly delivers sermons during Friday prayers, in which he discusses issues around gender and reproductive health, from gender-based violence to combating stigma surrounding HIV.

“Many women appreciate my sermons,” he said. “They say their husbands’ behaviour has changed since attending them.” He added that some men have told him the sermons inspired them to become more caring husbands and fathers.

The programme was launched in Senegal in 2011, but in recent years has attracted the attention of the Ministry of Women, Family, Gender and Child Protection, which regards it as an effective strategy for combatting maternal and infant mortality.

“Without men’s involvement, attitudes towards maternal health will not change,” said Aida Diouf, a 54-year-old female health worker who collaborates with the programme. Many husbands prefer their wives not to be treated by male health workers, she explained.

Discussions for men have also focused on girls’ rights, equality, and the harmful effects of female genital mutilation.

The programme now operates at least 20 schools throughout Senegal, and more than 300 men have been trained.

In some communities, men who once enforced patriarchal norms now promote gender equality, a shift which has led to a reduction in the number of forced marriages and greater acceptance of family planning, according to Senegal’s Ministry of Gender.

Men join the groups after being recruited based on trust, leadership and commitment. Candidates must be married, respected locally, and supportive of women’s health and rights.

After training, the men serve as peer educators, visiting homes and hosting informal discussions.

Although maternal and infant deaths in Senegal have declined over the past decade, experts say there is still much progress to be made. The country recorded 237 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023, and 21 newborns out of every 1,000 died within their first month. The UN’s global target is to reduce maternal deaths to 70 per 100,000 live births and newborn deaths to under 12 per 1,000 by 2030.

A key problem is that many women have continued to give birth at home, said El Hadj Malick, one of the programme’s coordinators.

“By educating men about the importance of supporting their wives during pregnancy, taking them to hospital and helping with domestic work at home, you are protecting people’s health,” Malick said.

He noted that he still encounters difficulty in changing attitudes on some issues.

“But when we focus on women’s right to be healthy, it gives a human face to the concept and it becomes universal,” Malick said.

Marius Borg Hoiby faces up to 10 years in prison after being charged with 32 criminal offences, including rape.

The son of Norway’s crown princess has been charged with raping four women, domestic violence, assault and other crimes following a yearlong police investigation, according to prosecutors.

Marius Borg Hoiby, 28, son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit and stepson of the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Haakon, is expected to stand trial early next year and could face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of the most serious charges, Oslo state attorney Sturla Henriksbo said on Monday.

Hoiby denies the most serious accusations against him but plans to plead guilty to some lesser charges in court when the trial starts, his lawyer Petar Sekulic told the Reuters news agency.

“He does not agree with the claims regarding rape and domestic violence,” Sekulic said of his client.

Hoiby was charged on Monday with 32 criminal offences, including one count of rape with sexual intercourse and three counts of rape without intercourse, some of which he filmed on his telephone, the prosecution said.

Henriksbo estimates the trial could begin in mid-January and take about six weeks.

Hoiby does not have a royal title and is outside the line of royal succession.

“It is up to the courts to hear this case and to reach a decision,” the royal palace said in a statement.

The prosecutor said Hoiby, as a member of the royal family, would not be treated “more lightly or more severely” than anyone else in similar circumstances.

Domestic abuse

Police in November last year held Hoiby in detention for one week as part of the investigation.

In August of last year, Hoiby was named as a suspect of physical assault against a woman with whom he had been in a relationship – the only victim identified by the prosecution, Nora Haukland.

“The violence consisted, among other things, of him repeatedly hitting her in the face, including with a clenched fist, choking her, kicking her and grabbing her hard,” the prosecutor said.

Hoiby, in a statement to the media at the time, admitted to causing bodily harm to the woman while he was under the influence of cocaine and alcohol and of damaging her apartment. He had stated then that he regretted his actions.

According to media reports, he spent time with gang members, Hells Angels bikers and members of Oslo’s Albanian mafia. In 2023, police contacted him to discuss his hangouts with “notorious criminals”.

It emerged last year that Hoiby had already been arrested in 2017 for using cocaine at a music festival.

The Taliban’s leader has warned that Afghans ungrateful for its hardline rule will be severely punished by God in a statement marking the fourth anniversary of the group’s return to power.

The statement from Haibatullah Akhunzada was made in a social media post on Friday to commemorate “Victory Day”, four years on from the chaotic United States and NATO withdrawal from the country after more than 20 years of war as the Taliban retook the capital, Kabul.

The threat was a stark reminder of the sweeping restrictions and repression of rights, especially of women and girls, that has taken place under the Taliban’s rule, which is based on its strict interpretation of Islamic law.

In his statement, Akhunzada said Afghans had faced hardships for decades in the name of establishing religious law in the country, which he said had saved citizens from “corruption, oppression, usurpation, drugs, theft, robbery and plunder”.

“These are great divine blessings that our people should not forget and, during the commemoration of Victory Day, express great gratitude to Allah Almighty so that the blessings will increase,” his statement said.

“If, against God’s will, we fail to express gratitude for blessings and are ungrateful for them, we will be subjected to the severe punishment of Allah Almighty.”

He also advised government ministers to remove the word “acting” from their job titles, signalling the consolidation of his administration’s rule in the country amid a lack of internal opposition.

Victory Day

Four years on from its return to power, the Taliban government remains largely isolated in the international arena over the severe rights restrictions imposed under its rule although Russia became the first country to officially recognise the Taliban administration in early July.

It also has close ties with China, the United Arab Emirates and a number of Central Asian states although none of these officially recognises the Taliban administration.

Victory Day parades were planned in several Afghan cities on Friday, and in Kabul, helicopters were scheduled to drop flowers across the city. Photographs of an official ceremony in Kabul to open the commemorations showed a hall filled exclusively with male delegates.

‘An open wound of history’

Rather than celebrating, members of the activist group United Afghan Women’s Movement for Freedom staged an indoor protest in the northeastern province of Takhar against the Taliban’s oppressive rule, The Associated Press news agency reported.

“This day marked the beginning of a black domination that excluded women from work, education and social life,” the group said in a statement to the agency.

“We, the protesting women, remember this day not as a memory, but as an open wound of history, a wound that has not yet healed. The fall of Afghanistan was not the fall of our will. We stand, even in the darkness.”

Afghan women also held an indoor protest in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, the agency reported.

Repression and death threats

The United Nations, foreign governments and human rights groups have condemned the Taliban for their treatment of women and girls, who are banned from most education and work, as well as parks, gyms and travelling without a male guardian.

Inspectors from the Vice and Virtue Ministry require women to wear a chador, a full-body cloak covering the head, while a law announced a year ago ordered women not to sing or recite poetry in public and for their voices and bodies to be “concealed” outside the home.

Last month, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Akhunzada and the country’s chief justice on charges of committing gender-based persecution against women and girls.

ICC judges said the Taliban had “severely deprived” girls and women of the rights to education, privacy, family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion.

At least 1.4 million girls have been “deliberately deprived” of their right to an education by the Taliban government, a UN report from August 2024 found.

Among the restrictions imposed on women is a ban on working for nongovernmental groups, among other jobs. A UN report this month revealed that dozens of Afghan women working for the organisation in the country had received direct death threats.

The report said the Taliban had told the UN mission that its cadres were not responsible for the threats and a Ministry of Interior Affairs investigation is under way. An Interior Ministry spokesman, Abdul Mateen Qani, later told The Associated Press news agency that no threats had been made.

In the meantime, Iran, Pakistan and the US have been sending Afghan refugees back to Taliban rule, where they risk persecution.

A key annual United States government report on global human rights abuses has drastically shifted focus, with references removed to abuses based on sexual orientation, and poor conditions downplayed in ally nations while taking aim at those who have clashed with President Donald Trump.

Released on Tuesday, the 2024 State Department Human Rights Report, was issued months late as Trump appointees altered an earlier draft dramatically to bring it in line with America First values, according to government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The report introduced new categories such as “Life”, and “Liberty,” and “Security of the Person.”

The department referred to its new report as “streamlined” and focused on remaining “aligned to the administration’s executive orders”.

While the 2023 report contains a lengthy introduction with numerous appendices and citations, the newest report has a single introductory page that stresses a desire to “minimize the amount of statistical data in the report”. An NPR analysis found individual country reports are, on average, one-third the length of the previous year’s.

There is no mention of discrimination against women, members of the LGBTQ community, or on the basis of race in the latest report introduction.

Instead, the report sounds an alarm about the erosion of freedom of speech in Europe and ramped up criticism of Brazil and South Africa, both of which Washington has clashed with over a host of issues.

Any criticism of governments for their treatment of LGBTQ rights, which appeared in Biden administration editions of the report, appears to have been omitted.

The report’s section on Israel is much shorter than last year’s edition and contains no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis or death toll in Gaza. Some 61,000 people have died, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as a result of Israel’s military operations in response to an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in October 2023.

While last year’s report underscored numerous acts of anti-Semitism in Hungary, noting that a local survey found half the population were “moderately or strongly anti-Semitic”, the new report says the close Trump ally has “made combating anti-Semitism a top priority, publicly emphasizing its welcoming and open environment for Jews”.

The report claims “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in El Salvador – where Trump has gained help from President Nayib Bukele, whose country is receiving $6m from the US to house migrant deportees in a high-security mega-prison.

Rights group Amnesty International said in a statement that the report “purposefully fail[ed]” to capture rights abuses in a number of countries.

This year’s Human Rights Report from the U.S. State Department reveals a disturbing effort by the Trump administration to purposefully fail to fully capture the alarming and growing attacks on human rights in certain countries around the globe.

— Amnesty International USA (@amnestyusa) August 12, 2025

This year’s Human Rights Report from the US Department of State shows a visible effort by the Trump administration to purposefully fail to fully capture the alarming and growing attacks on human rights in certain countries around the globe.

On Monday, rights group coalition the Council for Global Equality sued (PDF) the State Department to release report documents, alleging the department had potentially manipulated its latest human rights report.

For decades, the State Department’s congressionally mandated Human Rights Report has been used as a blueprint of reference for global rights advocacy.

This year’s report was prepared following a major revamp of the department, which included the firing of hundreds of people, many from the agency’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which takes the lead in writing the report.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in April, wrote an opinion piece that said the bureau had become a platform for “left-wing activists,” saying the Trump administration would reorient the bureau to focus on “Western values”.

Taking aim at Brazil and South Africa

In Brazil, where the Trump administration has clashed with the government, the State Department found the human rights situation had declined, after the 2023 report found no significant changes. This year’s report took aim at the courts, stating they took action undermining freedom of speech and disproportionately suppressing the speech of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, among others.

Bolsonaro is on trial before the Supreme Court on charges he conspired with allies to violently overturn his 2022 electoral loss to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Trump has referred to the case as a “witch hunt” and called it grounds for a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods.

In South Africa, whose government the Trump administration has accused of racial discrimination towards Afrikaners, this year’s report said the human rights situation significantly worsened. It stated that “South Africa took a substantially worrying step towards land expropriation of Afrikaners and further abuses against racial minorities in the country.”

In last year’s report, the State Department found no significant changes in the human rights situation in South Africa.

Trump, earlier this year, issued an executive order that called for the US to resettle Afrikaners, describing them as victims of “violence against racially disfavored landowners,” allegations that echoed far-right claims but which have been contested by South Africa’s government.

Taliban rulers say they are not behind the threats and are investigating, according to the United Nations.

Explicit death threats have been made against dozens of Afghan women working for the United Nations in Afghanistan, according to a new UN report, where their rights have been severely curtailed since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

The UN mission to the country said female national staff were subjected to direct death threats in May, in the latest update on the human rights situation in Afghanistan published on Sunday.

The report says the Taliban told the UN mission that their cadres were not responsible for the threats, and an Interior Ministry investigation is under way.

The Interior Ministry spokesman, Abdul Mateen Qani, however, said no threats had been made. “This is completely incorrect”, Qani told The Associated Press news agency.

“The ministry has an independent department for this, and we have a strategic plan for protection and security so there is no threat to them in any area, nor can anyone threaten them, nor is there any threat to them.” Qani did not answer questions about an investigation, according to AP.

The threats came from unidentified individuals related to their work with the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, other agencies, funds, and programmes, “requiring the U.N. to implement interim measures to protect their safety”, according to the report.

The Taliban barred Afghan women from working at domestic and foreign nongovernmental organisations in December 2022, extending this ban to the UN six months later. They then threatened to shut down agencies and groups still employing women. Aid agencies and NGOs say the Taliban have disrupted or interfered with their operations, allegations denied by authorities.

The UN report is the first official confirmation of death threats against Afghan women working in the sector. The report also highlighted other areas affecting women’s personal freedoms and safety, including inspectors from the Vice and Virtue Ministry requiring women to wear a chador, a full-body cloak covering the head. Women have been arrested for only wearing the hijab.

Women have also been denied access to public areas, in line with laws banning them from such spaces.

A UN report from August 2024 found that Afghanistan’s Taliban government has “deliberately deprived” at least 1.4 million girls of their right to an education during its three years in power.

About 300,000 more girls are missing out on school since UNESCO last carried out a count in April 2023, it said on Thursday, warning that “the future of an entire generation is now in jeopardy.”

ICC targets Taliban for persecution of women

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants in July for two top Taliban leaders in Afghanistan on charges of abuses against women and girls.

ICC judges said at the time there were “reasonable grounds” to suspect Taliban Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhunzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani of committing gender-based persecution.

“While the Taliban have imposed certain rules and prohibitions on the population as a whole, they have specifically targeted girls and women by reason of their gender, depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms,” the court said in a statement in July.

The Taliban has “severely deprived” girls and women of the rights to education, privacy, family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion, ICC judges said.

The Taliban has rejected the ICC warrants as “baseless rhetoric”, saying it does not recognise the ICC’s authority, and underlined the court’s failure to protect the “hundreds of women and children being killed daily” in Gaza.

At the transit camp in Islam Qala in western Afghanistan, Fatima steps out of the bus into the blazing heat and an uncertain future. She is one of 10,000 people who has arrived from Iran that day and one of 800,000 who has arrived over the last six months. She hurries her three children to an empty spot, slumps onto the dusty ground, and shelters her family with bed sheets. When asked where she goes from here, she says a brother might take them in in her home town.

The IFRC supports the Afghan Red Crescent Society to provide hot food and healthcare at the camp. UN agencies provide some cash. But within a day, it’s time to leave. Bus drivers call out the names of Afghan cities and towns. Fatima lugs her cases towards a bus to Owbeh, in Herat province. Her three children trail behind her. She explains that she learned carpet weaving in Iran, but wasn’t allowed to bring any materials or instruments with her. How can she start from scratch without money, she asks. And who would buy her carpets in her village anyway? They have nothing. Not even to eat.

The departure from Iran has been traumatic, but her real challenges start now. When she arrives in her hometown, there will be no jobs in the public sector for her. Men will be reluctant to hire her because of the rules and regulations associated with employing women. Her one chance to cope will be to get her own enterprise going. For that, she’ll need start-up capital. She may also need assistance from her brother to access markets. It will be a struggle, but increasing numbers of Afghan women are rising to this challenge. Fatima could, too. If only she could get access to credit.

But will anyone in her community be able to buy her products? Like most Afghans, her neighbours will largely depend on agriculture, which will depend on irrigation and rain. In much of Herat province, and across the country, irrigation is becoming impossible because of drought. Rivers are dust. Underground water sources are drying up. With no possibility to farm, men are pouring into the cities in search of daily labour, only to find the battle for water is raging there, too. Mercy Corps has claimed that half of the boreholes in Kabul have dried out and the city could run out of accessible groundwater in five years. This trajectory could be slowed down or reversed, but only with major investment in water conservation, rain vats, storage dams, and check dams. Just the sort of investment that Afghanistan is struggling to raise.

If Fatima can earn a little money and live close to water, then she can focus on her children’s schooling. Her daughter will have to attend a madrassa. This will be a significant downgrade from her education in Iran. But if she’s lucky, it will be one of the many madrassas that are already introducing more varied subjects and offering classes until 12th grade. If she’s resourceful and can invest some funds, there may be other options too, including vocational training and online courses. The restrictions she will have to navigate are extreme, but not new. They reflect a long-running struggle between cities and the countryside, between desires for self-realisation and deeply rooted patriarchy. Foreign aid may help by quietly creating multiple and flexible opportunities to exchange and learn, while recognising that the ideological battles are for the Afghans themselves and will take time. Some organisations are trying to do this, but not to scale.

It will take a lot of luck for Fatima to get investment in her social enterprise, to access clean drinking water and to get an education for her children. The alternative is grim, and sadly, much more likely. Like most new arrivals, she will probably be destitute within weeks. She won’t access the rare opportunities for business support. Lack of water will empty the villages around her. If she stays put, her health will fail. Medical care will be too far to reach or too expensive. She may be forced to marry her daughter off early and nudge her boys away from school into some cheap, daily labour. This is what is happening across the country. If she can, to avoid such a terrible fate, she will try to get back to Iran.

Can foreign aid play a role in supporting Fatima and the millions like her? Despite all the reservations, humanitarian funding has been generous in the last four years. More than $7bn has been spent on assistance. Enough to have helped tens of thousands of women to start small businesses. Enough to have irrigated farms, deepened bore holes and stored water across the country. Enough to have created thousands of alternative learning options for children. Humanitarian agencies have tried to assist in all these areas, but the demand for emergency relief has taken the bulk of the funds, and many donors have been reticent to invest in anything longer term for fear of appearing to legitimise those in power.

The need for a new approach is compelling. There is less money available now due to aid cuts, but what little is left can still be invested into locally led strategies for livelihoods, water infrastructure, health and learning. This may give people like Fatima a spark of hope in their futures. This is what IFRC will focus on, as much as its resources allow.

If the moral case for that is not compelling enough, it is worth reflecting that on the current trajectory, the historic repatriation to Afghanistan taking place this year is likely to be a prelude to a much bigger exodus in the years to come. It would be far wiser to invest now and give people a chance to thrive in their home country than to invest much more in refugee camps and anti-trafficking work in the near future.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Planned Parenthood says one million patients could lose coverage if it was cut off from Medicaid funds.

A United States federal judge has ruled against President Donald Trump’s effort to defund Planned Parenthood, a reproductive health services organisation that has long attracted conservative ire.

In a decision on Monday, US District Judge Indira Talwani ruled that Planned Parenthood clinics must continue to receive reimbursements for Medicaid, a government health programme for the poor.

“Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Talwani stated in her Monday order. “In particular, restricting Members’ ability to provide healthcare services threatens an increase in unintended pregnancies and attendant complications because of reduced access to effective contraceptives, and an increase in undiagnosed and untreated STIs.”

Planned Parenthood had filed a lawsuit over a provision in a recent Republican tax and spending bill that cut off Medicaid payments for one year to abortion providers who received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023.

The US already prevents federal funds from paying for abortion services, and organisations that provide abortions, such as Planned Parenthood, also offer reproductive health services such as contraception, pregnancy tests and STD testing.

The organisation estimated that the provision in the bill could result in the closure of 200 clinics across 24 states, with more than one million patients at risk of losing coverage.

Conservative politicians have long sought to restrict access to federal funds for Planned Parenthood, the country’s largest abortion provider, as part of a larger push to roll back access to reproductive health services.

Since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, a previous 1973 decision that had established abortion as a constitutional right, in June 2022, numerous Republican-led states have passed new restrictions on abortion or banned it entirely.

“Today, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction, blocking the provision in the reconciliation law that unconstitutionally ‘defunds’ Planned Parenthood from going back into effect,” Planned Parenthood said in a statement on Monday.

“This means that patients can use Medicaid at Planned Parenthood health centers, and Planned Parenthood health centers can receive reimbursements for the essential services they provide.”

A former cleaner claims he was forced to bury the bodies of hundreds of women and girls, on the orders of supervisors at one of southern India’s most revered temples. As Soraya Lennie explains, the case has shocked the country and sparked accusations of a three-decade old cover up.

Pelicot has been praised globally for her courage during trial, which forced changes to France’s rape law.

Gisele Pelicot, who has been internationally hailed after testifying against her husband and dozens of other men who raped her, has been awarded France’s top civic honour.

Pelicot, 72, was named knight of the Legion of Honour on a list announced before France’s July 14 national day, the AFP news agency reported on Sunday.

She was among 589 people named for the honour, which recognises merit-based national service.

Pelicot refused to remain anonymous and publicly testified at a trial in 2024 against her former husband, Dominique Pelicot, who drugged her and arranged for her to be raped by dozens of men over a decade.

His co-conspirators tried to claim they were unaware that the acts were not consensual and blamed the husband.

Gisele Pelicot at the time called it a “trial of cowardice” and asserted there was no excuse for abusing her when she was unconscious. Her testimony gripped the world and led to Dominique Pelicot and 50 co-defendants being found guilty in the mass-rape case.

Lauded for her courage in exposing the case, which forced a change in France’s rape law, she has since been named among the world’s most influential people in international lists.

Gisele Pelicot has not spoken further since the trial. She is focusing on writing a book, scheduled for release in 2026, that delves into her perspective of the ordeal, according to her lawyer.

Writers, artists and international figures are also on the Legion of Honour list.

Singer, music producer and clothing designer Pharrell Williams, writer Marc Levy, actor Lea Drucker, singer Sylvie Vartan, and Holocaust survivor and educator Yvette Levy are some of the other recipients.

Judges say Taliban officials have ‘severely deprived’ girls and women of rights including education.

Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have issued arrest warrants for two top Taliban leaders on charges of persecuting women and girls.

ICC judges on Tuesday said there were “reasonable grounds” to suspect Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani of committing gender-based persecution.

“While the Taliban have imposed certain rules and prohibitions on the population as a whole, they have specifically targeted girls and women by reason of their gender, depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms,” the court said in a statement.

The Taliban had “severely deprived” girls and women of the rights to education, privacy and family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion, ICC judges said.

“In addition, other persons were targeted because certain expressions of sexuality and/or gender identity were regarded as inconsistent with the Taliban’s policy on gender.”

The court said the alleged crimes had been committed between August 15, 2021, when the Taliban seized power, and continued until at least January 20, 2025.

The court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, sought the warrants in January, saying that they recognised that “Afghan women and girls as well as the LGBTQI+ community are facing an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban”.

UK-based rights group Amnesty International welcomed the move by the ICC, saying it was an “important step towards justice”.

“The announcement is an important development that gives hope, inside and outside the country to Afghan women, girls, as well as those persecuted on the basis of gender identity or expression,” Amnesty International chief Agnes Callamard said in a statement.

“This is a crucial step to hold accountable all those allegedly responsible for the gender-based deprivation of fundamental rights to education, to free movement and free expression, to private and family life, to free assembly, and to physical integrity and autonomy.”

The US-based Human Rights Watch also welcomed the decision.

“Senior Taliban leaders are now wanted men for their alleged persecution of women, girls, and gender non-conforming people. The international community should fully back the ICC in its critical work in Afghanistan and globally, including through concerted efforts to enforce the court’s warrants,” Liz Evenson, the group’s international justice director, said in a statement.

The ICC, based in The Hague, was set up to rule on the world’s worst crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has no police force of its own and relies on member states to carry out its arrest warrants – with mixed results.

In theory, this means anyone subject to an ICC arrest warrant cannot travel to a member state for fear of being detained.