Child Marriage Is Still Legal In New York State: HRW Daily Brief

Some 1.5 million children in Tanzania are not receiving secondary school education despite the government making secondary education in the country free, a new report by Human Rights Watch has found today. Difficult entrance exams, corporal punishment, sexual harassment, and a policy of throwing girls who fall pregnant out of school all contribute to the problem. Students with disabilities also find it very hard to attend school. Falling water levels in Kenya’s Lake Turkana following the development of dams and plantations in Ethiopia's lower Omo Valley threaten the livelihoods of half a million indigenous people in Ethiopia and Kenya, HRW has warned. The global battle to end child marriage has come to New York State, where kids as young as 14 can get married as long as they have permission from their parents and a judge. Some 3,850 children in New York State got married between 2001 and 2010. At least 338 practicing lawyers have resigned en masse in Nepal in protest at the appointment of 80 judges, an "extreme step" and the first such action in the 60-year-old history of the country's independent justice system. The UK’s programme to resettle lone children fleeing war used to be a "small beacon of humanity amid Europe’s sorry response to the refugee crisis". But last week's decision by the UK government to end the Dubs scheme has left that legacy in tatters. Staying with refugee kids, about 85 per cent of children on Australia's offshore island detention system of Nauru don't attend school, in part due to bullying and harassment. Four exonerated death row survivors in the US have formed a group to abolish the death penalty in the country, despite still recovering from the pain and trauma of years in prison themselves. Authorities in Oman have barred the family of Mohammed al-Fazari, a human rights defender and blogger, from traveling outside the country.