LGBT Iraqis Living in Fear: Daily Brief

New research by Human Rights Watch investigates violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender  people conducted by armed groups in Iraq. These armed groups, nominally under the prime minister’s authority, have raped, killed, and abducted LGBT people across Iraq, who also face routine violence, including sexual assault, from security officials. To ensure justice for these people, the Iraqi government should take all appropriate measures to end all abuses based on sexual orientation and gender expression and identity, and compensate families of all victims of unlawful killings and survivors of serious abuse.

In Afghanistan, Taliban authorities had pledged to allow all girls’ secondary schools to reopen today. But, of course, “Taliban statements are often very different from Taliban actions”. As many girls were preparing today for the first day of the new school term, the Taliban reversed their decision, announcing that girls’ secondary schools were to remain closed, indefinitely, until the Taliban put in place policies acceptable to them, including further restrictions on school girls’ dress. Donors meeting at a key conference on March 31 will have to keep up the pressure on the Taliban and make sure the reopening of schools is central in the negotiations for the Taliban to receive financial assistance. 

The Tanzanian government is taking an important step to ensure girls’ access to education: it published an agreement with the World Bank aiming to ensure that adolescents who are pregnant or mothers can return to school by June 2022. The government’s guidelines and accompanying measures will have to be concrete, and opportunities for consultation with civil society organizations will be crucial, to truly eliminate various barriers faced by these girls. In a previous report on laws that protect pregnant students’ right to education in over 30 African Union countries, Human Rights Watch found that guidelines are often a stepping stone toward adopting a legally binding national policy.

Yesterday, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced to nine more years in prison. He was previously arrested in January 2021, and Russian authorities have been bringing new criminal charges against him ever since, in order to stop him from mobilizing Russia’s civil society and exposing corruption at the highest echelons of power. These new trumped-up charges reflect the Russian government’s intensified crackdown on dissent and free expression since the start of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, as also shown by the arbitrarily detention of thousands of peaceful anti-war protesters and by the blocking of independent Russian media outlets and foreign outlets.

Family violence infringes on women’s basic rights and physical integrity and often pushes them into the arms of their abusers. In Tunisia, between January and October 2021, violence by domestic partners constituted 75.5% of cases of violence against women reported to the authorities. The violence women have experienced in their own families growing up is rarely reported, though, obscuring its lasting impact in women’s lives. It is time to shed light on the family dimension of violence against women.