Welcome to the 93rd edition of the Pixel Project’s VAW e-News Digest!
Violence against women in video game culture escalated to worrying levels when feminist Anita Sarkeesian had to cancel her lecture after receiving an anonymous threat by an individual claiming to have access to weapons and intending to commit a massacre on campus grounds. The incident highlights issues of violence against women on social media and campus safety.
Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014. Both of activists have been outspoken about the rights of girls to education. Malala herself has been a survivor of a violent attack designed to intimidate her into keeping silent.
The United Nations marks 11 October as the International Day of the Girl Child. Read the release from UN News Service here.
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Best regards,
The Pixel Project Team
Violence Against Women – General
- WORLD – Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi receive the Nobel Peace Prize 2014
- WORLD – Feature: The Unsafety Net – how social media turned against women
- BOLIVIA – New law to fight violence against women
- POLAND – Poland yet to ratify violence against women convention
- ICELAND – Criminologist finds no connection between number of Muslims in a country and violence against women, violence linked to education and gender equality
- SWITZERLAND – Inter-Parliamentary Union Conference calls for end of violence against women
- TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO – Violence against women a pandemic
- UNITED STATES – ‘Gamergate’, guns and threats collide in Utah
Domestic Violence
- AUSTRALIA – High-tech stalking the new front in domestic violence
- CHINA – Seminar on anti-domestic violence law held in Beijing
- INDONESIA and AUSTRALIA – Murder-suicide case in Britain was a case of domestic violence
- MALAYSIA – One Stop Crisis centre set up in Sibu town to handle domestic violence
- PAPUA NEW GUINEA – Papua New Guinean and Australian policewomen swap countries to learn about domestic violence prevention (trigger warning for illustration)
- TURKEY – 207 dead in a 9-month period in 2014 under domestic violence or honour killings
- RUSSIA – Aggression and hostility increasing in Russia, including domestic violence
- UNITED KINGDOM – New bill proposed to tackle domestic violence in Wales (trigger warning: illustration)
- UNITED STATES – Republican representative Lynn Jenkins receives criticism for her support of the Violence Against Women Act
Rape and Sexual Assault
- FRANCE – Activists want giant sculpture of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square to be removed as it immortalizes an act of sexual assault
- IRELAND – Sinn Fein leader accused of covering up rape within his movement
- INDIA – Journalist and author Madhusree Mukerjee correlates rising violence against women with development in indigenous tribes
- INDONESIA and AUSTRALIA – Indonesia number one destination for Australian tourists looking for child sex
- PAKISTAN – Seven years after the assault, rape survivor Kainat Soomro fights on
- THAILAND – Thai soap operas create outcry for romanticizing rape
- MALAYSIA and NEW ZEALAND – Malaysian envoy in New Zealand sex assault case to be extradited to face justice next week
- UNITED STATES – Harvard professors react against Harvard’s new sex assault laws, says it is ‘stacked against the accused’
Sex / Human Trafficking
- EUROPE – Trafficking harms 30,000 people across Europe, mostly caught in sex trafficking
- ALBANIA and UNITED KINGDOM – Ending modern slavery is not impossible, just very hard work
- CANADA – 12-year old girl among those rescued from cross-Canada trafficking ring
- COLOMBIA – Star of ‘Walking Dead’and activist Laurie Holden recently brought down a Colombian sex trafficking ring
- INDIA – Nobel prize winner Kailash Satyarthi states that child sex trade worth 343 billion dollars
- IRELAND – Health care professionals are not able to identify victims of trafficking
- NIGERIA – Woman trafficking other women from under threat of ‘juju’ sentenced in the United Kingdom
- UNITED STATES – Alleged child sex trafficking victims sue Backpage.com for allowing advertisements featuring trafficked minors
Female Genital Mutilation
- WORLD – #ENDFGM: A tipping point for female genital mutilation
- AFRICA – New campaign to stop female genital mutilation, called The Girl Generation: Together to End FGM gains traction
- KENYA – Africa can end FGM by 2035
- THE GAMBIA – Campaigner to return to her homeland to battle female genital mutilation
- TANZANIA – Residents in Tarime urged to stop female genital mutilation
- UGANDA – Call to empower adolescent girls to end cycle of violence
- UNITED KINGDOM – More than 1700 cases of FGM treated by the NHS since April
- ZIMBABWE – Kenyan-born activist Dr Kakenya Ntaiya sees education as a way of breaking the destructive cycle of practices
Honour Killing and Forced Marriages
- AFGHANISTAN – Four women mysteriously killed in Farah province
- BANGLADESH – Can child marriage be stamped out in Bangladesh?
- KAZAKHSTAN – Kazakhstan ‘stealing the bride’ video highlights barbaric kidnapping practice
- INDIA – Honour killing on the rise in Madurai
- IRAQ – Forced marriages and conversions for Yazidis
- NIGERIA – Nigerian government and Boko Haram reach a cease-fire to free the abducted schoolgirls
- NORWAY – Campaign on child bride to raise awareness about forced marriages
- UNITED KINGDOM – The dowry violence that shames Britain
Street Harassment
- WORLD – The first global guide on street harassment helps women learn their legal rights
- AFGHANISTAN – Women drivers in Afghanistan brave threats and harassment
- BELGIUM – Two complaints of street harassment daily in Brussels
- CANADA – Catcalls, insults and groping are a reality for Hamilton women
- EGYPT – Hidden camera reveals what it is like for a woman to walk alone in Cairo (trigger warning)
- JORDAN – Street art confronts street harassment
- MEXICO – Mexico City has the highest recorded instances of street harassment in experiment
- UNITED STATES – Two incidences of street harassment escalate into violence
Activism
- WORLD – 11 October marks the International Day of the Girl Child
- WORLD – Photographers from around the world capture the sorrow and pain of girls globally
- AFGHANISTAN – Biking ‘mountain-to-mountain’ to improve lives of Afghan women
- AUSTRALIA – YWCA Australia celebrates Week Without Violence from 17 – 23 October
- ARGENTINA – Women in Argentina gather to protest violence against women
- NORWAY and SOMALIA – Somalian-born activist Safia Abd Haaase receives medal from Norway for her work against FGM
- UNITED KINGDOM – Forced marriage and honour violence event to be held in Leicester
- UNITED STATES – Powerful documentary, called Private Violence, deals with the question: “Why doesn’t she leave?”