Kabul: In a grimy Kabul street, the director gives the order to roll the cameras, and filming starts on a remarkable new TV drama that boldly challenges taboos about women in conservative Afghanistan. Shereen, the star, enters the scene and buys a few things from street vendors when suddenly her husband, a possessive and brutal […]

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) It is an unimaginably hideous outcome. To be raped by your cousin’s husband; be jailed for adultery as your attacker was married; to suffer the ignominy of global uproar about your jailing and assault, but be pardoned by presidential decree; and then to endure the shame and rejection from a conservative society that […]

NEW YORK—Naila Amin was an American teenager who wore pink velour suits and smoked cigarettes. She had a contagious, loud laugh, and envisioned herself as a police officer when she grew up. Fast forward four months, Naila found herself trapped as a 15-year-old wife in Pakistan. Ten days after her forced marriage, she rebelled by […]

Last Sunday, a group of students at the University of South Dakota planned to attend a screening of our film, Honor Diaries, a documentary focused on the abuses women face under the honor system. The film follows the stories of nine women’s rights activists — of Christian, Sikh, and Muslim backgrounds — as they tackle […]

Mariam was a sixth-grader in Toronto when her family started pressuring her to get engaged. They sent her on a summer trip to their native Pakistan, ostensibly to study but actually to meet a fiance chosen by her aunt. When she protested after returning home, she said, her mother kept insisting and wearing her down. […]

Child sexual abuse grooming is a ‘massive issue’ for Huddersfield, a law firm has said. West Yorkshire law firm Makin Dixon, which has offices on Queen Street, says it has been dealing with a marked increase in cases of girls being groomed for sex by older men. The company has been working to obtain injunctions […]

One day in March 2011, Fraidy Reiss went to her lawyer’s office to close on a house. The prosaic routine of paperwork somehow diminished her sense of accomplishment. Not even the seller was present to hear what she yearned to say. She was only buying a small patch of lawn in a blue-collar neighbourhood. Yet […]

Halo Project at Middlesbrough Town Hall for the “Make It Happen’ Event #IWD #Haloproject