At least 600 Ugandan girls have been forced into Malaysia's sex trade in what has become a human trafficking epidemic, a foreign diplomat has said.
Hajah Noraihan, the Malaysian consul to Uganda, said despite an early warning to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2008 when the number of trafficked girls stood at 30, the constant flow of victims has not slowed.
Scores of South Asian charities struggling to curb high child-marriage rates are backing a global movement spearheaded by South African peace icon Archbishop Desmond Tutu to end the practice affecting millions of girls and women worldwide.
In 1990, a man accused his wife, the mother of three children, of having an affair and killed her. His in-laws didn't file any charges against him in court. Instead, they said the death of their daughter was an accident. The man remarried and had two more children.
ROKO tui Cakaudrove Ro Aca Mataitini is urging all village headmen and church leaders on Taveuni to prioritise the needs of women and children on the island.
Yesterday, a team from the Cakaudrove Provincial Council office visited Naselesele village to inform people on the roles of women and children in a family.
We first thought about starting this piece with the story of Saleha Begum, a survivor of Bangladesh's 1971 war in which, some reports say, as many as 400,000 women were raped. Begum had been tied to a banana tree and repeatedly gang raped and burned with cigarettes for months until she was shot and left for dead in a pile of women. She didn't die, though, and was able to return home, ravaged and five months pregnant.
Generally speaking, women have not exactly been conspicuous among the leaders of the ethnic minorities that are at odds with the Burmese central government. But that may be changing.
