The Northern Nigerian Women Reclaiming Their Lives After Divorce - Minority Africa
Toluwani Omotesho
March 12, 2024
But first, in South Africa, where, despite the rise in xenophobic attacks, the Minister of Home Affairs, Aaron Motsoaledi, announced on November 16, 2023, that the country would be toughening its asylum and immigration laws. This news is expected to have far-reaching effects on refugees fleeing their home countries.
Motsoaledi’s proposal has been made available to the public for discussion — a standard procedure in South Africa before laws are passed — and if approved, it’ll be a significant shift from the government’s previous policy of welcoming refugees.
One of the reasons behind this proposed change is that South Africa’s current unemployment rate is estimated to be around 32%, and the latest census recorded more than 2.4 million migrants in the country. This has fed the feelings of hostility towards migrants, and officials are referring to this situation as a ticking time bomb.
However, there are also political motivations behind this proposal. The ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), hopes to “correct its mistake” during its adoption of the UN refugee convention in 1996. The UN refugee convention, also known as the Geneva Convention, is a multilateral treaty that defines who a refugee is, their rights when granted asylum, and the obligations of countries that provide asylum. In a bid to integrate post-apartheid South Africa with the rest of the world, the ANC agreed to offer refugees the same rights as its citizens — including the right to equal employment and education— unlike many other countries that opted out of these clauses.
With the increasing conflict between citizens and migrants and the upcoming elections next year, the government is unlikely to change its plans, especially as it would put the ANC in the good graces of the electorate.
Antisemitic and Anti-Muslim Hate Speech Surges Across the Internet
The world’s oldest footprints were discovered in Laetoli, Tanzania. These footprints are estimated to be over 3.6 million years old and are the oldest evidence of human ancestors walking upright(i.e., bipedal humans).
“Some people never made it out alive”: Tackling endemic trafficking in North-West Nigeria
Due to its strategic location near porous borders, the town of Ilela, Sokoto state, has become a hotspot for human trafficking. In response, various advocacy groups have emerged to combat this issue in the region, providing vital support to victims including counseling, shelter, and the crucial task of repatriation of victims to their families.
Auwal Muntari was filled with joy when three men approached his family, offering to enrol him in a secondary school in Niger Republic, which was located just across the border from his village in Ilela. It was 2017, and at the age of 17, Auwal had longed to attend a good secondary school ever since he completed primary school in 2013. Unfortunately, there were no operational secondary schools in his village, so the opportunity in Niger seemed promising. Being just a few kilometres away from his village, it felt like a viable option.
A few days later, Muntari, along with two other teenagers who had also been promised a quality education, embarked on a motorcycle journey through a bush path towards Niger. They were hopeful that the journey to the nearest town in the French-speaking country would only take a few hours, but to their surprise, it ended up taking approximately two days. Eventually, they arrived at a village where Muntari was allocated a room with seven other young men.
How Congolese women put an end to generations of economic abuse
Access to land and natural resources is essential to the survival of women in eastern DRC; yet the culture discriminates against them by denying them the right to acquire plots of land. In the Nyangezi region, around a hundred women have started to acquire land despite these barriers. They are inspiring others with their extraordinary stories.
In the Wafuliro culture, to which Joséphine Mahendwa belongs, it is a shame for a woman to go back to her parents’ house; so she resorted to moving from house to house with her three children after her husband’s death 23 years ago at Uvira in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
“My husband’s family chased me out of the house my husband had built for our children and me,” the 50-year-old Mahendwa says. “They took all the land titles, divided the house among themselves, and asked me to go back to my parents.”
Mexico’s first openly non-binary magistrate found dead at home
Jesús Ociel Baena made history a year ago when they were sworn in as the first openly nonbinary person to assume a judicial post in Mexico.
On Monday, Mx. Baena, who used they/them pronouns, and their partner were found dead inside their home, stirring calls from Mexico’s LGBTQ community to determine if the magistrate had been targeted for promoting the rights of nonbinary people. The authorities in the state of Aguascalientes, where Mx. Baena, 38, was a magistrate on the electoral court, have said that their 37-year-old partner, Dorian Herrera, appeared to have killed them with a razor blade before dying by suicide.
But LGBTQ leaders in Mexico are questioning whether such a swift assessment fits what they say is a pattern by the authorities of effectively dismissing grisly killings involving LGBTQ people as crimes of passion.
Manipur women in naked assault video ‘will not give up’
In May, the small Indian of Manipur was plunged into a state of civil war due to ethnic violence between the Meitei and Kuki. At least 130 people have been killed, 400 wounded, and more than 600,000 forced out of their homes.
Unfortunately, rape and sexual violence are being used as weapons of violence in this conflict. Six months ago, two Kuki-Zomi women, Glory and Mercy, were stripped, paraded naked, and allegedly gang raped by a mob. Their ordeal was filmed and shared online, and while the video amplified their suffering, it also became evidence of injustice because it brought attention to the ethnic clashes between the Meitei and Kuki communities.
The widespread outrage that followed the release of the video compelled Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make his first statement on the violence. That was followed by the arrest of seven men who have now been charged with gang rape and murder.
The Northern Nigerian Women Reclaiming Their Lives After Divorce
Female divorcees in this part of the country are, more often than not, victims of stigmatization. Despite this, some, like Aishatu Muhammed and Rahmatu Hassan, saw divorce as a chance to rebuild their lives.
When Aishatu Muhammed was married off at age 17, she was indifferent. Her husband was a 28-year-old man whose family had a strong relationship with hers. She didn’t know much about him at the time, and they only spoke casually before their wedding.
Aishatu lived most of her life in Akko Local Government Area (LGA) of Gombe State in North East Nigeria. But life after divorce would soon push her back to the northwestern Kaduna State.
Ethiopian artist Julie Mehretu breaks African art-world record again
US-based Ethiopian Julie Mehretu has again broken the record for the highest sale price of any work by an African-born artist at auction. On Wednesday, her abstract painting Walkers With the Dawn and Morning fetched $10.7m (£8.6m) at Sotheby’s in New York. The piece features ink and acrylic on canvas and takes its name from a 1920s Langston Hughes poem.
Mehretu, 52, was born in Ethiopia and moved with her family to the US in 1977 during political strife. She has since become one of the most prominent names in the fast-growing contemporary African art world.
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