‘Stop killing us!’: Thousands march to protest against femicide in Kenya - Minority Africa
Toluwani Omotesho
March 13, 2024
But first in Sri Lanka, where hundreds of refugees and asylum workers are facing fear and uncertainty about their future, following news of the UNHCR shutting down operations in the country this year.
For years, Sri Lanka has been home to hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers; according to the UNHCR, there are about 567 refugees and 224 asylum seekers who are mostly Pakistanis. However, Sri Lanka isn’t a member country of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the 1967 protocol, so it has no domestic laws to help guide its actions towards refugees or asylum seekers.
As a result, this has made it a way station for refugees while the UNHCR processes applications for their resettlement to other countries. Refugees and asylum seekers are legally barred from working in Sri Lanka, so they’ve had to depend on allowances from the UNHCR to cover their rent, food, and other basic needs. Scholarships are also provided to fund the education of many children. However, these allowances and scholarships were scrapped in December due to the UNHCR’s plans to close its office in Columbo and maintain only a liaison presence from 2025.
The rationale behind this move is that most displaced people from the Sri Lanka civil war have returned to their native places. Still, many refugees and asylum seekers worry that this opens them up to deportation amidst the already dwindling hopes of survival without the UNHCR’s financial support.
To address these concerns, the UNHCR has promised to collaborate with Sri Lankan authorities to safeguard the rights and interests of refugees. Nonetheless, many human rights activists advocate for establishing domestic laws guaranteeing refugees and asylum seekers access to basic rights like shelter and education.
‘Stop killing us!’: Thousands march to protest against femicide in Kenya

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‘We are dying slowly:’ Palestinians are eating grass and drinking polluted water as famine looms across Gaza
Did you know that Madagascar produces about 80% of the world’s vanilla? It’s often referred to as the vanilla capital of the world.
Edwin Chiloba, my first love
On January 4, 2023, Edwin’s body was found stashed in a metal box along the Kipkenyo-Kaptinga road in Kenya. Maybe, as is alleged, the murder of Edwin was a case of intimate partner violence. However, the events that led to his death cannot be divorced from homophobia.
When I first met him, there would have been no way to know that years later, I – and the world – would lose him so tragically. Due to the long wait at the bus terminal at our initial meeting, I was already irritated when he stepped out of the bus.
He stood at 6’2”, wearing a shirt with fur-like imprints on the collar, straightened black trousers and heels a few inches tall. He was a breathtaking figure and a sight that easily made me forget the hours of waiting.
I had little time for pleasantries as I was meant to travel to the countryside on a night bus that same day so we took the first tuk-tuk to my place, a humble bedsitter with a bed, cooking gas and a few utensils, where I fixed us supper before heading out to get the bus to Nairobi then try to get another bus to the countryside.
Mainstream breastfeeding discourse has nothing to do with women. And everything to do with patriarchy
Alternatives to breastfeeding like wet nurses have existed since 18th century France where 90% of babies were breastfed by women who were not their mothers. Today, millennial African women are not given the freedom to choose.
I introduced formula milk to my second son’s diet when he was five months old. I did this because I had a very busy schedule that kept me away from him for many hours during the day.
While I was thrilled that supplementing breast milk with formula kept my son full and happy throughout the day, I was constantly bombarded with questions from people I knew and even strangers.
Why are you not breastfeeding exclusively? Isn’t it too early to introduce the boy to formula? Do you even know what is in the formula?
Many of these people considered it appropriate to probe me in this manner. It left me feeling like a failure and with an ongoing question on my mind: why does society interrogate and scrutinize the actions of mothers and women generally, in a way that it does not do to fathers?
A life in Fear: The dangers of finding love online as a queer woman living in Nigeria
Izzy was feeling hopeful about the year ahead. It was January 2010, and she was about to meet a woman she’d been chatting with online for a few weeks.
She took her time getting ready, choosing to wear jeans and a button-down shirt to look casual yet, hopefully, impressive.
Her date had been pestering her to meet for some time, she remembered, but she had wanted to wait. “I was happy we were finally meeting physically,” Izzy recalled.
The two women had initially planned to meet in a public place, but her date changed the venue at the last minute, saying it would be more comfortable and safer to meet in her home in the Ogba neighborhood of Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.
When the then-20-year-old arrived, she was welcomed in and told to relax. Her date, Izzy remembered, made some food and served drinks, and the women began to connect. But something felt off.
France: Migrant Children Sleep in the Street in Marseille
The French department of Bouches-du-Rhône, which includes Marseille, France’s second-largest city, is failing to provide unaccompanied migrant children the protections they need and to which they are entitled, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 70-page report, “‘Not the France I Imagined’: Housing, Health, and Education for Unaccompanied Migrant Children in Marseille,” finds that Marseille’s child protection authorities are leaving children with health needs on the street without treatment, psychosocial support, or follow-up care.
Half of unaccompanied migrant children who face an age assessment in Marseille are denied formal recognition as a child. Yet, those decisions are overturned for nearly 75 percent of those who file an appeal. Review by the courts can take months or even years, leaving children ineligible for emergency accommodation and services such as legal assistance, the appointment of a guardian, universal health protection, and education.
How new anti-LGBTQ+ bills in Africa expand crackdown on rights
Despite the decriminalization of same-sex relations in Mauritius in 2023, rights groups warn that new laws being considered in several African countries risk eroding LGBTQIA+ rights by creating new offenses and targeting new groups.
Many of the new bills resemble Uganda’s draconian Anti-Homosexuality Act, which was signed into law last May and which includes the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.”
Sexual minorities in the East African nation say they have faced a wave of abuse since then, with a prominent LGBTQIA+ rights activist stabbed in an attack in January.
In a January report, Amnesty International described a “barrage of discriminatory laws stoking hate against LGBTI persons” in some African countries.
Here’s what you need to know.
Gene Therapy Allows an 11-Year-Old Boy to Hear for the First Time
The genetic treatment targeted a particular kind of congenital deafness and will soon be tried in children who are younger.
Aissam Dam, an 11-year-old boy, grew up in a world of profound silence. He was born deaf and had never heard anything. While living in a poor community in Morocco, he expressed himself with a sign language he invented and had no schooling.
Last year, after moving to Spain, his family took him to a hearing specialist, who made a surprising suggestion: Aissam might be eligible for a clinical trial using gene therapy.
On Oct. 4, Aissam was treated at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, becoming the first person to get gene therapy in the United States for congenital deafness. The goal was to provide him with hearing, but the researchers had no idea if the treatment would work or, if it did, how much he would hear.
The treatment was a success, introducing a child who had known nothing of sound to a new world.
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