Violence against women in Ghana is deeply rooted in culture and family ties
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This week, we start in Benue, Nigeria, where displaced families are risking their lives just to bury their dead. Next, we travel to Kenya, where trans men and non-binary people face stigma for menstruating. Finally, we stop in Ghana, where a new study links violence against women in the country to culture and family.
But first, in Kenya, the refugees in the Kakuma camp are on the brink of starvation. The camp is currently home to around 300,000 people who have fled violence across Africa and the Middle East.
After major cuts to U.S. funding, food rations have dropped to just 30% of what people need each day, the lowest level ever. Where there used to be three meals a day, now there’s often just one. Cash aid has also stopped. That means it’s harder for people to buy simple things like vegetables or soap, making life even more difficult with each passing day.
As resources become dangerously low, hunger signs are getting harder to ignore, from more malnourished infants on feeding tubes to longer food queues. The World Food Programme says things could get worse. Without urgent intervention, starvation may become the new normal by August.
There’s hope that new donors will step in, but with nearly 70% of past funding gone, it may still not be enough.
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“My privacy matters”: Tanzania’s new VPN policy leaves LGBTQ+ individuals exposed
Sabel*, a gay man living in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, uses pseudonyms to engage with other LGBTQ people online. Despite feeling somewhat anonymous, the fear of being arrested is ever-present.
“Online, we are free to express our identities under anonymous names, but people have [still] been arrested, so Virtual Private Network (VPN) provides an extra layer of security,” he says.
Engaging with partners and building relationships within the LGBTQ community through platforms like the Telegram channel provides Sabel with freedom and solidarity. Nonetheless, he remains cautious and expresses worries about the dangers of openly discussing his sexual orientation on various social media sites.
“I do not use other social media platforms to express my sexuality. Telegram is a relatively secure platform.”
Queer Nigerian students are finding community in a campus “Love House”
The first time Janet met Ayo*, the latter played a Todrick Hall song in a banking hall, hoping to catch Janet’s attention. And like drawing a moth to a flame, it worked.
“It was on Grindr that I met Ayo again,” Janet says. ”I was elated, mostly because I was now to be among people who would certainly understand the loneliness.”
Before gaining admission into the University of Ibadan in 2019, Janet, bold and relentless about his identity, had attracted unwanted attention that led to him being kidnapped and kitoed due to his Facebook presence.
Despite the ordeal leaving him traumatised, it strengthened his resolve to continue to be himself and to share his thoughts on queer identity, drawing shock and awe from students and lecturers alike. Meeting Ayo, Janet says, was pivotal to their student experience.
“I was added to a WhatsApp group that same day. We were a total of five members, students who were equally as lonely as I was and had met each other through stereotyping and Grindr,” Janet says. “We were called Love House. It’s a community where nothing but love and kindness foster the bonds which bind us, a safe space.
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A transgender man, Alex avoids shops, clinics and communal toilets during this time. He doesn’t buy sanitary pads for fear of ridicule and instead resorts to cutting strips of cloth from old blankets.
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What keeps girls from school in Malawi? We asked them and it’s not just pregnancy
Coverage of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns on girls in Malawi emphasised the risks they faced as a result of not attending school. In particular, concerns about pregnancy garnered significant media attention.
The United Nations Children’s Fund, for example, published an article in March 2021 entitled “Schoolgirl shakes off COVID-19 regret: Lucy’s return to school”. Under a glossy photograph of a smiling girl, readers learn about 16-year-old Lucy, one of 13,000 Malawian students who became pregnant during COVID-19 school closures. The story went on to detail the dire consequences of sexual activity to Lucy’s well-being, and the redemptive power of an eventual return to school.
The Unicef piece echoed thousands of similar publications circulated after March 2020 that analysed COVID-19’s unique risk for girls in the global south and lamented lost returns to girls’ education.