Is playing football a women’s right?

The Iranian Female Football Star can’t take part in the next international tournament due to the travel ban imposed by her husband. Niloufar Ardalan (alias Lady Goal) is one of Iran's best female players and the captain of the national team. She was meant to kick the ball at the Asian Football Confederation's championship in futsal, held at the end of September in Malaysia.

(Source: www.dailymail.co.uk)

As Ms Ardalan said, her husband has refused to grant her permission to travel abroad. Allegedly, the reason: her husband wants her to be at home on the first day of school for their 7-year-old son.

In Iran, married women need the consent of their spouses to leave the country. They can be banned from travelling abroad if their husbands refuse to sign the papers needed to get or renew a passport.

This is not the first discriminatory measure that favours men, related to sports. We have learnt from the story of Ghoncheh Ghavami that women aren’t allowed to enter stadiums and watch men playing sports. But due to the international outcry, we also learnt that this might change: a limited number of women could attend male sporting events. This was reported by the several media outlets back in June. However, watching football, wrestling or swimming will still be an entertainment preserved for men only. This is in spite the fact that football is the most popular sport in the Islamic Republic.

Since the 1979 revolution, women were also virtually banned of doing sports. This had changed in the early 2000’s, when futsal clubs had become popular and the government allowed women to play indoors, with their heads covered. In 2005, the Iranian national women’s team was re-founded and since then, it has obtained good results.

(Source: www.bbc.co.uk)

Last year, several newspapers wrote about Iran's soccer federation rules randomly to check the gender of the players at training sessions, following revelations of men secretly playing in the league. According to the authorities this is needed, due to the sex change operations having been legal in Iran since 1979.

These happenings show that considerable changes are needed to end discrimination against women.

As Niloufar Ardalan said: "I wish [the] authorities would create [measures] that would allow female athletes to defend their rights in such situations".

>>TAKE ACTION! for a women's rights defender, Narges Mohammadi by signing this petition.

Is sharing a joke enough reason to jail someone?

Fomusoh Ivo Feh, a 29-year old Cameroonian student was about to start university when he was arrested by six plain-clothes men in the South-West region of Cameroon on 13 December 2014. His arrest followed a sarcastic SMS message that he sent to a friend , Azah Levis Gob who also shared it with his friend, Afuh Nivelle Nfor, a secondary-school student. The SMS was sent as a joke about how difficult it is getting into university or finding a good job without being highly qualified in Cameroon – suggesting it was easier to get into Boko Haram. The message read: ‘Boko Haram recruits young people from 14 years-old and above. Conditions for recruitment: 4 subjects at GCE, plus religion.’ After a teacher saw the message on Afuh Nivelle Nfor’s phone and showed it to the police, Ivo and his friends were arrested in late 2014. Subsequently, all three were charged with several offences, including attempting to organise a rebellion. A military court in Yaoundé sentenced Ivo and his ...

Are you sure that your laptop is “child-labour-free”?

You can’t entirely be. If you search on the internet, you will probably find that the lithium-ion battery, the thing that powers your laptop, tablet or smartphone and enables you to surf for hours, contains cobalt. If you search a little longer, you’ll learn that 50% of this mineral comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – mined in the south of the country, often by children and for very little money. Kids work in mines under dangerous conditions Children, as young as seven are involved in this dirty industry. According to a UNICEF report from 2014, approximately 40,000 boys and girls work in the mines across the southern part of the DRC, many of them involved in cobalt mining. The majority of the kids work above ground, collecting minerals from the mountains of tailings (or residue) outside both active and inactive industrial mines. They can also work in lakes and streams close to the mines, washing and sorting the stones. Some boys go underground, digging deep to a...

The ideology of Boko Haram and the Islamic State

Boko Haram had announced the group's pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State on 7 March 2015, therewith aligning itself with the IS in the global Jihadist movement. The IS welcomed the news and promptly accepted a pledge of allegiance to the group , according to an audiotape purportedly from its spokesman. "We announce to you to the good news of the expansion of the caliphate to West Africa because the caliph... has accepted the allegiance of our brothers [..]” – IS spokesman Mohammed al-Adnani said in the message. However, this video appearing on IS-affiliated websites could not be authenticated. Although the nature of exact links between the two armed groups are still unclear, it can be confirmed that their ideologies and operations show similarities, despite some remaining differences. (Source: www.dw.com) The ideology of the two armed groups The ideology of both groups is based on a premodern theological tradition that wants the establishment o...

Crumbs of human rights

Search This Blog