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Gender

Two-year jail term for child marriage

The government on Monday approved a law setting a two-year jail term for anyone involved in marrying a girl aged under 18, in a bid to cut the country's notoriously high child marriage rate. The new law comes days after new UN figures showed saudi marriagetwo-thirds of Bangladeshi girls marry before they reach adulthood. It targets the parents or guardians and the marriage registrar as well as the groom, reports AFP. "Anyone found responsible for child marriage, including the groom, the marriage registrar or the guardians, would...

Girls seek equal opportunity in Bangladesh

Until five years ago, Shima Aktar, a student in Gajaghanta village in the Rangpur district of Bangladesh, about 370 km northwest of the capital Dhaka, was leading a normal life. But when her father decided that it was time for her to conform to purdah, a religious practice of female seclusion, things changed. The young girl, now 16 years old, says her father pulled her out of school at the age of 11 and began to lay plans for her marriage to an older man “for her own protection” he said. girls bdBorn to a hardline Muslim family, pretty, shy...

Girl trafficked in India, pushed into flesh trade

A 17-year-old girl from Bangladesh was allegedly sold and pushed into flesh trade in Thane, Mumbai and Bangalore, police said today. The teenage girl, hailing from Muldhar village in Faridpur district of Bangladesh, has alleged in her complaint filed yesterday with Thane’s Kalwa police, that her friend’s acquaintance repeatedly raped her in April, while promising marriage at her native place, Sub-Inspector Sachin Ambre said. womenIn the same month, he sold her to agents (involved in trafficking) in Bangladesh who in-turn sold her to their counterparts in India, he said. The girl was subsequently brought to Maharashtra’s Thane dis...

‘Infoladies’: women who get villages connected

In rural Bangladesh, dozens of women on wheels are biking into remote villages and hooking up poverty-stricken families to the net. Thanks to ‘Infoladies’, tens of thousands of people are connecting with social media, chatting to loved ones, and getting government services. The project is the brainchild of a local development company called D.Net and was formally launched in 2010. It grew out of a previous program that used ‘Mobile ladies’ to hook rural villages up to the wider world with mobile phones. Then along came the Infolady association: young, educated women from rural backgrounds who bike into isolated villages with a laptop, giving people the chance to get online. But that’s not the only service they provide. They also dish out advice on health – including taboo subjects li...

Rape charges ‘have become a fashion’ in India, says Shiv Sena

A rightwing Indian party has said rape charges have “become a fashion” in the country. The hardline Hindu nationalist party Shiv Sena made the comments in an article supporting a police officer who has been accused of rape. It questioned victims’ intentions for reporting crimes, saying rape allegations were “good weapons to seek personal revenge”. It follows accusations that Sunil Paraskar, a senior police officer, raped and molested a model over a three-month period. “After he has served for so many years in the police force, one model now charges DIG [deputy inspector general] Sunil Paraskar with rape and in one night he becomes a villain,” the party wrote. “Such accusations have become good weapons to seek personal revenge.

Internet access to villages on bicycle by Infoladies

Only 5 million of Bangladesh’s 152 million citizens have regular Internet access. Three-quarters live in rural villages. The Infoladies, a group of about 50 women in their early 20s, travel through the countryside equipped with a laptop computer, a tablet, a smartphone, a digital camera, and a glucometer ministering to the technologically impoverished. Mahfuza Akhter, 24, an Infolady, sets up a Skype session so Abdul Kashem can show off a newborn calf to his son in Saudi Arabia. The most requested activity is setting up Skype calls to male relatives, many of whom have left to take jobs in the Middle East. Mahfuza weighs a pregnant 18-year-old. As they bike from village to village, they help villagers with a range of digital tasks, such as taking blood-sugar readings and looking up in...