Women Affairs

'They said they were going to give us ostrich eggs,' Esther Mbarga, aged 49, recalls. "'They're huge,' they said. 'Come and we'll give them to you.'" Aged ten or eleven, she and her friends had never seen an ostrich egg. They were really excited. They were taken deep into the bush and waited expectantly. Then, one at a time, they were led off to have their genitalia mutilated. Esther was pinned to the ground by four women and cut by a fifth. She limped away bleeding and crying. It was hard to walk and urination was incredibly painful for days afterwards. For some reason, the women weren't happy with the excision. On further checking they decided that there was more to cut. They cut more the following day and yet more a week later. Esther lives in Burkina Faso where female genital mutilation is not legal but is still carried out covertly. Female genital mutilation comprises 'all procedures involving partial or total removal of the exte...

EDITH M. LEDERER Actress and United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman speaks Tuesday during a news conference at U.N. headquarters, urging world leaders and ordinary people to join the global fight to end violence against women. The actress, seven months pregnant and passionately committed to her role as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Development Fund for Women, said the violence was probably the "most widespread human rights violation of our time." "One in three women will encounter violence in some way, shape or form against them in their lifetime," Kidman told a news conference at U.N. headquarters. "That's an extraordinary statistic. Yet do we ever hear it?" The 40-year-old Australian star became a goodwill ambassador in January 2006 for the U.N. Development Fund for Women, known as UNIFEM. Its acting executive director, Joanne Sandler, said Kidman wanted to focus on an issue "where she could mak...

Cormac Mac Ruairi A woman in dark robes places a prayer mat on the floor and she begins to pray to Allah. She is surrendering to her God and Allah's wishes as expressed in the holy Koran. When the camera moves closer, we see all is not as it first appears: her garments are transparent and her breasts are clearly visible. The Koran forbids all Muslims — men and women — to show themselves naked in public. And though it is probably not strictly banned, we can only imagine the quotes from the Koran written in calligraphy on her body must also breach the spirit of Islamic religious law. The depicted texts from the Koran deal with the perscribed punishments for women who "misbehave". As the film continues, we hear four tragic stories of women being forced into arranged marriages, being whipped, beaten and raped. We see images of backs marked by a whip and a woman's face reduced to a bloody pulp by her man's fists. All the time these women, we are told, are meant to surr...