News updates

Human rights campaigner and democrat politician, Sarah McBride, won a majority vote in the Delaware state Senate elections to become the first and only openly transgender state senator in the history of the US. McBride, 30, a former press secretary for the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, said after her victory: “Tonight, I hope to show LGBTQ people that our democracy is big and broad enough for them too.” According to An Nahar, McBride was not the only trans person who made an unprecedented achievement in the latest elections. Taylor Small, 26, won her primary for a Vermont state House seat, in addition to Stephanie Byers was elected to represent Kansas Legislature as the first transgender native American in the entire Midwest. Also, An Nahar reported, Mauree Turner won the race for Oklahoma’s House of Representative becoming the first nonbinary person elected to a state legislature, and in New York State, Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones became the first openly gay Black members in the two houses of Congress. (An Nahar, November 6, 2020)
 

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that Lebanon broke its promises to protect women and girls’ rights. According to a report submitted to the United Nations Committee reviewing the country’s commitment to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and scheduled for June 2021, Lebanon has not made progress to implement the international recommendations. In this respect, Lebanon Researcher at HRW, Aya Majzoub, said another five years have passed and the authorities have done little to end discrimination against women and girls. They should show seriousness about women’s rights by carrying out long-overdue reforms before they are pressed to answer to the UN again for their non-compliace, Mahzoub maintained. The organization criticized in the report the failure of the Lebanese government to enact laws that protect women, stressing on the civil status and nationality laws in particular. Noting, that the nationality law prohibits Lebanese women married to foreigners from passing citizenship to their children which affects all aspects of the children’s and spouses’ lives, including residency and access to work, education, social services and health care, while also leaving children at risk of statelessness. Concerning the unified civil code, the report indicated that the country puts up with 15 religious-based personal status laws controlled by religious courts who discriminate against women across all the sects without ensuring their basic rights. The report also drew attention to the unified standard work contract for migrant domestic workers recently adopted by the labor ministry. It voiced concern over the decision by the Shura Council to suspend it indefinitely, while reminding that it could have been a major step towards abolishing the abusive kafala (sponsorship) system. The Human Watch Report also considered that the legal protection measures against domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment are not enough. Commenting on the HWR, Lina Abu Habib, activist and feminist researcher at Asfari Institute, AUB, stated that the objective report reduces to nothing the credibility of contaminated misleading opinions of the political elite. It came to confirm that nothing has actually changed, and that the sectarian laws are still dominant, she said, adding, the Lebanese woman remains deprived of her right to confer nationality to her children from a non-Lebanese father. Over and above, there has been no useful development since the enactment of the controversial domestic violence bill, Abu Habib noted. Women’s rights, she clarified, are fundamental constituents of democracy, which explains why these rights are marginalized in a system ruled by nepotism and corruption. In conclusion, Abu Habib said the HRW report will be a helpful and valuable tool for the feminist movement, especially that it puts forward its main demands. (To view the Human Rights Watch report in English, kindly visit the following link: https://bit.ly/32idG06).(L’Orient Le Jour, Human Rights Watch website, November 5, 2020)
 

The League of Qannoubine for Missions and Heritage and the Antonine Nuns, in collaboration with the Congregation of Maronite Lebanese Missionaries, organized this past weekend a training course on the methods for proper municipal food processing, medical and aromatic herb cultivation and distillation, at the Artisan Workshop in the Patriarch’s Garden in Diman. On the occasion, Activity Coordinator, George Arab, said the training aims to develop the financial resources of rural households in order to improve their living conditions. For her part, Sister Lina Khawand, revealed that the Artisan Workshop will hold a series of workshops aiming at creating new work opportunities for local inhabitants at the Workshop itself and at the adjoining plaza which serves drinks and foods, in addition to enhancing the production and marketing of traditional mouneh. Khawand pointed out that the Workshop is in need of a new variety of medicinal and aromatic herbs for distillation purposes, namely wild roses, thyme, sage, lavender, bay and excelsa, besides the traditional crops like grapes and apples. At the end of the course, beneficiaries will receive certificates that qualify them to work at artisan shops and sell their home-made produce. (Al Diyar, October 31, 2020)
 

In an unprecedented move, New York authorities announced yesterday the promotion of the first African-American woman to a top patrol job. This first comes at a time when protests by Black Lives Matter movement continue. NYC mayor, Bill de Blasio, appointed Juanita Holmes chief of patrol, to become the first female to take on the role of overseeing 77 police stations and a majority of New York Police Department (NYPD), the largest municipal force in the US with around 35,000 employees. The Democratic mayor said during a press conference: “it’s really time to have more and more women in positions of leadership in NYPD and in police forces all over the country.” Holmes, who has been in the NYPD service for 30 years, has been in charge of liaising with the public since last December. (An Nahar, October 29, 2020)