New royal decree in Saudi Arabia will allow women to drive starting next June, ending notorious longtime ban. By Elad Benari – Arutz Sheva Saudi Arabia announced on Tuesday it will allow women to drive starting next June, in a historic decision that makes the Gulf kingdom the last country in the world to permit
The UN on Tuesday decried numerous executions of civilians in Iraq by the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group, warning that educated women appeared to be especially at risk. The jihadist group is showing a "monstrous disregard for human life" in the areas it controls in Iraq, the UN human rights office said. The
An Egyptian court has sentenced seven men to life in prison for sexual assaults on women during a number of public rallies in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square. They are the first such heavy sentences against perpetrators of sexual violence following the government’s decision to toughen penalties. Sexual violence has been on the rise
Just days after Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry threatened to use force to stop women violating a ban on female drivers, one man has come up with a creative way to protest the laws, which rights groups have slammed as discriminatory. Hisham Fageeh, who describes himself as "an artist and a social activist", released an
Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive cars, but that certainly hasn’t stopped one Saudi woman from driving and even posting an online video documenting it. The video, posted in Arabic to the internet on October 7, was translated into English by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “I'm driving
A 28 year old Arab housewife has been arrested after allegedly racking up nearly 1 million dirhams in fines, website 7 Days in Dubai reported on Thursday. The fines came to a total of 928,000 dirhams ($252,648) – the largest amount a woman driver has ever run up in the UAE, according to
More than 30 million girls are at risk of undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM), despite increasing global rejection of the act, a report said on Monday. A UNICEF report showed that more than 125 million women and girls alive today have undergone FGM, while 30 million girls remain at risk of being cut in
A legal requirement that women make up at least a quarter of all provincial elected officials was quietly removed by conservative male parliamentarians, officials said, the latest in a series of decisions undermining advances in women’s rights in Afghanistan. The change, engineered in mid-May, was only discovered by women members of parliament a
As many as 74 schoolgirls in Afghanistan’s far north fell sick after smelling gas and were being examined for possible poisoning, local officials said on Sunday. While instances of poisoning are sometimes later found to be false alarms, there have been numerous substantiated cases of mass poisonings of schoolgirls by elements of Afghanistan’s ultra-conservative
An online initiative aimed at countering sexual harassment in Egypt has been launched via Facebook, reported local media site Al-Bawaba on Wednesday. The idea was born when the female creator of the Facebook page was verbally harassed by an elderly driver whilst stuck in traffic, instead of shying away she decided to expose him by
