harmful traditional practices

Human Rights Watch, July 13, 2010.

A father alleged that his son-in-law had kidnapped his daughter.  The daughter showed that she was of age and had married of her own free will.  The court held that a family can have no control over who an adult chooses to marry.

While the victim was sleeping, her partner Sebastian Javier Parra Godoy attacked her by striking her in the head. She suffered near-fatal head injuries as a result of the blow. On February 5, 2013, the criminal court in the province of Angol found Mr. Godoy guilty of the crime of attempted intimate femicide. In their ruling, the judges explicitly referenced the fact that the case presented a case of gender-based violence. It concluded that that Parra Godoy had acted as a result of traditional views considering women as subordinate perpetuating stereotypes of violence and coercion.

Although great strides have been made in breaking down the barriers that have previously kept women from being able to have the same rights and privileges to work in the legal profession that men enjoy, there is still progress to be made.

Interights, an international human rights organization, filed a complaint before the Commission on behalf of several complainants, arguing that Nigeria's Islamic Sharia courts had violated their rights to a fair trial and due process. The main complainant, S.H., a nursing mother, was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. She was tried under Sharia law, according to which adultery is punishable by death.

The issue here was whether A should get a residence permit to Finland because of family ties. He had entered into marriage with his cousin B in Syria in 2004 who was 15 years old at the time and had lived in Finland since 1996. The Directorate of Immigration (now Finnish Immigration Service) denied A's application for residence permit.

Petitioners challenged the tribal practice of female genital mutilation and argued that it is inconsistent with the Ugandan Constitution. They argued that the practice is cruel, inhuman, and degrading, and endangers the right to life and privacy under the Constitution. The two issues before the court were whether the petition raised any matter for constitutional interpretation and whether the practice of female genital mutilation should be declared as null and void under the constitution.

By Physicians for Human Rights with Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

The first appellant, P, was seeking asylum from being returned to Kenya on the grounds of a fear of persecution because of the violence that both she and her children had suffered from her husband in Kenya, especially as domestic violence tends to be accepted in Kenya and the police had not effectively protected her against her husband.   The second appellant, M, seeks asylum on the grounds of fearing that she would be subjected to female genital mutilation at the hands of her father, who is a member of the Mungiki sect that practices FGM, and who had already previously performed

Petitioners applied for constitutional review of Article 781(1) of the Civil Code which stated that "a child shall follow the family name of the father."  The Constitutional Court held that the civil code provision requiring a child to follow the father's family name is unconstitutional.  The court held that "such unilateral requirement to follow the father's family name and disallow use of the mother's name violates individual dignity and sexual equality."  In addition, the court held that "forcing one to use only his original father's family name and not allowing a name cha