Global report
1 UNITED STATES
Texas abortion law is sex discrimination, says UN
United Nations human rights monitors condemned Texas for its new anti-abortion legislation, which they say violates international law. Melissa Upreti, the chair of the UN’s working group on discrimination against women and girls, said the new law was “structural sex and gender-based discrimination at its worst”. She warned that the legislation, which bans abortions at about six weeks, could force abortion providers underground and drive women to seek unsafe procedures that could prove fatal.
“This new law will make abortion unsafe and deadly, and create a whole new set of risks for women and girls. It is profoundly discriminatory and violates a number of rights guaranteed under international law,” she said.
Upreti, one of five independent experts charged by the UN to push for elimination of discrimination against women and girls, was also critical of the US supreme court. Last week the court decided by a five-to-four vote to allow the Texas law to go ahead, despite the provision’s blatant disregard of the court’s own 1973 ruling legali sing abortion in the US, Roe v Wade.
Spotlight Page 32
Opinion Page 4 8
2 BELARUS
Opposition leader jailed in Lukashenko clampdown
A court has sentenced the senior opposition leader Maria Kalesnikava to 11 years in
