Rising Up and Reinventing the Playing-Field: Addressing Gender-Based Violence and Disparity Against Women in Honduras

Credit: REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

By Shirin Asgari
Staff Writer

Globally, Honduras has one of the highest incidences of violence against women. It is reported that sixty-four percent of women living in Honduras have been subject to either a direct threat or an attack at least once in their lives. Additionally, this violence is inflicted either by someone within a woman’s social circles or by gang members, and can take the form of rape, femicide, disappearances, as well as physical and physiological abuse. Honduras further lacks any specialized structures to ensure the prevention, protection, and prosecution of violence against women. For instance, a statistical average taken over the course of six years found that around 93.5 percent of femicide cases within the country have gone unpunished. High rates of impunity feed into the perpetuation of this cycle, normalizing and facilitating such attitudes and actions which stem from the country’s machismo culture.      

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Op-Ed: Genocide in Xinjiang?: The Complexities of the U.S. State Department’s Declaration

An organized demonstration protesting the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims in San Francisco, CA.

Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons

By Gabriella Clinton
Staff Writer

Last week, the U.S. State Department, under the guidance of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, officially accused the Chinese government of committing genocide and other crimes against humanity against Uyghur Muslims and other religious and ethnic minority groups living in the Xinjiang region. This statement was released on the last full day of the Trump Administration—Tuesday, January 19th. The Chinese government has since denied the accusations; however, it is estimated that as many as 2 million Uyghur Muslims, as well as members of other minority Muslim groups, have been detained in internment camps located throughout the country’s northwestern region. This abuse of human rights and endorsement of ethnic cleansing by the government has occurred  for several decades, but drastically intensified around March 2017.

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Show of Hands: Enrollment in Early Education in the United States versus Denmark


Research has shown that high-quality ECEC lessens the inequality gap between children of disadvantaged and advantaged backgrounds, increasing the income potential and opportunities for upward social mobility for low-income children later in life. Thus, the US should follow in the footsteps of Nordic countries by improving its ECEC system.

By Charlotte Armstrong
Contributing Writer

Denmark has some of the lowest levels of inequality in the world, while the United States has some of the highest levels of income inequality among industrialized nations. This leads to a variety of detrimental effects on residents of the U.S., including their individual opportunities for upward social mobility. This cycle of inequality begins with children, and the quality of education they are given at an early age. 

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