Policy – www.globalcitizenspress.com

Flushing Law Enforcement Cracks Down on Immigrant Sex Workers inside Fake Massage Parlors

June 11, 2019

BY YILUN CHENG – Right next to the entrance to the Long Island Rail Road in the heart of downtown Flushing, is 40th Road, a 0.1-mile stretch of pavement, once known as “Restaurant Row.” The tiny stretch features more than 20 restaurants and food courts, attracting foodies from all over New York City. But ever since the New York Times published an article last April on the death of Yang…

Nepali Immigrants Reflect on the Visa Lottery—a Peculiar Little Part of U.S. Immigration Policy

May 19, 2019

BY LAUREN HARRIS – Each year, for as long as Garima KC can remember, signs for the diversity visa lottery appeared in shop windows all throughout Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital city, the fall registration period often coinciding with the Hindu festival Dashain. During the festival in 2017, KC and her mother walked the busy streets—saturated with Nepali men and women shopping for gifts—and saw a sign posted inside a nearby photo…

Consumers Continue to Pay for Nail Service from Trafficked Technicians

May 14, 2019

BY MIRA SEYAL – Lien Glankler, born in Laos and raised in Vietnam, held a focus group of potential customers in the summer of 2017 to test her new business plan: a nail salon in Sacramento, California that would break with the increasing dependence on human trafficking to supply workers in the nail salon industry. The reaction to that plan was an unpleasant surprise. The potential customers didn’t find the…

SESTA-FOSTA: A Year Later

May 6, 2019

Both bills were controversial from their creation, but despite the huge effect that they had in the weeks following their passage, sex work advertisements seem to have bounced back online in recent months. They’re much more expensive, however, Robinson notes, and they’re not congregated on a single platform, as they used to be.

Refugees Resettled in Small Cities and Suburbs Face Transportation Challenges

April 8, 2019

BY LAUREN HARRIS – Salah Kamal, a 30-year old Syrian refugee, has a love-hate relationship with the public bus of his hometown, Grand Rapids, Mich. When he was resettled in 2016 in Grand Rapids, a mid-size Michigan city, the local bus system was his only connection to food, healthcare, work and important immigration appointments. Though riding the bus made such things possible, Kamal says, it didn’t necessarily make them easy….

Once Jailed in China, Human Rights Lawyer Still Fighting For Justice in NJ

March 31, 2019

BY RONNIE LI – Biao Teng, a Chinese human rights lawyer, was walking on a street near his home one day eight years ago when someone came up behind him suddenly, took off his shirt and covered his eyes with it, and then forced him into a car before he could make a sound. Teng was taken into custody and held for about 10 weeks in solitary confinement in retaliation…

No Easy Path to Canadian Citizenship For Some Syrian Refugees

March 27, 2019

BY YEJI LEE – Canada has received international attention for an innovative program that has brought 56,800 Syrian refugees into the country by pairing one refugee family with five volunteer Canadian sponsors for a year. Now, in early 2019, close to 25,000 of those refugees are eligible to apply for citizenship. For those refugees looking to become Canadians, however, more obstacles lie ahead. “I would say around 90 percent…

Indian Women’s Long Wait For Justice in Gender Violence Cases

May 11, 2017

BY SHIBANI GOKHALE — Twenty-five years after Bhanwari Devi reported that five men raped her to deter her activism, she still awaits justice. Though the attack prompted nationwide protests in India and led to the enactment of a new legislation protecting women from sexual assault in the workplace, Devi’s attackers are yet to be punished.

Bronx Soccer Club Doubles as Legal Service Provider for Immigrant Athletes, Their Families

May 8, 2017

BY KYLEE TSURU — Like the community where South Bronx United is based, the club’s demographics are diverse. Players come from 23 countries, nearly all from Latin America or West Africa— and frequently need legal assistance to navigate immigration laws in the United States.

A Rebirth of Iranian Journalism

May 8, 2017

BY ALISON GONDOSCH — In 2016, several Iranian publications were either closed or suspended along with the imprisonment of eight Iranian journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Most of these journalists were charged with propaganda against the state.

A Refugee Law for India: A Dream or a Soon-to-Be Reality?

April 28, 2017

BY SHIBANI GOKHALE — Although India is home to over 300,000 refugees, it is not a signatory to the United Nation’s Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and has not enacted a law specifically protecting their rights.

Welcome Nowhere: The Plight of the Rohingya and the Fear of Relocation

April 26, 2017

BY LOUIS BAUDOIN-LAARMAN — For the past two months the Rohingya refugee community in Bangladesh has been anxious and unsettled after the country’s prime minister restated Bangladesh’s intention to relocate the refugees to the barren 30,000-hectare island of Thengar Char in the Bay of Bengal.

Zimbabwe Activist Held on Treason Charges

April 25, 2017

BY TANYA NYATHI — Evan Mawarire remembers receiving a harrowing call in May of last year. The person on the other end of the phone spoke in Shona, a dominant dialect among Zimbabweans. “Do you know that that very flag that you have around your neck could strangle you to death?”

Will Vietnam Legalize Prostitution?

May 4, 2016

Vietnam debates the issue — unthinkable a decade ago in a country dominated by Confucianism. By DIEN LUONG It was past midnight and Ngo Thi Mong Linh had already gone to sleep when her cellphone suddenly rang. Linh knew all too well what to anticipate from the other end. “A sex worker was urging me to come to rescue her,” Linh recalled in an interview. “Her client robbed her of…

Ghana: A Community Approach to Violence against Women

April 29, 2016

BY KATHRYN DAVIS Women and girls in Ghana have been victims of sexual assaults and other gender-based violence at some of the highest rates in the world, and Ghanaian officials say they have made little progress in stopping the violence. “We still experience high rates of gender-based violence in many societies globally, Ghana included, violence within families, culture and it defies all of our efforts,” Martha Ama Akaya, Ghana’s UN…

Evaluating the United Nations with Gender

BY JIHYE LEE Critiquing yourself is hard. And imagine if the evaluation is of a decades long effort to fulfill the goals of fighting poverty, inequality and climate change. It’s made ieven tougher because the crucial data and feedback come from the countries whose records aren’t stellar on those issues In mid March, a number of organizations gathered at the United Nations to discuss methods of evaluating the process of…

April 29, 2016

Arraigned in a Kenyan Court for Procuring an Abortion

April 29, 2016

BY SHANDUKANI OMPHULUSA MULAUDZI Ruth Mumbi was arrested by the police five years ago for what they said was a demonstration to incite violence in her community of Mathare, a slum in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Mumbi organized a group of women to protest the country’s high maternal mortality rate. More recently however, Mumbi has advocated for the rights of young women who have been arrested after they underwent unsafe abortions….