Sofia Firdous of Congress, Odisha's First Woman Muslim MLA
New Age Islam News Bureau
07 Jun 2024
· Sofia Firdous of Congress, Odisha's First Woman Muslim MLA
· Jailed Nobel Laureate NargesMohammadi Targets Sex Abuse in Iranian Prisons
· Saudi Women’s Sport Now About Winning, Not Participation, Says Saudi Fencer, Lama Al-Fozan
· Women and children of Gaza are killed less frequently as war’s toll rises, AP data analysis finds
· Business Summit in Karachi Highlights Women’s Achievements, Challenges
· As African Pop Crests Again, Women Are Leading the Second Wave
· Experts Blame Low Prosecution for Rising Violence Against Women
Compiled by
New Age Islam News Bureau
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Sofia Firdousof Congress, Odisha's First Woman Muslim MLA
June 06, 2024
Odisha Congress MLA Sofia Firdous is the
daughter of Mohammed Moquim | X
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When Odisha Assembly election results came out on June 4, Tuesday, the Indian National Congress's Sofia Firdous created history by becoming the first woman Muslim MLA in the history of the state. The 32-year-old Sofia Firdous will represent the Barabati-Cuttack segment in the 147-member Odisha Assembly.
Interestingly, Odisha's first woman chief minister NandiniSatpathy represented the seat in 1972. The Congress leader was also the last woman to win from Cuttack-Barabati before Firdous.
Who is Sofia Firdous?
Congress candidate Sofia Firdous is the daughter of senior party leader Mohammed Moquim. She won a battle of debutants to retain the Barabati-Cuttack seat, beating Purna Chandra Mahapatra of the BJP by a margin of 8,001 votes. She polled 53,339 votes in all while Mahapatra got 45,338. Biju Janata Dal's Prakash Chandra Behera, who came third, got 40,035.
The Congress party decided to field Sofia Firdous after her father was disqualified from contesting polls following his conviction in a corruption case.
Sofia Firdous is a Civil Engineering graduate from the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology and married to entrepreneur Sheikh Mairajul Hague. In 2023, she was elected president of the Bhubaneswar chapter of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India (CREDAI), etvbharat said in a report.
Mohammed Moquim's disqualification
Mohammed Moquim, the managing director of Metro Builders Pvt Ltd was convicted by a vigilance court for obtaining pecuniary advantage in favour of his company in guide of loans meant for the rural poor from Odisha Rural Housing and Development Corporation Ltd. The Congress legislator, along with IAS officer Vinod Kumar and others, were handed a three-year imprisonment by the court. In April 2024, the Orissa High Court upheld the vigilance court's verdict in the decade-old loan irregularities case.
Earlier in March, Mohammed Moquim had made news when the Supreme Court stayed an High Court order that nullified Moquim’s 2019 election on the grounds of suppression of criminal cases pending against him, an Indian Express report said.
As it was confirmed that Moquim can't fight the 2024 polls, the Grand Old Party decided to field his daughter instead.
In a similar feat in 2022, GulmakiDalwazi Habib had become the first Muslim chairperson of an urban body in Odisha. The then 31-year-old usiness Administration graduate, competed against the BJP to become the chairperson of the Bhadrak Municipality.
Source: theweek.in
https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2024/06/06/orissa-assembly-elections-2024-meet-sofia-firdous-of-congress-odisha-s-first-woman-muslim-mla.html
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Jailed Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi Targets Sex Abuse in Iranian Prisons
June 05, 2024
FILE - Iranian human rights activist
Narges Mohammadi is seen at her parents' home in Iran, hours after being
released from prison on October 8, 2020, in this screen grab from a Twitter
video posted by her husband, Taghi Rahmani
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Imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate and activist NargesMohammadi is urging support for a newly launched campaign targeting sexual abuse of activists and protesters detained in Iranian prisons.
"Sexual harassment, assault and rape serve as instruments of torture, intimidation and coerced confessions by governments seeking to suppress popular protest movements," she wrote in a Tuesday Instagram post calling for victims to "share personal stories."
Mohammadi's post referenced widely reported accounts of torture at Kahrizak Prison in the 1980s, in which "some officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran admitted to sexually abusing prisoners and detainees,” her statement said.
Located in southern Tehran, Kahrizak Prison again drew attention for the alleged torture and rape of detainees following the June 2009 post-election protests.
Mohammadi said the practice of tacitly approved state-led sexual harassment and rape of activists and protesters in Iranian prisons continues.
"The perpetrators and those who authorized such atrocities have never faced accountability," she wrote. "Instead, individuals who speak out and expose sexual harassment within the Islamic Republic have consistently faced prosecution and punishment."
Rape and sexual violence as a means of suppressing dissent within Iran’s prison system has been documented by numerous news outlets and international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others.
Officials in Tehran have denied the practice occurs within its prisons, and the government has repeatedly denied requests from international rights groups to gain access to the facilities or alleged victims as part of third-party investigations.
Mohammadi, 52, who has already received three court sentences for speaking out about harassment, is set to stand trial for the fourth time on June 8, 2024.
Thirty-six female political prisoners at Tehran's Evin Prison issued a statement on Monday demanding that Mohammadi's latest trial be conducted "publicly and with the presence of witnesses and individuals who have experienced harassment, abuse, and sexual assault, as well as independent media."
Mohammadi was a leading light for Iran's nationwide, women-led protests sparked by the September 2022 death in morality police custody of MahsaAmini, which grew into one of the most intense challenges to Iran’s theocratic government. Amini had been detained for allegedly not wearing her headscarf to the liking of authorities.
Currently serving a 6.5-year sentence for her human rights work, Mohammadi has been imprisoned multiple times, according to the London-based Persian-language broadcaster Iran International.
In December, an Iranian court added 15 months to Mohammadi's current prison sentence for allegedly spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic, according to her family.
In October 2020, Mohammadi was released early from the 10-year prison sentence she received on charges stemming from her human rights work.
Some information is from The Associated Press.
Source: voanews.com
https://www.voanews.com/a/jailed-nobel-laureate-targets-sex-abuse-in-iranian-prisons/7644076.html
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Saudi Women’s Sport Now About Winning, Not Participation, Says Saudi Fencer, Lama Al-Fozan
June 06, 2024
LONDON: The goal for women’s sport in Saudi Arabia is no longer about taking part on a global scale but winning medals and titles, Saudi fencer Lama Al-Fozan told Arab News on Thursday.
Al-Fozan, who is also vice president of the Saudi Athletes’ Committee, was a guest at the WiMENA Women in Sport conference at Chelsea FC in London and one of many voices extolling the progress being made in the Kingdom and the wider Middle East region.
She said the blueprint for development of women’s sport participation in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East and North Africa region worked as an example for the rest of the world to follow, a common theme at the conference.
These were “exciting times” for the Kingdom, she said, explaining that when she started fencing as a teenager there were only 200 registered Saudi female athletes. By 2024 the number had increased to 7,000, mirrored by a three-fold increase in women’s sporting federations and clubs from 32 to 97 in under a decade.
Al-Fozan said women now also held training and coaching roles, worked in sports management and sat on sporting institutions’ boards. She highlighted how the Kingdom’s sports authorities had focused on increasing the number of activities open to female participation.
However, she added the focus had now moved on from encouraging women and girls to play sports to creating conditions where talent could be developed to ensure success.
Al-Fozan said that while Saudi athletes might not dominate at the Paris Olympics this summer, people could see for themselves the progress made at events in years to come.
“The goal is no longer just to participate in competitions such as the Olympics, but to actually win medals — this is one of the pillars of the (Saudi) national sport strategy. We are very optimistic and we are excited about it, the future is bright,” she said.
The fencer told Arab News that the progress and potential of women’s sport development in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East was often underestimated, especially in the West.
“I feel we faced criticism in the past because we weren't doing enough and then when we started to develop, we still faced criticism,” she said.
“We really aren't doing this for other people, or to market ourselves, we are doing this for our nation and for our own development. As a Saudi, as an athlete, and as a female, I'm really proud of that.”
Source: arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2525236/sport
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Women and children of Gaza are killed less frequently as war’s toll rises, AP data analysis finds
June 6, 2024
JERUSALEM (AP) — The proportion of Palestinian women and children being killed in the Israel-Hamas war appears to have declined sharply, an Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data has found, a trend that both coincides with Israel’s changing battlefield tactics and contradicts the ministry’s own public statements.
The trend is significant because the death rate for women and children is the best available proxy for civilian casualties in one of the 21st century’s most destructive conflicts. In October, when the war began, it was above 60%. For the month of April, it was below 40%. Yet the shift went unnoticed for months by the U.N. and much of the media, and the Hamas-linked Health Ministry has made no effort to set the record straight.
Israel faces heavy international criticism over unprecedented levels of civilian casualties in Gaza and questions about whether it has done enough to prevent them in an 8-month-old war that shows no sign of ending. Two recent airstrikes in Gaza killed dozens of civilians.
The AP analysis highlights facts that have been overlooked and could help inform the public debate, said Gabriel Epstein, a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East policy who has also studied the Health Ministry data.
The declining impact on women and children -- as well as a drop in the overall death rate -- are “definitely due to a change in the way the IDF is acting right now,” Epstein said, using an acronym for the Israeli army. “That’s an easy conclusion, but I don’t think it’s been made enough.”
AS THE WAR EVOLVES, A SHIFT OCCURS
When Israel first responded to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, which killed some 1,200 people, it launched an intense aerial bombardment on the densely populated Gaza Strip. Israel said its goal was to destroy Hamas positions, and the barrage cleared the way for tens of thousands of ground troops, backed by tanks and artillery.
The Gaza death toll rose quickly and by the end of October women and people 17 and younger accounted for 64% of the 6,745 killed who were fully identified by the Health Ministry.
After marching across most of Gaza and saying it had achieved many key objectives, Israel then began withdrawing most of its ground forces. It reduced the frequency of aerial bombings and has focused in recent months on smaller drone strikes and limited ground operations.
As the intensity of fighting has scaled back, the death toll has continued to rise, but at a slower rate – and with seemingly fewer civilians caught in the crossfire. In April, women and children made up 38% of the newly and fully identified deaths, the Health Ministry’s most recent data shows.
“Historically, airstrikes (kill) a higher ratio of women and children compared to ground operations,” said Larry Lewis, an expert on the civilian impacts of war at CNA, a nonprofit research group in Washington. The findings of the AP analysis “make sense,” he said.
Another sign that Israel softened its bombing campaign: Beginning in January, there was a sharp slowdown in “new damage” to buildings in Gaza, according to Corey Scher, a satellite mapping expert at City University of New York who has monitored buildings damaged or destroyed since the war began.
DAILY DEATH TOLLS AT ODDS WITH UNDERLYING DATA
The Health Ministry announces a new death toll for the war nearly every day. It also has periodically released the underlying data behind this figure, including detailed lists of the dead.
The AP’s analysis looked at these lists, which were shared on social media in late October, early January, late March, and the end of April. Each list includes the names of people whose deaths were attributable to the war, along with other identifying details.
The daily death tolls, however, are provided without supporting data. In February, ministry officials said 75% of the dead were women and children – a level that was never confirmed in the detailed reports. And as recently as March, the ministry’s daily reports claimed that 72% of the dead were women and children, even as underlying data clearly showed the percentage was well below that.
Israeli leaders have pointed to such inconsistencies as evidence that the ministry, which is led by medical professionals but reports to Gaza’s Hamas government, is inflating the figures for political gain.
Experts say the reality is more complicated, given the scale of devastation that has overwhelmed and badly damaged Gaza’s hospital system.
Lewis said while the “beleaguered” Health Ministry has come under heavy scrutiny, Israel has yet to provide credible alternative data. He called on Israel to “put out your numbers.”
HIGH CIVILIAN DEATH TOLL IS A LIABILITY FOR ISRAEL
The true toll in Gaza could have serious repercussions. Two international courts in the Hague are examining accusations that Israel has committed war crimes and genocide against Palestinians – allegations it adamantly denies.
Israel has opened a potentially devastating new phase of the war in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where an estimated 100,000 civilians remain even after mass evacuations. How Israel mitigates civilian deaths there will be closely watched.
Israeli airstrikes in Rafah last month set off a fire that killed dozens of people, and on Thursday an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in central Gaza killed at least 33 people, including 12 women and children, local health officials said.
Israel says it has tried to avoid civilian casualties throughout the war, including by issuing mass evacuation orders ahead of intense military operations that have displaced some 80% of Gaza’s population. It also accuses Hamas of intentionally putting civilians in harm’s way as human shields.
The fate of women and children is an important indicator of civilian casualties because the Health Ministry does not break out combatant deaths. But it’s not a perfect indicator: Many civilian men have died, and some older teenagers may be involved in the fighting.
PARSING GAZA HEALTH MINISTRY DATA
The ministry said publicly on April 30 that 34,622 had died in the war. The AP analysis was based on the 22,961 individuals fully identified at the time by the Health Ministry with names, genders, ages, and Israeli-issued identification numbers.
The ministry says 9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data because they remain “unidentified.” These include bodies not claimed by families, decomposed beyond recognition or whose records were lost in Israeli raids on hospitals.
An additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates; they were excluded from AP’s analysis.
Among those fully identified, the records show a steady decline in the overall proportion of women and children who have been killed: from 64% in late October, to 62% as of early January, to 57% by the end of March, to 54% by the end of April.
Yet throughout the war, the ministry has claimed that roughly two-thirds of the dead were women and children. This figure has been repeated by international organizations and many in the foreign media, including the AP.
The Health Ministry says it has gone to great lengths to accurately compile information but that its ability to count and identify the dead has been greatly hampered by the war. The fighting has crippled the Gaza health system, knocking out two-thirds of the territory’s 36 hospitals, closing morgues and hampering the work of facilities still functioning.
Dr. Moatasem Salah, director of the ministry’s emergency center, rejected Israeli assertions that his ministry has intentionally inflated or manipulated the death toll.
“This shows disrespect to the humanity for any person who exists here,” he said. “We are not numbers … These are all human souls.”
He insisted that 70% of those killed have been women and children and said the overall death toll is much higher than what has been reported because thousands of people remain missing, are believed to be buried in rubble, or their deaths were not reported by their families.
AS DEATH TOLL RISES, THE DETAILS ARE DEBATED
To be sure, this war’s death toll is the highest of any previous Israel-Palestinian conflict. But Israeli leaders say the international media and United Nations have cited Palestinian figures without a critical eye.
Israel last month angrily criticized the U.N.’s use of data from Hamas’ media office – a propaganda arm of the militant group – that reported a larger number of women and children killed. The U.N. later lowered its number in line with Health Ministry figures.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, lashed out on the social platform X: “Anyone who relies on fake data from a terrorist organization in order to promote blood libels against Israel is antisemitic and supports terrorism.”
AP’s examination of the reports found flaws in the Palestinian record keeping. As Gaza’s hospital system collapsed in December and January, the ministry began relying on hard-to-verify “media reports” to register new deaths. Its March report included 531 individuals who were counted twice, and many deaths were self-reported by families, instead of health officials.
Epstein, the Washington Institute researcher, said using different data-collection methodologies and then combining all the numbers gives an inaccurate picture.
“That’s probably the biggest problem,” he said, adding that he was surprised there hadn’t been more scrutiny.
The number of Hamas militants killed in the fighting is also unclear. Hamas has closely guarded this information, though Khalil al-Hayya, a top Hamas official, told the AP in late April that the group had lost no more than 20% of its fighters. That would amount to roughly 6,000 fighters based on Israeli pre-war estimates.
The Israeli military has not challenged the overall death toll released by the Palestinian ministry. But it says the number of dead militants is much higher at roughly 15,000 – or over 40% of all the dead. It has provided no evidence to support the claim, and declined to comment for this story.
ShlomoMofaz, director of Israel’s Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, said such estimates are typically based on body counts, battlefield intelligence and the interrogations of captured Hamas commanders.
Mofaz, a former Israeli intelligence officer, said his researchers are skeptical of the Palestinian data.
In previous conflicts, he said his researchers found numerous “inconsistencies,” such as including natural deaths from disease or car accidents among the war casualties. He expects that to be the case this time as well. The large number of unidentified dead raises further questions, he said.
Michael Spagat, a London-based economics professor who chairs the board of Every Casualty Counts, a nonprofit that tracks armed conflicts, said he continues to trust the Health Ministry and believes it is doing its best in difficult circumstances.
“I think (the data) becomes increasingly flawed,” he said. But, he added, “the flaws don’t necessarily change the overall picture.”
Source: apnews.com
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-casualties-toll-65e18f3362674245356c539e4bc0b67a
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Business summit in Karachi highlights women’s achievements, challenges
June 06, 2024
KARACHI: Pakistani women entrepreneurs and industry leaders this week highlighted their achievements and challenges at a business summit held in Karachi, pointing out that despite strides, securing finances and being taken seriously by market players and state institutions remained a key issue for women.
Senior members of the business community attending the ‘Shevolution’ business summit in Pakistan’s commercial hub of Karachi on Wednesday said only 15 percent of the country’s women were professionals, out of which less than five percent were businesswomen.
This lack of representation and access to finance were described as a “serious dilemma” by participants, with officials at the Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry Korangi, which organized the summit, saying the national GDP could grow three times with equal participation of women in the economy.
Women make up 48 percent of Pakistan’s population but female employment participation is 20 percent, official data shows. The World Bank says if women’s participation was at par with men, Pakistan’s GDP could increase by 60 percent by 2025.
“The biggest challenge for women is to make a case to raise finances to scale up their businesses, to prove to the financiers that they can also be relied on in terms of returning those loans and making good money for themselves from those investments,” MehvishWaliany, CEO of Alkaram Studio, a major textile company, told Arab News on the sidelines of the event.
“There are plenty of women entrepreneurs out there but they all exist in very small spaces.”
Saima Nadeem, a former member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, said women wished to come forward but lacked recognition.
“We haven’t been able to give that access, that direction to women even if they have been given loans,” Nadeem said.
One solution, according to SahibzadiMahin Khan, patron-in-chief and founding president of the Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry Korangi, was more women in leadership positions, who could make women-focused policies and allow more room for female participation and growth.
“We need more women in leadership roles, and I think I am just trying to contribute some of my efforts to this ecosystem where we want to bring in more women,” Khan told Arab News. “We want to train, we want to facilitate and bring them to a level where they can hold the hands of those who come after them and be able to mentor them. We are trying to make a circle out of it.”
Individuals and institutions also needed to take women more “seriously,” Khan added:
“The SECP [Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan] says there should be more than one woman [in the top management]. But when we talk to the corporate sector, they say they have taken one woman onboard. What happens is, they [companies] aren’t giving women the power of decision making.”
But conditions had improved in recent years, according to NaushabaShahzad, Executive Vice President at the National Bank of Pakistan, who said there had been a “significant improvement” in the ecosystem provided to businesswomen by the government and other financial institutions.
“[The] State Bank [of Pakistan] and other banks have been coming forward with specific women-focused policies for empowering women and providing finances to women,” Shahzad, a senior banker with 30 years of experience, said.
“There is a significant increase in the number of businesswomen … Especially after the [coronavirus] pandemic, a lot of women have started online businesses. They are coming forward and doing really well.”
SaquibFayyazMagoon, senior vice president of the Federation of Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, quoted the finance minister and said women entrepreneurs were likely to get subsidies in the upcoming budget, either in terms of tax breaks or other support for their ventures.
“Without women participation, it is not possible to improve the economy,” he said. “If we ignore 51 percent of our population and move ahead, it will be the dream of a fool. It is not possible. We have to involve women to grow our economy.”
And men needed to be part of the change, said Andreas Wegner, deputy head of mission at the German Consulate Karachi, who was attending the event:
“What really could bring women forward as well, and men, is when men open up to the idea that the 50 percent of the population that are not men can bring diversity, new ideas and bring other solutions and benefits.”
Source: arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2525011/business-economy
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As African pop crests again, women are leading the second wave
JUNE 6, 2024
When the emergent Nigerian singer Ayra Starr visited the British digital radio station Kiss Fresh in March, she was asked to whom she wanted to give flowers for International Women’s Day. Starr named three fellow artists — Tems, Tyla and Tiwa Savage — known to fans of modern Afropop as its most consistent guest star, its fastest-rising newcomer and its trailblazing millennial forebear. Taken together, the list can be seen as indicative of not only a breakthrough moment for the music, but what it took to get here. “It makes me emotional, because when I started, I got criticized for dressing too sexy, or my lyrics were a bit too risqué,” Savage said a few months later on the same platform, reflecting on the sour, sexist reception she’d often seen during her own 2010s rise, when she faced backlash for videos like “Wanted” and saw some banned from TV for indecency. The enthusiastic reception Starr had received as a femme-forward “sabi girl,” then, felt promising, an omen of a less patriarchal and more uncompromising future coming into view for Africa’s rapidly expanding pop movement. Or, as Savage put it: “Seeing it now, seeing someone like Ayra, I’m like … yeah!”
Ayra Starr’s new album, The Year I Turned 21 (released May 30), is the latest landmark in an ongoing Afropop evolution. It is among the sleekest records the genre has ever produced, unbelievably self-assured yet acutely aware of the wider world. Along with Tyla and Tems, Ayra completes a triumvirate of young women currently seizing the Afropop stage for themselves, while making fewer concessions to Western presentation. Much early Afropop suffered from an identity crisis — a need to honor tradition, and at the same time an overwhelming appetite for success beyond local borders — that found it zealously integrating the dominant sounds of American music, sometimes at its own expense. Now, a few decades removed from the need to validate the sounds of home or to explain themselves, this trio has carved out space atop the global pop ranks on their own terms.
Afropop has made its greatest international strides, commercially and creatively, in the last decade. The founding of the Nigerian label Mo’Hits in 2003 began the evolutionary process in earnest, and within a few years the most prominent African stars were catching the attention of artists in the States: In 2011, the Mo’Hits rapper D’Banj signed with Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music, while the more R&B-forward duo P-Square signed with Akon’s Konvict label. Their calling card tended to be a chintzy synth-pop sound, heavily influenced by the T-Pains and Flo-Ridas of the American Top 40. But in the end, the industry maneuvering didn’t move the needle much for the music, which remained a curiosity. In their wake, a form known as Afrobeats came to prominence, its very intentional “s” far from the only thing separating it from the sounds of FelaKuti. Led by Tiwa Savage, the prodigy turned global ambassador Wizkid and the Atlanta-born, Lagos-raised architect Davido, the music that became the bedrock of the style affixed African rhythms to the familiar sounds of hip-hop and R&B. The first generation to grow up under the easement of that influence — the synergist Rema, the siphon Fireboy DML and the Ghanaian-American futurist Amaarae — found freedom in its sprawl, becoming pickier about the wells from which they drew and, over time, moving closer to home musically.
The American breakthrough for Afropop coincided with the cultural crossover of other foreign-language pop from South America, Puerto Rico and South Korea, with each genre seeming to have its own big bang. For K-pop, it was Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” powered by the virality of nascent YouTube border-crossing. For Latin pop, the metastasizing success of “Despacito” and its Justin Bieber remix built on a latent reggaeton genealogy lingering beneath the surface. Somewhere between the seed-planting of the former and the overnight propagation of the latter is “One Dance,” Drake’s massive 2016 hit with Wizkid. The song funneled Afrobeats through UK funky and dancehall, and you could make no more honest case for an introduction of Afrobeats to the world — with its vibrant, all-encompassing sound and globalist vision, two things it had in common with Drake, who became one of its earliest and most consistent adopters. In the wake of “One Dance,” a trade route was established, others followingDrake’slead. The late ‘10s brought expanded influence for Davido and Wizkid, who honed their sounds down to the most useful components. Producers like the Nigerian British P2J and the British Ghanaian Jae5 started a cross-cultural exchange, crafting variations of prevalent Afrobeats styles for British rappers like Dave, J Hus, Skepta and Stormzy. Both also produced for the self-proclaimed Afro-fusionist Burna Boy, the first Afropop artist to really synthesize the diaspora into anything like a singularity.
The genre’s eruption intersected with the rise of the streaming economy, and as broader tolerance for foreign pop rose alongside it, stars from within and without seized the moment. By 2019, Burna Boy had amassed enough juice to complain about his place on the bill at Coachella: “I am an AFRICAN GIANT and will not be reduced to whatever that tiny writing means,” he said on Instagram. The album he released that year of the same name set a new benchmark, earning a Grammy nomination for best world music album. (He would win the following year for Twice as Tall.) The same summer as African Giant, Beyoncé took her musical machine to Africa for her Lion King soundtrack project, The Gift, which spanned rap, Afrobeats and gqom, a house subgenre originating in South Africa. Wizkid and Tiwa Savage were in attendance, leading a cast that largely featured Nigerian and South African performers. P2J, among the architects of Beyoncé’s African transformation, pointed in particular to the track “Brown Skin Girl” as a turning point for an inevitable Afropop takeover, calling it “a big moment for Africa” and saying the album would “change the face of music.” Still, it has taken some time for the actual brown skin girls to be the faces of that charge.
For many years, Tiwa Savage was holding it down in an Afropop boys’ club. She was far from the only woman excelling — artists like Simi and Teni did much for the cause — but there were times where she seemed to be the only one gaining traction — hence her “Queen of Afrobeats” title, a claim that often felt uncontested. She has always been aware of her position and the pressures of it, operating between two different masculine cultures, but there has also always been an eager audience for her music. “Afrobeats is very male-dominated, so most of my fans are female,” she told Vogue UK in 2018. “Women identify with my music, with my lyrics, and I really use that to my advantage.” It is a demographic shift that has helped change the rules of engagement for the women coming up after her: What once felt like a fight for attention has now shifted toward one for individuality. “Obviously Afrobeats is experiencing a huge wave that has helped me and a lot of artists,” Amaarae told Vulture last year, after the release of her sensual and adventurous sophomore album, Fountain Baby. “But I want the freedom of the vision that exists outside of this pocket.” With her own style-bending songs, Amaarae has contributed greatly to these efforts; though she has not become a star befitting her output, she’s helped make a way for others.
At the forefront of the current wave is Tems, who emerged during the Afropop boom of the early pandemic. She provided the signature sauce of the atmospheric Wizkid hit “Essence,” which proved to be a major genre milestone and personal springboard. Then came collaborations with Rihanna (contributing to the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack), Drake (co-featuring on Future’s Hot 100 chart-topper “Wait For U” and the Certified Lover Boy cut “Fountains”) and Beyoncé (in a guest spot on the club-conquering album Renaissance), earning her an Oscar nom, a Golden Globe nom, a Grammy win and the highest ever chart debut for an African artist. Last year, her single “Free Mind” set a record for most weeks at No. 1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop airplay chart by a woman. In that song’s peace-seeking psalm, her appeal comes very clearly into focus: Tems makes a feel-it-in-your-chest soul music rooted more in African and English traditions than the American ones so often pulled from by her predecessors. She is so clearly hewing in one direction it is difficult to misclassify her as anything else.
The Nigerian singer has been quite diligent about identifying her music as just “R&B,” and with good reason: Her simmering songs are not in conversation with the diaspora in the same way. They are self-contained — not just laid back, as much Afropop is, but interior and slightly removed. (“Everyone I asked for advice was like, ‘The only way you can do this is Afrobeats. It’s not that your music is bad, it’s just that it doesn’t fit in Nigeria. Nigerians don’t like this,’ ” she said in an Interview magazine conversation with Kendrick Lamar.) The true differentiator in her sound is a tonal one: “All the other girls had these sweet, high voices,” she told The Cut earlier this year. “And my voice had bass.” There are few greater illustrations of this than “Love Me JeJe,” the single from her new album, Born in the Wild (out June 7), which reinterprets the 1997 SeyiSodimu song of the same name, in touch with the classic but wholly in service to the younger singer’s instrument.
For quite a while, media overwhelmingly siloed the pop of the continent to the music of West Africa, and designated it all as Afrobeats. (“It’s not all being properly categorized,” Amaarae has noted. “We’re all being lumped into this one umbrella.”) Even now, as I write this, the broader Afropop label feels like its own too-slippery catch-all. The harsh truth is that those distinctions don’t matter to the average American, who has little conception of Africa as a continent, much less its cultural nuances at the nation and city levels. But there is at least something to be said for the latter term feeling more inclusive than the former, if not more accurate. With her ascent over the last few months, Tyla has pushed that door open wider. “They never had a pretty girl from Joburg / See me now and that’s what they prefer,” she sings on “Jump,” from her self-titled solo debut (March 22). The South African singer had already been honing her craft in plain sight when “Water” spawned a viral dance challenge on TikTok and catapulted her to stardom. Winning the inaugural Grammy for best African music performance, the song set the stage for a quantum leap.
In embracing the log-drum-powered sound of amapiano, a house music hybrid born in South Africa, Tyla has become its greatest envoy. You may have heard its distinctive rhythms pulsing through West African pop, thanks in large part to Asake, a breakout star of the 2020s who adopted its wobble into his street-rap variant. The shuffling music Tyla makes feels more homegrown — a centrist turn from the creations of amapiano DJs in South Africa like Uncle Waffles and Felo Le Tee. Her songs are sweat-soaked but subtle, often sensation-driven, her vocals possessed by the breathlessness of intimacy and motion. It may sound simple, but she performs a certain ethereal perfection, exuding the ease of a sunbather, and the effect on her songs is as apparent as the difference between a real tan and a cosmetic one. She moves through reveries like “Safer” and “ART” with sylph-like grace, and the songs often seem to have the illusory, mystifying charms of a perfume commercial.
Ayra Starr's trajectory runs nearly parallel to Tyla’s. A teenage prospect who started uploading covers online before being spotted by Afropop royal Don Jazzy, the Mo’Hits co-founder, and signing to his second-act label Mavin Records, Starr’s breakout song, “Rush,” also went viral on TikTok, and was among the songs competing with “Water” in its Grammy category. She is one of a few artists working who has actively embraced the Afrobeats title, and her songs do feel more distinctly in the lineage of an artist like Wizkid, intuitively embracing the growth potential of global expansion. “The generations of African artists who worked to this extent for people like me to be able to be global with this sound worked for this,” she told Elle, when asked about internal criticism of the sound’s international dilution. “The genre’s not being diluted, it’s becoming mainstream.”
There may not be a more compellingly all-inclusive sound than hers: As if attempting to honor the long Afrobeats history of wholesale integration that has made it so difficult to define, The Year I Turned 21 bears out all of that potential. If there has ever been “world music,” this is it. There are African forms like highlife and amapiano mixed in with Latin pop and dancehall, the self-described Afrobeats-R&B hybrid “Last Heartbreak Song” and a song literally called “Rhythm & Blues.” Starr finds points of triangulation between Brazilian pop star Anitta and R&B maven Coco Jones and Jamaican producer Rvssian and Latin trap artist Rauw Alejandro. Her mellow, sultry voice is limber enough to flex in nearly any direction.
What is perhaps most glorious about The Year I Turned 21 is how seamless it all feels. Starr has said she thought of the album as a TV show, and though that pseudo-concept isn’t actively pushed in the listening experience, it has an unbreakable continuity. There is no disconnect between the rap swagger of “Bad Vibes” and the jazzy sway of “Orun.” She is as comfortable repurposing Wande Coal’s “You Bad” (on “Jazzy’s Song”) as she is nodding to Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” (on “Control”). Everything fits. Where K-pop maximalism sometimes leads to acts wearing their influences on their sleeves in mismatched layers, like a child trying to dress himself for the first time, this album makes those decisions naturally, without a second thought. The music feels in pursuit of an enlightened state, unwilling to strain itself. On “Goodbye,” across a sashaying lounge rhythm, Starr sounds emancipated, in full strut, with Asake in tow. “Lagos Love Story” embodies its beachside romance, turning Lagos into a Shangri-La. Through her, you can hear an Afrobeats ideal, and how such a thing interacts with the vision of the modern Afropop star.
Ayra Starr, Tyla and Tems each feel like surefire hits in a time when fame is difficult to quantify, and all three artists releasing pivotal career albums in the span of three months is a good-sized crack along African music’s glass ceiling. For many years, women in hip-hop circles faced the same obstacles, and the parallels are unsurprising given the masculine ideology in both cultures. But for the moment, we are seeing just what kind of sprawl a diversity of perspectives can bring to a genre. How you categorize the music matters far less than who is allowed to make it pop.
Source: npr.org
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/31/g-s1-2221/ayra-starr-tems-tyla-women-african-pop
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Experts blame low prosecution for rising violence against women
07 June 2024
Gender-Based violence on women and girls are rising because of low prosecution of perpetrators, Emeritus Dean of Law at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Prof. Joy Ezeilo (SAN) has submitted.
Ezeilo made the submission in Abuja while speaking at the launch of three books, ‘Effects of Bwari conflict and Enugu sit-at-home on women’, ‘Experiences and conditions of domestic workers in North West Nigeria’ and ‘Impact of the farmerherder crisis on women and girls in IDP camps’ by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RSL) West Africa.
She explained: “Offenders get away with their crimes due to a lack of due diligence in investigation and prosecution, evidence, and witness support, including delays and corruption in the administration of the criminal justice system. Victims have been re-victimised and doubly jeopardised by society and in the justice delivery ecosystem.”
Ezeilo insisted that lack of accountability, effective and responsive support services for victims and survivors, as well as low prosecution of cases also encourages impunity in committing violence-related offences against the female gender.
The don also blamed the criminal justice ecosystem for not doing enough to protect victims, stating: “In the criminal justice ecosystem, police and other administrators of justice often fail to protect victims of sexual and gender-based violence by dismissing the seriousness of such violence.”
The law teacher observed that the emergence of Boko Haram has escalated sexual and gender-based violence in the form of sexual slavery, abduction, kidnapping and trafficking of girls as mercenaries and comfort women to provide sex for the insurgents, forced marriage to terrorists and ‘sex-for-food’, saying these untoward practices are having a significant impact on women, children and persons with disabilities, resulting in huge unmet justice needs.
She lamented that cases of sexual assault continue to be trivialised, and the ‘blaming the victim’ mantra still very much alive. Ezeilo stressed that the culture of shaming and stigmatisation worsens the silence around reporting and prosecuting cases of sexual and gender-based violence.
On the impacts of violent activities such as banditry, farmer-herder clashes, and sit-at-home in the Southeast on women and girls, the academic argued that women not only lose economically, but also lose their families in the ensuing violence.
Her words: “Evidence has established that in all these attacks, women and children suffer all kinds of abuses such as the loss of sources of subsistence occupation, maybe farming or livestock rearing. This results in family instability and the creation of a mass population of widows because their husbands are killed in the violent conflict. This increases the inability of children to attend schools because they are rendered homeless and living in IDP camps.
“The orgy of violence that is rocking some parts of the country has resulted in food insecurity driving food inflation to about 40 per cent.”On his part, the regional representative of Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung West Africa, Dr. Claus Dieter Konig, said the recommendations by could be adopted to alleviate the sufferings of victims.
Source: guardian.ng
https://guardian.ng/news/experts-blame-low-prosecution-for-rising-violence-against-women/
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URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/sofia-firdous-congress-odisha-muslim/d/132467