UN rights experts urge stronger efforts to eliminate violence against women News
UN rights experts urge stronger efforts to eliminate violence against women

[JURIST] Four UN human rights experts on Tuesday stressed [press release] a need for greater international and national efforts to eliminate violence against displaced women. Noting substantial levels of violence perpetrated against the world’s roughly 17 million conflict-displaced women, the UN’s release came during the worldwide International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women [UN backgrounder]. The experts, Chaloka Beyani, Rashida Manjoo, Rosa Kornfeld-Matte and Urmila Bhoola [official profiles] urged measures including a more punitive approach to deterring violence, greater security for those displaced and increased education for individuals offering aid at camps for internally displaced persons.

Beginning in 1999 the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women falls on November 25 each year in commemoration [TIME report] of the 1960 murders [Miraposa Foundation backgrounder] of Dominican political activists Patria, Minerva and Maria Mirabal. The event marks the beginning of 16 days of activism to advance women’s rights around the world, which end on December 10, Human Rights Day [UN backgrounder], linking violence against women to human rights. The greater concern for women’s human rights has been an ongoing struggle internationally. Earlier this month, Suad al-Shamari, a prominent women’s rights advocate, was arrested [JURIST report] for insulting Islam. Last month Maryam al-Khawaja, a prominent political activist in Bahrain, was released [advocacy website] from jail following an extended investigation [JURIST report] into her activism. Domestically in April the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] temporarily blocked [JURIST report] Arizona from enforcing a statute that will prohibit women from having a medication abortion after seven weeks of pregnancy.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.