The Turkish government is planning to reduce the ratio of underage as well as forced marriages in the country from five percent to one percent through an action plan regarding the issue prepared by the Family and Social Policies Ministry for 2018-2023, daily Milliyet reported on Aug. 31. According to the data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), of the 602,982 official marriages in Turkey in 2015, over 30,000 girls aged 16-17 were forced into marriage, the daily said. This figure corresponds to 5.2 percent of all marriages that year, whereas this ratio was determined to be 7.3 percent in 2002, according to Milliyet. The Family and Social Policy Ministry has held meetings regarding its action plan called “Strategy document and action plan for prevention of early and forced marriage.” In these meetings, the officials reportedly said the issue of child marriage was still an important problem in the…

The Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet, has introduced a bill to legalize gay marriage, a move that follows a string of liberal reforms in one of Latin America’s most conservative nations. In 2015, Chile’s Congress approved same-sex civil unions after years of legislative wrangling. In March, Bachelet, a centre-left politician, pledged to send a full marriage bill to legislators before the end of the year. “We can’t let old prejudices be stronger than love,” Bachelet said in Chile’s La Moneda presidential palace. “We do this with the certainty that it is not ethical or fair to put artificial limits on love, or to deny essential rights just because of the sex of those who make up a couple.” The move comes a week after Chile’s constitutional court approved a landmark bill that will allow abortion in some circumstances. Chile was one of only a handful of countries in the world that…

India’s Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Wednesday said that 30 per cent of his ministry’s budget would be invested on the country’s women farmers. “There will be at least 30 per cent of the budget allocation for women beneficiaries in all ongoing schemes, programmes, and development activities,” he said in his address at the National Consultation of Women Farmers, organised by the National Commission for Women, UN Women and Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch, a forum for women farmers’ rights. In the consultation, women farmers and their collectives from 24 states across India shared a comprehensive framework for establishing gender responsive laws, institutions, policies and programmes in the agriculture sector with the ministry. Singh said that the ministry would be initiating women centric activities to ensure benefits of various beneficiary-oriented programs/schemes reach them. “We will be focusing on women self-help group to connect them to micro-credit…