Peru’s minister for women has denounced the impunity that surrounds crimes of gender violence, which she says has placed the country among the world’s most dangerous places for women. “There are discretion and impunity in the justice system that makes it necessary to strengthen the entire system involved in a complaint, from the police officer to the judges,” the Minister for Women and Vulnerable Populations, Ana Maria Romero-Lozada, said in an interview with EFE over the weekend. “We don’t want to send a lot of people to jail, but if someone must go, then he should go. We have to apply the law as it’s written,” she added. The ministry issued a recent report that revealed a 26 percent surge in complaints about gender violence in the first four months of this year — a total of 2,415 — compared with the same period last year. According to Romero-Lozada, this…

Saudi Arabia has re-arrested women’s rights campaigner Loujain al-Hathloul, who is best known for her defiance of the kingdom’s driving ban. Ms Al-Hathloul was detained at King Fahad International Airport in Dammam on the country’s east coast near the border with Bahrain on 4 June and is expected to be taken to Riyadh for questioning by the Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution. She has had no access to a lawyer and has not been allowed to contact her family, Amnesty International reported. The exact reason for her arrest has not been made public but Amnesty said they believe it is due to her human rights activism in the country. The 27-year-old is most famous for defying the kingdom’s ban on female drivers after attempting to drive into Saudi Arabia from the United Arab Emirates. Following the stunt, she was arrested and detained by the Saudi authorities for 73 days. She…