In 2007, Inga Abramova from Belarus was arrested as she was hanging ribbons to raise awareness of the ‘European March’ campaign and detained for five days for ‘minor hooliganism.’ Inga was held underground in a poorly lit and cold cell in a facility staffed exclusively by male guards. The guards made frequent comments about Inga ‘joking’ that […]
19th August 2013
Training on the UN Bangkok Rules for prison officials in Bangladesh provides an insight into the problems faced by women prisoners, as well as some positive progress. Overcrowding in prisons is a major problem in many countries, and Bangladesh is no exception. While there is prison capacity for only around 27,368 people, the system […]
19th July 2013
PRI’s Executive Director, Alison Hannah, reports from a meeting in Thailand last week on the implementation of the Bangkok Rules in East Asia and the Pacific, where participants heard about a range of promising rehabilitative initiatives, as well as exchanging information and views on the many similar challenges women in conflict with the law face […]
1st March 2013
PRI’s Policy Director, Andrea Huber and Programme Officer, Olivia Rope, report from the half-day of discussion of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination of Women (CEDAW) on women’s access to justice. PRI’s activities at the United Nations this year kicked off with the half-day of discussion of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination of Women […]
18th February 2013
I was in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from 1 to 4 May to develop PRI’s work in the South Asia region. Alongside meetings with the Chief Justice and Law Minister, PRI had also organised, together with our local partner organisation BLAST (the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust), a roundtable event on women and girls in the […]
6th May 2012
Blog by PRI’s Executive Director Alison Hannah On Tuesday evening I arrived in Kiev for the final conference reporting on the outcomes of our 3-year programme to support penitentiary reform in Ukraine. As our Regional Director’s flight from Moscow was delayed, I went ahead to our hotel on a bizarre taxi ride along back streets […]
13th April 2012
Upon return from Geneva, on Friday evening, my head was spinning from all the various issues I had discussed with so many different people from so many different institutions and the week felt much longer than five days, but at the same time the term had passed as with a snap of the fingers. It […]
11th March 2012