For 20 years, Mexican activist Lydia Cacho has been waging war on human trafficking in Mexico. In 1999 she launched CIAM Cancun (the Comprehensive Care Centre for Women), a shelter for battered women and children that has been threatened with closure due to lack of funding.

The organisation was created in response to the sexual violence against women and children that is rife in Mexican culture. It's a refuge in a country where trafficking is seldom punished.

For immediate release: March 28, 2011

Toronto, Canada and El Estor, Guatemala:

Rosa Elbira Coc Ich and ten other indigenous Mayan Q'eqchi' women filed a lawsuit Monday against Canadian mining companies HMI Nickel, and its corporate owner, HudBay Minerals, regarding mining-related gang-rapes suffered by them near a Canadian-owned mining site in Guatemala.

On January 17, 2007, the eleven women were gang-raped by mining company security personnel, police and military during the forceful expulsion of Mayan Q'eqchi' families from their farms and homes in the community of "Lote Ocho". These armed evictions were sought by HMI Nickel in relation to its Fenix mining project, located on the north shores of Lake Izabal, Guatemala.

This weekend marked the five-year anniversary of the ascent to power of Canada's exceptionally charismatic (cough*cough) and calculating Conservative PM Stephen Harper. It's surprising that Stephen Harper has lasted so long in a minority government, but for a minority PM, he sure has accomplished a lot -- if by accomplishments, one is referring to the insidious erosion of women's rights that has occurred in the last five years. Let's take a look back at what Harper has done to increase gender inequality, shall we?

Scrap universal daycare