The Gluttmacher Institute in US recently did some research in Ghana and discovered that ten percent of pregnancy-related deaths were due to unsafe abortions. Health experts say that insufficient facilities and the lack of law awareness are the factors to blame for these deaths.

Abortion has been declared legal in Ghana as early as 1985. The law states that any woman who has been the victim of rape and incest has the right to undergo an abortion. The law also extends to women whose pregnancies would only cause them mental or physical harm. Despite the legalization of abortion, it seems that only very few women are aware of this law.

In fact, even some health care providers and women’s groups were also unaware of the law. Needless to say, awareness of this abortion law is extremely important especially in a country like Ghana where a lot of females admit to seeking abortion simply because they do not have the financial stability to raise a child. Even though most of these women approached doctors and hospitals for the procedure, almost half still preferred to look for alternative solutions, such as medications or midwives. Needless to say, these non-medical procedures can have health dangers which, in many cases, have resulted to the death of the patient.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is deemed to be the most dangerous place in the world for women, thanks to thousands of rape cases that occur each year. One of the convicted rapists is Eleka Amungu who raped a 15-year-old girl last year. Amungu claims that he loved the victim and wanted to make her his wife but he did not have the money to marry her. After forcing himself on her, the parents of the girl had him arrested after he told them that he couldn’t afford to marry their daughter. Amungu is now serving his sentence at a prison in Goma.

The prison houses about 300 convicted rapists. This number pales in comparison to the 8,000 rape cases that have occurred last year in the Kivu area alone. Experts are saying that the prevalence of rape in this area of Congo could stem from the historical fact that rape was actually used as a weapon by armed soldiers since the last decade. Today, men who look to soldiers for their role models end up committing the same crime as well. What’s even more disturbing is that the rape victims are getting younger and younger. A lot of the perpetrators are also ignorant of the law and are even unaware that rape is a crime.

The government of Nepal is taking the blame for the rise of human trafficking in the country, especially among young women. Local humanitarians are pointing the finger to the failed implementation of anti-trafficking laws. This results to numerous Nepalese women being smuggled to India to work in brothels.

The Human Trafficking and Transportation Act was developed in 2008 and states that any traffickers arrested will be charged with more than $2,000 in fine and will be sentenced to prison for more than 20 years. Unfortunately, the law has done little to prevent the human trafficking crime from occurring in different parts of the country.

According to an NGO that specializes in helping trafficking victims, the problem stems from the fact that the government is not able to strongly implement the anti-trafficking laws and that among the thousands of criminals who commit trafficking, only a few hundred are punished.

The NGO also conducted research and discovered that a lot of the human traffickers of Nepal are from criminal gangs who are connected to brothel owners in India and that traffickers usually attract their victims by promising possibilities of job or good marriages. Most of the girls and women who are trafficked also resided in towns that are near the perpetrators.