Turkey’s main opposition united with the government Saturday to overwhelmingly pass a motion giving its military a mandate to carry out operations in neighboring Iraq and Syria.

The parliament met in an emergency session two days ahead of an independence referendum by Iraqi Kurds. Addressing parliament, Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli warned that the Kurdish referendum would bring very dangerous consequences, perhaps even clashes even in global terms.

“Pulling out just a brick from a structure based on very sensitive and fragile balances will sow the seeds for new hatred, enmity and clashes,” Canikli said.

He added that all options and methods were on the table regarding the independence vote and that Turkey would not hesitate to use them.

Ankara strongly opposes the referendum, fearing it could fuel secessionist demands within its own large restive Kurdish minority.

On Saturday, the head of the Iraqi armed forces met with his Turkish counterpart in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, for talks on the forthcoming referendum. Baghdad shares Ankara’s opposition to the vote.

Turkish armed forces carrying out drills on the Iraqi Kurdish border received new reinforcements. The army has been holding military exercises there for the past six days.

Turkish forces were also being beefed up on the Syrian border, with Ankara again warning it would not allow Syrian Kurds to create their own independent state.
…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged her supporters to keep up the momentum in the final hours before Sunday’s national election, urging a last push to try to sway undecided voters.

Merkel is seeking a fourth term in office and her conservative bloc of the Christian Democratic Party and Bavarian-only Christian Social union has a healthy lead in the polls. Surveys in the last week show it leading with between 34 to 37 percent support, followed by the Social Democrats with 21 to 22 percent.

Still, the support has been gradually eroding over the past week. Merkel told supporters in Berlin on Saturday that they needed to keep up their efforts to sway undecided voters, saying “many make their decision in the final hours.”

After handing out coffee and chatting with the campaign workers in Berlin, Merkel headed north to her own riding, walking through the streets of the city of Stralsund shaking hands, posing for photos and signing autographs.

She also campaigned in the northern city of Greifswald and planned a stop as well on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic.

Her main challenger, Social Democrat Martin Schulz, was in western Germany at a rally in the city of Aachen.

At a rally Friday night in Berlin, Schulz urged Germans not to vote for the anti-migrant Alternative for Germany party, known by its German initials AfD, which appears assured of gaining seats in the national parliament for the first time. The nationalist party has 10 to 13 percent support in the polls.

Calling the AfD a “party of agitators” and “the enemies,” Schulz said his Social Democrats were the best option to fight them.

“We will defend democracy in Germany,” he said.

In addition to the AfD, the Greens, the Free Democratic Party and the Left Party were all poised to enter parliament with poll numbers between 8 and 11 percent.

With the numbers so close, several different coalition government combinations could be possible. Merkel on Friday night told supporters in Munich not to be complacent with her bloc’s lead.

“We don’t have a single vote to give away,” she said. “We can’t use any experiments – we need stability and security.”
…

While Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs dominated headlines, countering terrorism and extremism took center stage at the U.N. General Assembly this week. Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top officials from 24 countries highlighted progress made in the fight to defeat the Islamic State militant group in Iraq. VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from Washington.
…

The United States sees value in the New START arms control treaty with Russia, despite Washington’s concerns about Moscow’s track record on arms control and other issues, senior U.S. officials said Friday.

The remarks by the Trump administration officials, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, suggest the treaty will remain in force and the door remains open to pursuing an extension of the accord, which is set to expire in 2021.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty gives both countries until February 2018 to reduce their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,550, the lowest level in decades. It also limits deployed land- and submarine-based missiles and nuclear-capable bombers.

Moscow seen as unreliable

Reuters has reported that President Donald Trump, in his first call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, criticized the New START treaty, saying it favored Moscow.

But one of the Trump administration officials said on Friday the United States was not looking to discard New START.

Senior U.S. officials, including U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, have questioned Russia’s reliability on arms control, citing longstanding U.S. allegations that Russia has violated the Cold War-era Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Russia denies treaty violations and accuses the United States of them.

Working to improve relations

The accusations come amid a nosedive in U.S.-Russian relations.

U.S. intelligence agencies accuse Russia of meddling in the U.S. presidential election, which Moscow denies, and recent tit-for-tat exchanges between Washington and Moscow include moves to slash each others’ diplomatic presence.

The tensions have reached Syria, where the United States and Russia are backing different forces that are scrambling to claim what is left of Islamic State-held territory.

Russia warned the United States on Thursday it would target U.S.-backed militias in Syria if Russian troops again came under fire.

Still, a second senior Trump administration official said Friday the United States was seeking ways to improve communication with Moscow and build some degree of trust, which the official described as nonexistent.

Trump took office saying he wanted to improve ties strained since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, which led Washington to impose sanctions on Russia.

Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko met Trump on Thursday and said afterward that they had a shared vision of a “new level” of defense cooperation.

But the second senior Trump administration official said there had been no decision on whether to provide defensive arms to Ukraine, something Kiev has long wanted.
…

Germans go to the polls Sunday in national elections that will decide whether Angela Merkel remains chancellor for a fourth consecutive term. As Henry Ridgwell reports, many wrote off Merkel’s chances as Germany struggled to cope with the 2015 migrant crisis, but she has weathered the storm, and polls point to a comfortable victory.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to propose a two-year transition for the period after Britain’s formal departure from the European Union on March 29, 2019, the so-called Brexit.

May’s office released excerpts from a speech she will deliver Friday in Florence, Italy, emphasizing that both sides share “a profound sense of responsibility’’ to ensure that Brexit goes “smoothly and sensibly.”

On the eve of her speech, May met with Cabinet ministers for more than two hours to finalize Britain’s position.

Ministers have had tense discussions over crucial issues such as the amount Britain must pay to settle its financial commitments to the bloc and the status of EU citizens in Britain, among others.

The tensions exploded into public view last week when Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson outlined his own vision for life outside the European Union. He argued for a sharp break with the bloc, a stance that dismays moderates who fear this will wreck Britain’s relations with the world’s biggest trade bloc.

May’s speech comes before the fourth round of negotiations with the EU partners, which cannot move forward until the pending issues are resolved, although Britain wants to begin discussing future links, including trade and security cooperation.

While British media are reporting that May would offer to pay $24 billion during the transition period, the excerpts do not include a figure.
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A Syrian opposition activist and her journalist daughter have been found slain in their apartment in Istanbul, the Istanbul police department said Friday.

The bodies of 60-year-old Orouba Barakat and her 22-year-old daughter Halla were found overnight in their apartment in Istanbul’s Uskudar neighborhood in the Asian side of the city.

Turkish media reports said Orouba Barakat was investigating alleged torture in prisons run by the Syrian government. It said she had lived in Britain, then the United Arab Emirates before coming to Istanbul.

“The hand of tyranny and injustice assassinated my sister Doctor Orouba and her daughter Halla in their apartment in Istanbul,” Orouba’s sister Shaza wrote on Facebook, adding that they were stabbed to death.

“Orouba wrote headlines in the first page and she pursued criminals and exposed them. Her name and her daughter’s name, Hala, now made first page headlines,” Shaza added.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Turkey has become home to almost 3 million Syrian refugees, many of them opponents of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
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The Catalan regional leader on Thursday said he would press on with an Oct. 1 referendum on a split from Spain, flouting a court ban, as tens of thousands gathered for a second day on the streets of Barcelona demanding the right to vote.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont said he had contingency plans in place to ensure the vote would go ahead, directly defying Madrid and pushing the country closer to political crisis.

Spain’s Constitutional Court banned the vote earlier this month after Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said it violated Spain’s 1978 constitution, which states the country is indivisible. Most opposition parties are also against the vote.

“All the power of the Spanish state is set up to prevent Catalans voting,” Puigdemont said in a televised address.

“We will do it because we have contingency plans in place to ensure it happens, but above all because it has the support of the immense majority of the population, who are sick of the arrogance and abuse of the People’s Party government.”

‘Step back for democracy’

On Thursday, tens of thousands gathered outside the seat of Catalonia’s top court in Barcelona, singing and banging drums, to protest the arrests of senior officials in police raids on regional government offices on Wednesday.

“This is a step back for democracy,” said one of them, 62-year-old pensioner Enric Farro. “This is the kind of thing that happened years ago — it shouldn’t be happening now.”

State police arrested Catalonia’s junior economy minister, Josep Maria Jove, on Wednesday in an unprecedented raid of regional government offices.

Spontaneous protest

Acting on court orders, police have also raided printers, newspaper offices and private delivery companies in a search for campaign literature, instruction manuals for manning voting stations and ballot boxes.

Polls show about 40 percent of Catalans support independence for the wealthy northeastern region and a majority want a referendum on the issue. Puigdemont has said there is no minimum turnout for the vote and he will declare independence within 48 hours of a “yes” result.

A central government’s spokesman said protests in Catalonia were organized by a small group and did not represent the general feeling of the people.

“In those demonstrations, you see the people who go, but you don’t see the people who don’t go, who are way more and are at home because they don’t like what’s happening,” Inigo Mendez de Vigo said.

Mendez de Vigo also said an offer for dialogue from Madrid remained on the table. Repeated attempts to open negotiations between the two camps over issues such as taxes and infrastructure investment have failed over the past five years.

Rajoy said on Wednesday the government’s actions in Catalonia were the result of legal rulings and were to ensure the rule of law. The prime minister called on Catalan leaders to cancel the vote.

Hundreds of National Police and Guardia Civil reinforcements have been brought into Barcelona and are being billeted in two ferries rented by the Spanish government and moored in the harbor. But the central government must tread a fine line in enforcing the law in the region without seeming heavy-handed.

Hardline tactics a concern

The stand-off between Catalonia and the central government resonates beyond Spain. The country’s EU partners publicly support Rajoy but worry that his hardline tactics might backfire.

In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, who heads the pro-independence devolved government, said she hoped the Catalan and Spanish governments could hold talks to resolve the situation.

In a referendum in 2014, Scots voted to remain within the United Kingdom.

 
…

Federal prosecutors in Switzerland on Thursday announced indictments of the leader of a prominent Swiss Islamic group and two other top members over alleged al-Qaida propaganda videos posted on YouTube. Contacted by phone in Bangladesh, one of the suspects rejected the case as “politically motivated.”

Attorney General Michael Lauber’s office alleges the three members of the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland violated Swiss laws banning al-Qaida, Islamic State and associated radical groups. His office and federal police have opened about 60 cases linked to alleged “jihadi-motivated terrorism,” mostly involving propaganda.

The indictments target ICCS President Nicolas Blancho, the group’s cultural production chief Naim Cherni, who is a German citizen, and spokesman Abdel Azziz Qaasim Illi, said Illi in a phone interview. Blancho and Illi are both Swiss citizens, he said. They all remain free.

“Our reaction is the same it has always been: It is a politically motivated act by the state prosecutor,” Illi said from Bangladesh, where he was taking part in ICCS efforts to help the Muslim Rohingya minority who have been fleeing violence in neighboring Myanmar by the hundreds of thousands since Aug. 25.

“They know their case is weak,” Illi said of the prosecutors. Referring to ICCS, he added: “They are trying to defame the famous Islamic organization.”

The case was built around an interview that Cherni conducted in Syria in 2015 with Abdullah al-Muhaysini that has been posted on YouTube. The Saudi militant has been linked to an umbrella organization known as Jaish al-Fatah, or Army of Conquest, which is led by an al-Qaida affiliate. Illi called him a “rebel leader” and said links to al-Qaida weren’t confirmed.

Illi said authorities had tried and failed to have YouTube remove the interview video.

The attorney general’s said it asked the Swiss division of Google Inc. — YouTube’s parent company — to delete the interview two years ago and said it was “annoying” that it remained online.

“It is not in our power to delete it. It would be desirable if this were to change, particularly in the case of criminal proceedings such as this,” Lauber’s office wrote in an email. “This is a political question.”

The indictment comes nearly two years after Lauber’s office announced an investigation of what was then an unspecified German citizen accused of “having presented his journey to embattled regions of Syria in a video for propaganda purposes, without having explicitly distanced himself from al-Qaida activities in Syria.”

In a statement Thursday, the attorney general’s office said the videos were supportive of al-Qaida and had been “actively promoted via social media and at a public event” by all three suspects.

 
…

Israel’s support of next Monday’s independence referendum by Iraqi Kurds is threatening to strain recently restored diplomatic relations with Turkey. Ankara has been condemning the planned vote, warning of severe consequences for the region.

Israel has a long tradition of seeing the region’s Kurds as a buffer from both Arab and Iranian threats; but with Turkey having its own restive Kurdish minority, Israel’s support of the vote has drawn strong condemnation in Turkey. 

Aydin Selcen, a former senior Turkish diplomat who served widely in the region, says the response by Ankara and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been restrained.

“In the government media, there are many articles saying, look, Israel is behind Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence. But what has to be followed is the practical reaction from Ankara, not what the government media reports. I also did not see anything coming from Erdogan’s mouth putting Israel on the target for this issue,” Selcen said.

Israel and Turkey only recently restored diplomatic ties after rapprochement efforts following the 2010 killing by Israeli commandos of 10 Turks trying to break Israel’s economic blockade of Gaza. But Turkish suspicions over Israel’s relations with the region’s Kurds were further heightened this month when former senior Israeli general Yair Golan declared the Kurdish rebel group the PKK, which has been fighting the Turkish state for decades, is not a terrorist organization. Washington and the European Union have designated the PKK as a terrorist group.

The comment triggered a strong reaction in Ankara; but former Turkish diplomat Selcen says a swift response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrates that both sides are committed to working together, despite differences.

“Mr. Netanyahu made a very attentive statement underlying for Israel the PKK is a terrorist organization, but an independent Kurdish state is in the interests of the region; Israel needs this alliance as Turkey needs it for different reasons, but they both need it. And that’s how they managed to repair the relations. And with Israel there are some tensions, but the two sides manage to go on now with the newfound, let’s say friendship and relations, they are not going to sever the diplomatic ties, like before over the issue of Kurdistan,” Selcen said.

Analysts warn if Israel backs its support of the Kurds with action, it will likely further strain relations with Ankara, whatever their wider mutual interests.
…

French labor unions staged fresh protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s contested labor law reforms Thursday — a day before he adopts them by executive order.

The nationwide action backed by the powerful, hard-left CGT trade union, saw protesters take to the streets in the second round of public opposition to the long-touted reforms that will give more power to employers to hire and fire workers. Macron says that’s needed to power the stagnant French economy and boost jobs.

In cities across the country, demonstrators waved anti-capitalist placards and angry personal messages against Macron, whose popularity has recently taken a hit.

In Paris, demonstrators brandishing posters reading “The state ruins the people” marched past the posh La Rotonde restaurant where Macron was branded arrogant for prematurely celebrating his victory in the first round of the elections before he had won the presidency.

The latest protests come a week after hundreds of thousands of protesters — half a million, according to the unions — took to the streets in the first major challenge to Macron’s fledgling presidency.

Macron is waving away the opposition and his government is pressing ahead with the labor reforms, backed by a robust majority in parliament.

 
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The lack of a unified approach by world governments to paying kidnap ransoms is putting the lives of citizens of all nationalities at greater risk and providing terror groups with a big source of finance, warns a new report from British analyst group the Royal United Services Institute.

The authors call for a global, rigorously applied and scrupulously monitored commitment to prevent any concessions to terrorist organizations.

A series of high profile kidnappings by Islamic State in Syria highlighted the lack of a unified global response. Among them was American filmmaker James Foley, held for nearly two years alongside other hostages, until he was murdered in August 2014.

“There are cases where a number of individuals are taken hostage, so in the James Foley case, tragically, and other cases in West Africa, where you have mixed nationalities.  And those that pay ransoms are freed earlier, multimillion-dollar ransoms that allow the terrorist groups to perpetuate their work.  And those that do not pay ransoms are kept for extended periods of time until it becomes politically expedient to murder them,” explains report author Tom Keatinge of RUSI.

He adds that terrorists often will abuse hostages whose governments refuse to negotiate, in order to raise the pressure on countries that do.

France is among the countries accused of paying ransoms.  In December 2014, then President Francois Hollande waited on the tarmac of a military airport outside Paris to welcome home hostage Serge Lazarevic, who had been kidnapped in Mali by al-Qaida militants.  He is one of several French hostages to have been released.

Choosing ‘right to life’

While Hollande consistently denied his government paid ransoms, the evidence suggests otherwise, says Keatinge.

“There are a number of countries, Italy is another one, where hostages have come home.  And the country has chosen the immediate right to life of their citizen over adhering to an internationally-agreed ban not to finance terrorist organizations.”

Ransoms are a major source of criminal financing in Colombia.  Guerrilla fighters belonging to the rebel National Liberation Army, known as the ELN, have kidnapped dozens of people.  In a rare interview this month, the group’s commander “Yernson” spoke about the key role that kidnapping plays.

“It’s a difficult economic situation; that’s why we have hostages.  We could say, ‘No, we won’t kidnap anyone else,’ but how would we finance our struggle? How would we finance our work?  We live off of the ‘ransom tax’ and kidnappings,” he told a Reuters journalist.

Specialist private sector companies, usually backed by insurance policies, are brought in to negotiate in such cases.  They often secure a release for a fraction of the ransom demand, says Keatinge.

“In places like Mexico, South America, where kidnapping is almost an industry for money raising for criminal groups, that’s where these private sector companies have proven to be very effective.  In the [Niger] delta in Nigeria, releasing people who have been taken hostage from oil companies, that’s another place they have been very effective.”

Currently, the ban on terrorist financing precludes the use of private sector resolutions in terrorist hostage situations.  Keatinge argues reversing this policy would lower kidnappers’ ransom expectations and potentially throttle a major source of terrorist financing.
…

World leaders meeting at the United Nations on Wednesday launched a half-billion dollar effort to end violence against women and girls, a crime suffered by one in three in their lifetimes.

The effort will fund anti-violence programs that promote prevention, bolster government policies and provide women and girls with improved access to services, organizers said.

It will take particular aim at human trafficking, femicide and family violence, they said.

A third of all women experience violence at some point in their lives, and that figure is twice as high in some countries, according to the United Nations.

“Gender-based violence is the most dehumanizing form of gender oppression. It exists in every society, in every country rich and poor, in every religion and in every culture,” Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, head of U.N. Women, said as the United Nations held its annual General Assembly.

“If there was anything that was ever universal, it is gender inequality and the violence that it breeds against women,” she said.

In other forms of violence, more than 700 million women worldwide were married before they were 18, and at least 200 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation in 30 countries, according to U.N. figures.

The initiative of 500 million Euros (US$595 million) was launched by the U.N. and the European Union, which is its main contributor, organizers said.

“The initiative has great power,” said Ashley Judd, a Hollywood actress and goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) who participated in Wednesday’s announcement.

“There are already so many effective, research-based, data-driven programs,” Judd told the Thomson Reuters Foundation ahead of the announcement. “Financing for existing programs is a beautiful thing.

“It also makes an incredibly powerful statement to show that the world is increasingly cohesive around stopping gender-based violence,” she said.
…

Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi returned to frontline Italian politics over the weekend, staking his claim to lead a resurgent center-right into national elections that are expected early next year.

At exactly the same moment, Berlusconi’s outspoken ally, Matteo Salvini, was addressing his Northern League party and laying down his own marker to become the next prime minister.

“Salvini Premier” read a sign stuck to the lectern.

In reality, neither man looks likely to head the next government if they pull off an election victory, and possible alternative candidates are already emerging.

“There is an apparent power struggle going on between Berlusconi and Salvini, but it will not get out of hand. They know a violent clash would be suicidal with voters,” said Piero Ignazi, politics professor at Bologna University.

“The truth is both men will remain head of their respective parties, but they won’t be the next prime minister,” he said.

This would open the way for a consensus candidate who would have to bridge the huge divergences between the three main rightist parties – from the fierce anti-EU agenda put forward by both the Northern League and Brothers of Italy to the pro-European vision embraced by Berlusconi on Sunday.

Latest opinion polls show this trio of long-standing allies are pulling ahead in the polls and predicted to win a combined 35 percent of the vote, with the anti-migrant Northern League just ahead of Berlusconi’ Forza Italia on some 15 percent.

By contrast, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and ruling center-left Democratic Party (PD) are seen on around 28 percent apiece. The 5-Star has ruled out any coalition alliances and the center-left pool of votes is shrinking as various leftist parties engage in ferocious infighting.

Court appeal

Under the current electoral system no party or bloc looks like winning enough seats to govern alone. However, political analysts say the wind is filling the center-right’s sails after years of adverse conditions, giving it pre-election momentum.

Berlusconi ignominiously resigned from power in 2011 during a sovereign debt crisis. Mired in sex scandals and legal woes, he was subsequently expelled from the Senate and banned from running for office due to a 2013 tax fraud conviction.

Open heart surgery last year left most analysts writing his political obituary. But not for the first time, the media tycoon, now 81, bounced back and has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn the ban on seeking election.

A hearing is scheduled for November, but a verdict is unlikely to come for several months, meaning he almost certainly will not be able to stand in the next national ballot, which is due by May 2018 and widely expected to be held in March.

“Despite his age, Berlusconi would love to be prime minister again. It would be his last hurrah. But realistically speaking, it is not about to happen,” said a Forza Italia official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Significantly, Berlusconi made his political comeback speech at an event organized by Forza Italia stalwart Antonio Tajani, the president of the European Parliament. Party sources said Tajani was in pole position to be Berlusconi’s surrogate.

Compromise

While Berlusconi’s name abroad evokes memories of “bunga bunga” sex parties and wisecracks, Tajani is a much less colorful character, whose pro-European instincts would make him a reassuring figure for international markets.

Those very same instincts would pose a problem for Berlusconi’s hardline allies, who have regularly denounced the European Union and have called for Italy to quit the euro.

“The leader of the center-right needs to be chosen through a clear process, perhaps a primary,” Giorgia Meloni, the head of Brothers of Italy, told Sky Italia television on Sunday.

“I imagine that whatever grassroots method you decide, Tajani will not win out,” she said.

Brothers of Italy is a small, nationalist party, which is anti-migrant and anti-euro. It tries to differentiate itself from the League by saying it focuses on the whole country, not just the wealthy north.

Buoyed by the League’s strong poll numbers, Salvini says the leader of the party which wins the most votes next year should automatically be the prime ministerial candidate.

But Berlusconi, a four-times premier, has ruled out handing over the baton of power to Salvini, who has embraced Europe’s far-right and endorsed France’s National Front.

“We created the center-right in Italy and we have always been its leader, laying out and fulfilling its program,” Berlusconi said on Sunday. The two men have not spoken for months, saying they are in no hurry to discuss strategy.

Political analysts have speculated that the pro-business Forza Italia might find it easier to create a government of national unity with former prime minister Matteo Renzi’s PD party rather than the populist Northern League.

Forza Italia loyalists reject this notion.

“We ruled with the Northern League for years in national government and we are ruling with them now in the regions and it is going well,” said Forza Italia lawmaker Deborah Bergamini.

One such regional coalition is in Liguria, headed by Forza Italia’s Giovanni Toti. He attended both the Forza Italia and Northern League rallies at the weekend and is due to take part in a Brothers of Italy meeting this weekend.

“Toti has been carefully building bridges between the three parties and would be a natural choice to head any national coalition,” Bologna University’s Ignazi said.
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Ukraine could have a new Supreme Court installed by next month as part of judicial reforms aimed at rooting out corruption, Ukraine’s Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko said Tuesday.

“I think from October the new Supreme Court will start working,” Petrenko told Reuters in an interview at the Concordia Annual Summit in New York. “The next challenge for us is to establish new appeal courts throughout the country, and to take in new judges in the regional courts.”

Petrenko added that reforms within appeal and regional courts could be in place within the next four years. Other government reforms began in 2014, after a popular uprising driven partly by public anger over endemic corruption.

Ukraine is still dealing with nagging allegations of graft, and Transparency International ranked it a poor 131st out of 176 countries in the World Ranking of Corruption Perception in a report this year.

The selection process for new Supreme Court judges has been questioned by figures including British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who cited concerns in July that Ukrainian government reforms were faltering.

Not ideal, but ‘very good’

Petrenko addressed criticism surrounding the selection, saying that while there are no ideal processes, “this one is very good.”

“We have a democratic society, and all the time there are people who will criticize the process,” he said.

Ukraine currently is the recipient of an aid-for-reforms program from the International Monetary Fund.

So far, the IMF has given the country $8.4 billion, helping it recover from a two-year recession following the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the outbreak of a Russian-backed insurgency in its industrial east.

Under the $17.5 billion program, the IMF wants Ukraine to set up a special court to focus on tackling corruption.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Friday said he hoped an anti-corruption chamber would be created next month, but expressed doubt that an independent court as envisaged by the IMF could be set up before 2019.
…

Russia will abide by a European Court of Human Rights ruling requiring it to pay nearly 3 million euros ($3.6 million) in damages for the 2004 Beslan school siege, the Interfax news agency reported Tuesday, citing the Russian justice ministry.

Russia used excessive force to storm a school in the small southern Russian town seized by Islamist militants in 2004, causing a high number of hostages to be killed, the court ruled in April.

The three-day drama began when Islamist militants took more than 1,000 people hostages on the first day of the school year and called for independence for the majority-Muslim region of Chechnya.

More than 330 hostages died, including at least 180 children, when the siege ended in a gunbattle. It was the bloodiest incident of its kind in modern Russian history.

The case for damages was brought by 409 Russian nationals who either were taken hostage or injured in the incident, or were family members of those taken hostage, killed or injured, the European Court of Human Rights statement said in April.

On Tuesday, the court said in a press release that its Grand Chamber Panel had rejected a Russian government request to refer the case and said its ruling was final.

“No other actions are being contemplated by the participants in this process,” the Russian justice ministry said in comments carried by Interfax.

In its April ruling, the court said the heavy-handed way Russian forces stormed the school had “contributed to the casualties among the hostages.”

It also ruled that authorities had failed to take reasonable preventive measures, despite knowing militants were planning to attack an educational institution.
…

The first of hundreds of Catalan mayors summoned to answer questions on why they have backed a banned Oct. 1 referendum on independence from Spain appeared before the state prosecutor on Tuesday amid cheers and chants from supporters.

The first three mayors to declare exercised their right to remain silent, the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI) said.

Years of separatist feeling in the industrial northeastern region will come to a head in less than two weeks as the fiercely pro-independence regional government calls a referendum on splitting from Spain.

Madrid has declared the referendum illegal and the Constitutional Court has suspended the vote that was approved by the regional government earlier this month.

So far, 745 of 948 municipal leaders have said they will provide venues for the referendum.

“Voting is not a crime,” said Marc Solsona, mayor of the town of Mollerussa, one of nearly 750 mayors facing charges of civil disobedience, abuse of office and misuse of public funds, as he left the state prosecutor’s office in Barcelona.

“I’m just the mayor and I have to serve my people. I am committed to the people being able to vote on Oct. 1 in accordance with the law passed by the Catalan parliament and what happens to me is not important,” he said.

Solsona smiled, kissed and gripped hands with dozens of clapping supporters gathered outside the state prosecutor’s office as he entered to chants of “You are not alone.”

“We consider ourselves privileged to have a mayor who represents the townspeople above any other interests — political or financial,” said 63-year-old pensioner Angel Tena, who had traveled to Barcelona to support the mayor.

Separately, police continued their search for ballot boxes, voting papers and campaign leaflets on Wednesday, raiding the offices of Spain’s biggest private delivery company Unipost in the Catalan city of Terrassa, Spanish media reported.

Neither the police nor the Interior Ministry could confirm the raid, but footage showed dozens of people gathered outside the company’s offices chanting “Out with the occupying forces,” handing out voting papers and laying carnations on police cars.

Unipost confirmed the raid without giving further details.

Although polls show less than half of Catalonia’s 5.5 million voters want self-rule, most in the wealthy northeastern region want the chance to vote on the issue.
…

FIFA president Gianni Infantino wants the next edition of the Women’s World Cup to draw a billion TV viewers across the world.

Infantino, who attended the official launch of the tournament that will be organized in France in 2019, said on Tuesday that the previous edition in Canada in 2015 was watched by 750 million viewers.

Speaking alongside French federation president Noel Le Graet and French Sports Minister Laura Flessel, Infantino said “our goal is to reach one billion in France in 2019.”

The tournament, which will run from June 7 to July 7, will gather 24 teams in six groups.

France will kick off the event at Parc des Princes in Paris, with the semifinals and finals in Lyon.

“It will be magnificent,” Infantino said. “France is a great football nation for both men and women.”

 
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A towering monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the prolific assault rifle that bears his name, has been unveiled in Moscow.

Kalashnikov died in 2013 at age 94 in the city of Izhevsk where he lived. He has received accolades as the creator of the AK-47 assault rifle, the world’s most popular firearm. An estimated 100 million guns are spread worldwide.

Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky said at the monument’s opening Tuesday that the Kalashnikov rifle has become “Russia’s cultural brand.”

The monument in downtown Moscow shows Kalashnikov cradling his rifle.

Kalashnikov, born into a peasant family in Siberia, began brooding about a new rifle design after being wounded in a 1941 battle against Nazi forces, and finalized it in 1947.
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Officials are calling for increased police patrols and new laws to punish perpetrators after a spate of rapes around Italy.

After two new cases emerged Tuesday, Rome mayor Virginia Raggi declared it has been “a black September for Italy.”

In Rome, a German woman reported being raped, robbed and bound in the swank Villa Borghese park overnight.

And in Catania, police on Tuesday arrested a man who allegedly raped a doctor to whom he had gone for medical help.

The attacks followed a case in Florence where two American students said two carabinieri officers raped them after offering them a ride home from a disco in their patrol car. And in August, a Polish tourist was raped and her partner beaten during a beach attack in Rimini.

 
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Alphabet unit Google has offered to display rival comparison shopping sites via an auction as part of an EU compliance order following a landmark fine for favoring its own service, four people familiar with

the matter said on Monday.

The proposal, submitted to the European Commission on August 29 following a record 2.4-billion-euro ($2.87 billion) penalty, would allow competitors to bid for any spot in its shopping section known as Product Listing Ads, the people said.

Three years ago, the world’s most popular internet search engine made a similar offer in an attempt to settle a long-running investigation by the European Commission and stave off a fine. The offer was ultimately rejected following negative feedback from rivals and discord within the EU executive.

Under this earlier proposal, Google had reserved the first two places for its own ads. The new offer would also see Google set a floor price with its own bids minus operating costs. The company has sought feedback from competitors.

The offer does not address the issues set out by EU competition regulators, the people said. The Commission had ordered Google to treat rivals and its own service equally.

“This is worse than the commitments,” one of the people said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The Commission was not immediately available for comment.

Google did not respond to a request for comment. Google has until September 28 to stop its anti-competitive practices or its parent company Alphabet could be fined up to 5 percent of its average daily worldwide turnover.
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The four American college students attacked with acid at a Marseille train station have forgiven their assailant, who reportedly suffers from a mental illness, a university spokesman said Monday.

The four women, on a study-abroad year, have all said they intend to remain in Europe to continue their studies, the spokesman for Boston College, the private Jesuit school they attend, told The Associated Press.

The women “have stated their intention to remain in Europe for their studies and have offered forgiveness to the woman who attacked them, an individual who police say suffers from mental illness,” said Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn.

The four were attacked Sunday morning at the Saint Charles train station in the southern French city. A 41-year-old woman has been taken into custody by police in the case.

Two of the students had asked for prayers for their assailant in Facebook posts late Sunday.

One of the women, Michelle Krug, said she was one of two who got hit in the eye with “a weak solution of hydrochloric acid.” She asked friends to “please consider thinking about/praying for our attacker” so she can receive help.

“Mental illness is not a choice and should not be villainized,” Krug wrote, adding she planned to continue her “incredible opportunity” to study in France.
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Canada-born designer Erdem Moralioglu has turned the Old Selfridges Hotel into a glamorous speakeasy for his London Fashion Week show.

With classics “Stormy Monday” and “My Funny Valentine” playing, the fashion house named Erdem on Monday displayed glamorous, full-length evening gowns with full-length gloves and sparkly accessories.

Many had floral themes and remarkable detailing, adding to the show’s exuberance and opulence.

While many designers are showing more and more skin, Erdem opts for a subtle celebration of feminine beauty. There were some sheer and lacy outfits, but most were more modest, with either high necklines or sweetheart ones.

The effect was entrancing. Nostalgia was in the air – the program featured a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II meeting Duke Ellington in 1958.

London Fashion week continues later Monday with Christopher Kane, and others.
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At least eight people were killed and dozens more injured when a violent storm hit western Romania on Sunday.  

The storm, bearing winds of 100 kilometers an hour, also caused property destruction in neighboring Serbia, and in Croatia.

Road and rail traffic in parts of Romania was halted by fallen trees and dozens of towns and villages were left without power.

“We can’t fight the weather,” Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Tudose told Antena3 TV. “The entire medical sector is focused on the injured.”

He said the government would help support the communities hit by the storm.

Romania’s national weather agency issued warnings of strong winds and rainstorms for western areas of the country.

Emergency responders urged people to take shelter indoors, unplug household appliances and park in areas not close to trees or power lines.

The storm followed several days of high temperatures.  Temperatures were above 30 degrees Celsius on Sunday.
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Ana Brnabic, Serbia’s first openly gay prime minister, joined several hundred activists at a gay-pride march in Belgrade on Sunday.

Brnabic, who is also the first woman in top-level job, said she is working “one step at a time” toward building a more tolerant society.

Serbian riot police cordoned off the city center with metal fences early Sunday to prevent possible clashes with extremist groups opposed to the gathering. Similar events have been marred by violent clashes in the conservative country.

 “The government is here for all citizens and will secure the respect of rights for all citizens,” Brnabic told reporters. “We want to send a signal that diversity makes our society stronger, that together we can do more.”

Members of Serbia’s embattled LGBT community face widespread harassment and violence from extremists. Violence marred the country’s first gay pride march in 2001, and more than 100 people were injured during a similar event in 2010 when police clashed with right-wing groups and soccer hooligans. Several pride events were banned before marches resumed in 2014.

Brnabic, who was elected in June, has tried to shift the focus away from her sexual orientation, asking “Why does it matter?”

Serbia is on track to join the European Union, but the EU has asked the country to improve minority rights, including for the LGBT community.

The marchers Sunday said they hoped Brnabic will bring about legislative changes for same-sex couples.
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One of President Vladimir Putin’s top allies said on Sunday she saw no logic in deploying U.N. peacekeepers along the border between Russia and Ukraine, something Kyiv and Washington favor.

Putin this month suggested armed U.N. peacekeepers be deployed to eastern Ukraine to help protect ceasefire monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and to help end a conflict between Ukrainian troops and Russia-backed separatists, which has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called the proposal “interesting,” while Kurt Volker, the U.S. envoy to Ukraine peace talks, says the suggestion gives negotiators more ideas with which to seek a resolution to the conflict. But differences about where the peacekeepers would operate risk sinking the plan.

Putin originally said the peacekeepers could be deployed along the line of contact between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists, but later said they could also be deployed in other areas where OSCE inspectors work.

Washington and Kyiv also want peacekeepers to be deployed along those parts of Ukraine’s border with Russia which Kyiv does not control.

However, Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Russian upper house of parliament and a close Putin ally, said on Sunday Moscow strongly objected to that idea.

“I don’t see any logic in such a proposal,” Matviyenko, visiting Turkmenistan, told reporters, the Interfax news agency reported. “Those who would like to surround the residents of the self-proclaimed republics of Donbas [parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions] with barbed wire or to simply destroy these people … will not succeed.”
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The investigation into Russian influence on the US elections has renewed attention to the Russian ban on US adoptions, a response to American sanctions about five years ago. Donald Trump Jr. said that was the topic when he met with a Russian lawyer during his father’s election campaign. As Svetlana Prudovskaya of VOA’s Russian service reports, the adoption ban has affected families and children in both countries.
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A senior NATO official says there’s reason to be concerned about the large-scale Zapad 2017 military maneuvers being conducted now by Russia and Belarus, since they could be seen as “a serious preparation for big war.”

General Petr Pavel, head of NATO’s Military Committee, told the Associated Press in an interview Saturday that NATO is increasing efforts to re-establish the military-to-military communications with Russia to avoid any “unintended consequences of potential incidents during the exercise.”

The defense chiefs of NATO member countries were holding their annual conference this year in the Albanian capital of Tirana to discuss fighting terrorism, the situation in the Western Balkans and the new U.S. strategy on Afghanistan.

The Zapad war games, being conducted this year mostly in Belarus, run until September 20 and reportedly involve 5,500 Russian and 7,200 Belarusian troops.

‘Not aimed at NATO’

Despite assurances from Moscow that “NATO is not considered as an enemy” and that “the exercise is not aimed at NATO,” Pavel said Russians have not been transparent about the facts of the exercises. He says the number of troops in the exercises — which the Russians say is about 12,700 — could actually be between 70,000 to 100,000.

“All together, what we see is a serious preparation for big war,” he told The Associated Press. “When we only look at the exercise that is presented by Russia, there should be no worry. But when we look at the big picture, we have to be worried, because Russia was not transparent.”

Two weeks ago, Pavel met with the head of the Russian military’s General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov.

The Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, General Curtis Scaparrotti, had a phone call with Gerasimov at the beginning of Zapad 17. Pavel said it was “mainly focused on transparency and risk reduction and avoidance of unintended consequences of potential incidents.”

“We have a high concentration of troops in the Baltics. We have a high concentration of troops in the Black Sea, and potential for an incident may be quite high because of a human mistake, because of a technology failure,” said Pavel. “We have to be sure that such an unintended incident will not escalate into conflict.”

The Military Committee offers consensus-based advice on how the alliance can best meet global security challenges.

Western Balkans

Stability and security in the Western Balkan countries was also discussed during the conference. Pavel said trouble in the region could come from radicalism, organized crime, migration, economic problems or the “malign influence from Russia.”

“We do not compete with Russia for the Western Balkans. We are primarily focused on the Balkans being stable and secure,” he said.

He also added there was no plan for reducing troops in Kosovo or setting a time length for their presence.

About 4,500 troops from 31 countries have been deployed in Kosovo since June 1999, after NATO’s 78-day air campaign to stop a deadly Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but Serbia has not recognized it.
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Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said he is prepared to intervene militarily if a referendum held by the nation’s Kurdish population results in violence.

Speaking to the Associated Press Saturday, Abadi said the Kurdish vote on independence is “a dangerous escalation” that will invite violations of Iraqi sovereignty.

Abadi also told an Iraqi news agency that the Kurds would be “playing with fire” by continuing with plans for the referendum, which is scheduled for September 25 in the three governorates that make up the Kurdish autonomous region. The vote is also expected to be held in areas controlled by Kurds but claimed by the Baghdad government.

Turkey warns of ‘grave mistake’

On Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim warned that the Iraqi Kurdish plan to hold an independence referendum was a “grave mistake.”

Iraqi Kurdistan regional President Masoud Barzani is backing the referendum.

Turkey, which borders the Iraqi Kurdish region, has strong ties with Barzani, but Ankara has been stepping up its pressure to call off the vote.

“There are 10 days left. Therefore, I want to repeat our friendly call to Masoud Barzani: Correct this mistake while there is still time,” Yildirim said Friday to supporters.

The warning was followed by Ankara’s first direct threat.

“We don’t want to impose sanctions, but, if we arrive at that point, there are steps that have been already planned that Turkey can take,” Yildirim added.

The warning came days after the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, told the Kurds that they would “pay a price for the vote.”

Ankara fears secession

Ankara, with its own restive Kurdish minority, in an area that mainly borders Iraqi Kurdistan, fears an independent Kurdish state could fuel similar secessionist demands. Those fears are heightened by the suspicion that Syrian Kurds on the Turkish border harbor the same independence ambitions.

Turkish fears of the referendum have created rare common ground across the country’s deep political divide. 

“Balkanization of the Middle East would bring instability,” warned Ceyda Karan, a columnist with the Turkish opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper. “Borders are not drawn fairly in many parts of the world. The question of where to find fairness in redrawing them is unknown.”

WATCH: Iraqi Kurds Prepare for Independence Vote, Despite Opposition

​US: keep focus on IS

The United States has voiced strong opposition to the independence vote.

On Friday the White House released a statement saying the United States “does not support” the Kurdish plan to hold a referendum, and that the plan “is distracting from efforts to defeat ISIS and stabilize the liberated areas.” Further, it says, “holding the referendum in disputed areas is particularly provocative and destabilizing.”

The Trump administration is calling on the Kurds to cancel the referendum and instead engage in “serious and sustained dialogue with Baghdad,” which the U.S. has offered to facilitate.

Iran has also registered its opposition to the referendum, but Turkey arguably has the most leverage on the Iraqi Kurds. The Habur border gate on Turkey’s frontier with Iraq is the main trade route to the outside world for Iraqi Kurdistan, while an oil pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan provides a financial lifeline.

Sanctions possible

Sanctions could prove to be a double-edged sword.

“Habur does not only mean gate to Iraqi Kurdistan,” points out former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, who set up Turkey’s consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital of Irbil.

“Habur means gate to Iraq and in today’s terms means gate to the Middle East as all border gates are closed with Syria. There is the oil pipeline; Iraqi Kurdistan oil, including Kirkuk oil, is being marketed to global markets through Ceyhan. That is a win, win for Ankara,” Selcen added.

Financial considerations are not the only factors that Ankara has to consider.

“Ankara is against [the referendum], but on the other hand, Barzani is the best ally in the region. I think they are not that vocal when it comes to the referendum,” said political scientist Cengiz Aktar.

Barzani in the past decade has developed a close relationship with Ankara, one built not only on lucrative trade but also on security cooperation.

Barzani has provided assistance to Ankara in Turkey’s war against the Kurdish rebel group PKK, which is waging a decades-long insurgency for greater minority rights in Turkey and has bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Turkish election politics could further restrict Ankara’s room to maneuver.

The Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum threatens to complicate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election bid in 2019.

“I understand Mr. Erdogan is trying to balance the traditional Kurdish vote that goes with [Erdogan’s] AK Party and [Turkish] nationalists,” said former diplomat Selcen, who is now a regional analyst.

The Kurdish vote in Turkey traditionally accounts for about 10 percent of Erdogan’s support, votes that could be crucial in what is predicted to be a closely fought presidential election.

Selcen suggests the solution to the political conundrum posed by the Iraqi Kurdish independence vote to Erdogan’s own ambitions could be to simply do nothing. 

“I think in today’s system in Turkey, one should only follow closely what Mr. Erdogan says, and, knowing his usual style and usual rhetoric, I find Mr. Erdogan’s position much milder and more moderate. I will speculate that following September 25, the day of the referendum, it will be business as usual between Ankara and Irbil.”

Dorian Jones contributed to this report from Istanbul.
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Would a 15-year-old girl be married off by her parents in violation of the law? Would another girl, who looks even younger, get justice after an alleged statutory rape at the hands of an older man?

In their impoverished communities in Uganda, the answers hinged on the fact that one girl had a birth certificate and the other didn’t. Police foiled the planned marriage after locating paperwork that proved the first girl was not 18 as her parents claimed. The other girl could not prove she was under the age of consent; her aunt, who’s also her guardian, has struggled to press charges against the builder who seduced and impregnated her.

“The police were asking me many questions about proof of the girl’s birth date. How old she is? Where she goes to school,” said the aunt, Percy Namirembe, sitting in her tin-roofed shantytown home in Masaka near the shores of Lake Victoria in south-central Uganda. “I don’t have evidence showing the victim is not yet 18.”

As Namirembe spoke, in a room decorated with a collage of Christ and the Madonna, her niece sat beside her, her belly swollen and a vacant stare on her face.

In the developed world, birth certificates are often a bureaucratic certainty. However, across vast swaths of Africa and South Asia, tens of millions of children never get them, with potentially dire consequences in regard to education, health care, job prospects and legal rights. Young people without IDs are vulnerable to being coerced into early marriage, military service or the labor market before the legal age. In adulthood, they may struggle to assert their right to vote, inherit property or obtain a passport.

“They could end up invisible,” said Joanne Dunn, a child protection specialist with UNICEF.

With the encouragement of UNICEF and various non-governmental organizations, many of the worst-affected countries have been striving to improve their birth registration rates. In Uganda, volunteers go house to house in targeted villages, looking for unregistered children. Many babies are born at home, with grandmothers acting as midwives, so they miss out on the registration procedures that are being modernized at hospitals and health centers.

By UNICEF’s latest count, in 2013, the births of about 230 million children under age 5 – 35 percent of the world’s total – had never been recorded. Later this year, UNICEF plans to release a new report showing that the figure has dropped to below 30 percent due to progress in countries ranging from Vietnam and Nepal to Uganda, Mali and Ivory Coast.

India is the biggest success story. It accounted for 71 million of the unregistered children in UNICEF’s 2013 report – more than half of all the Indian children in that age range. Thanks to concerted nationwide efforts, UNICEF says the number of unregistered children has dropped to 23 million – about 20 percent of all children under age 5.

Uganda is a potential success story as well, though very much a work in progress. UNICEF child protection officer Augustine Wassago estimates that the country’s registration rate for children under 5 is now about 60 percent, up from 30 percent in 2011.

While obtaining a birth certificate is routine for most parents in the West, it may not be a priority for African parents who worry about keeping a newborn alive and fed. Many parents wait several years, often until their children are ready for school exams, to tackle the paperwork.

Maria Nanyonga, who raises pigs and goats in Masaka, says lack of birth registration caused her to miss out on tuition subsidies for some of the seven nieces and nephews she is raising.

“I tried my best to get the children’s certificates, but I didn’t even know where to start,” she said. “I didn’t know when they were born, and the officials needed that.”

Even now, two years after losing out on the financial aid, Nanyonga is uncertain about the children’s ages.

“I can only guess,” she said. “I think the oldest is 10 and the youngest is 5.”

Henry Segawa, a census worker in the Rakai administrative district, is among those who’ve been trained to do the registration outreach. Their efforts have been buttressed by public awareness campaigns; radio talk show hosts and priests have been encouraged to spread the word.

“When you go to a home, you explain the benefits of birth registration, and people have been responding well,” Segawa said.

On one of his forays, Segawa was on hand in a remote village as a midwife delivered a baby at a decaying health center with a leaky roof, no running water and outhouse walls smeared with excrement.

Upon hearing the newborn’s piercing bawls, Segawa strode toward the birth register to record the newborn’s details.

The baby, Ben Ssekalunga, was the ninth child in his family, said his grandmother, Mauda Byarugaba.

“I want this baby to be her last one,” she said of her daughter. “Nine children are too many.”

Birth registration plays a pivotal role in Uganda’s efforts to enforce laws setting 18 as the minimum age for marriage.

Child marriage remains widespread, due largely to parents hoping to get a dowry from their daughters’ suitors. In the rare cases where the police are alerted, investigators face an uphill task pressing charges if they cannot prove, with a birth certificate or other official document, that the girl is a minor.

But in the recent case in Rakai, police detective Deborah Atwebembeire was able to prevail in a surprise raid on a wedding party because the bride-to-be’s birth certificate proved she was 15.

“When we reached there, I heard one man say, ‘Ah, but the police have come. Let me hope the girl is not young,'” Atwebembeire recalled.

The girls’ parents claimed she was born in March 1999, which would have made her old enough to consent. Yet only months before, the girl’s parents had told birth registration officials she was born in October 2001.

The wedding was called off, and the parents spent a night in jail.

“We achieved our objective, which was to stop the wedding,” Atwebembeire said.

The girl, Asimart Nakabanda, had dropped out of school before the planned marriage. “The man is out of my mind now. I don’t want him anymore,” she said. “I want to go back to school and study.”

The birth registration campaign in Uganda dates back only about five years and there’s still uncertainty as to whether the government will invest sufficient funds to expand and sustain it.

In India, by contrast, the major progress in birth registration results from a decades-long initiative. Public health workers, midwives, teachers and village councilors in remote areas have all been empowered to report births. In areas with internet connectivity, online registration has helped boost overall coverage.

Chhitaranjan Khaitan, an official with the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, said 15 of the country’s 29 states had reported a 100 percent birth registration rate, and seven more states surpassed 90 percent. Many states have successfully linked registration to a nationwide effort to provide every Indian citizen with an identification number.

An added motivation is India’s effort to stem its skewed gender ratio, due largely to families’ preference for sons. By requiring health workers and village officials to register all births, authorities hope fewer newborn girls will be killed by their families.

Pradeep Verma, a 28-year-old car mechanic in the village of Gram Mohdi in the central state of Chhattisgarh, was thrilled to obtain his daughter’s birth certificate earlier this year.

“It was the first thing I did after my daughter was born,” Verma said. “My parents did not register my birth. It was not considered important or necessary in those days.”

Verma has had repeated problems with proving his identity, particularly in getting a government ration card that entitled him to cheap rice and sugar.

“I know how difficult it has been to get an official identity document or enroll in government welfare programs, since I have no proof of birth,” said Verma, who dropped out of school in 10th grade. “My daughter will not have to face such hassles.”

Verma’s state of Chhattisgarh was recording just 55 percent of births in 2011. Amitabha Panda, the state’s top statistician, said reasons included lack of registration centers, outdated data collection methods and wariness of extending outreach to areas where Maoist rebels held sway.

In 2013, with help from UNICEF, the state government launched a campaign using street theater, graffiti and notices distributed at markets to get the word out. Today, the state says it registers virtually every birth.

The West African nation of Mali is another success story. It’s now reporting a birth registration rate of 87 percent – one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa – despite a long-running conflict involving Islamic extremists.

Michelle Trombley, a UNICEF child protection officer in Mali, admires the parents and local officials who persisted with registration efforts even when their communities in the north were occupied by rebels.

“They were so dedicated to having children registered, they would smuggle in the official registration books,” she said. “People were literally putting their lives at risk.”

For all of the progress, huge challenges remain for UNICEF and its partners to attain their goal of near-universal registration by 2030.

In Somalia, wracked by famine and civil war, the most recent registration rate documented by UNICEF, based on data from 2006, was 3 percent – the lowest of any nation.

In Myanmar, the overall registration rate has surpassed 70 percent, but is much lower in the western state of Rakhine, base of the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority. Human rights agencies say many thousands of Rohingya children there have no birth certificates because of discriminatory policies.

More broadly, there’s the massive problem of children without birth certificates or other identification who make up a significant portion of the millions of displaced people around the world, fleeing war, famine, persecution and poverty.

In Lebanon, tens of thousands of Syrian children have been born to refugee parents in recent years without being registered by any government. The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, has pushed Lebanese authorities to ease barriers to registration, such as requirements to present certain identity documents.

Major efforts to register refugee children also are under way in Thailand and Ethiopia.

Monika Sandvik-Nylund, a senior child protection adviser with UNHCR, said birth registration can be crucial to enabling refugee children to return to their home countries or to reunite after being separated from their parents.

There are no comprehensive statistics on the extent of such separations, but Claudia Cappa, author of the upcoming UNICEF report, says they can be heartbreaking for a parent.

“How can you claim your child if you don’t have proof he or she really existed?” she said. “Imagine how devastating this might be to a mother.”
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