Danelly Estupiñán will never forget the first threats she received back in 2015. First came the text message declaring “Danelly, your end has come.” And then a distorted voice over the phone, repeating: “we know where you are”.

Since then, Estupiñán has been constantly followed, photographed and had her home broken into, in apparent retaliation for her human rights work defending black communities in Buenaventura, Colombia’s biggest Pacific port. “I don’t go out anymore… because wherever I go, they’re there,” she told Amnesty International in June, shortly before fleeing the country upon learning of a plot to kill her. “I have no social life, I have nothing.”

Having lost fathers, husbands and sons to years of bloodshed, women of African heritage like Estupiñán are taking on more active roles in defending their ancestral communities. Yet standing up to corporations and criminal organizations who seek to oversee development projects, mineral extraction and drug-trafficking in their ter..

(ERBIL, Iraq) — Vice President Mike Pence made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Saturday in the highest-level American trip since President Donald Trump ordered a pullback of U.S. forces in Syria two months ago.

Flying in a C-17 military cargo jet to preserve the secrecy of the visit to the conflict zone, Pence landed in Erbil to meet with Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani. The visit was meant to reassure the U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State after Syrian Kurds suffered under a bloody Turkish assault last month following the Trump-ordered withdrawal.

Earlier Pence received a classified briefing at Iraq’s Al-Asad Air Base, from which U.S. forces launched the operation in Syria last month that resulted in the death of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and spoke by phone with Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi.

It was Pence’s second trip to the region in five weeks after Trump deployed him on whirling trip to Ankara, Turkey, last month to negotiate a cease-fi..

(BAGHDAD) — Iraqi security forces fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse crowds of protesters Saturday, killing one person, in a third day of fierce clashes in central Baghdad, security and hospital officials said.

A protester was struck with a rubber bullet and died instantly and 12 others were wounded in the fighting on Rasheed Street, a famous avenue known for its old crumbling architecture and now littered with rubble from days of violence. Fifteen people have died and over 100 wounded in the renewed clashes. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

At least 341 protesters have died in Iraq’s massive protests, which started on Oct. 1 when thousands of Iraqis took to the streets to decry corruption and lack of services despite Iraq’s oil wealth.

Separately, Iraq’s Parliament failed to hold a session Saturday due to lack of a quorum. Lawmakers were supposed to read reform bills introduced to placate protesters. The next session was postponed t..

Vogue Mexico‘s December issue will feature an openly transgender ‘Muxe’ on its cover, for the first time in its history. Muxes, or Muxhes, are indigenous transgender women (or third gender individuals) who have existed in southern Mexico for centuries. Accompanying the cover, the magazine features a series of editorial portraits, and profile of the Muxe community in the Oaxaca town of Juchitán.

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MUXE’ Naa: Érase una vez una tierra llena de magia, filigranas en oro e iguanas, en la que la cálida brisa aún susurra LEYENDAS al oído de los transeúntes. Es aquí donde, desde tiempos INMEMORIALES, comienza la historia del tercer género. En mundo en el que las etiquetas parecen imprescindibles, los #muxes aparecen como esa figura que se rehúsa a ser encasillada. El tercer género tiene un importante rol dentro de la historia #zapoteca y se convierte en la prueba viviente de que la magia ancestral aún camina sobre esta tierras. [LINK EN BIO para ver el artículo com..

(MILAN) — A Milan hospital is exhibiting X-rays of women attacked by men to highlight what one doctor calls the “daily horror” of violence against women.

The San Carlo Hospital mounted the exhibit in its atrium to coincide with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which takes place on Monday.

Patients’ anonymity was respected in putting the five X-rays on display, including one showing the large blade of a knife lodged in a woman’s abdomen. Other X-rays show fractured limbs, including a shin bone broken in two.

For the show’s inauguration on Thursday, Dr. Maria Grazia Vantadori, a hospital surgeon and liaison for women suffering violence from husbands, boyfriends, family members or acquaintances, noted that some patients don’t at first consider themselves domestic violence victims. “Often the women who come to the emergency room, not knowing how to label what happened to them, don’t immediately say they have suffered violence,’’ Vantadori said.

But, ..

Hundreds of thousands of Colombians took to the streets across the country on Thursday, in protest against President Iván Duque and his right-wing government.

People from many backgrounds—including students, teachers, pensioners and union members—braved the torrential rain to join one of the largest mass demonstrations Colombia has witnessed in recent years, according to multiple media reports.

“It was astonishing!” María Camilla, a 23-year-old Colombian who joined the protests on Thursday, tells TIME. “Everyone was outside.”

“I had never been to a march as big as yesterday… It was impressive,” she adds. “There was a party atmosphere, as it usually is in the marches here [in Colombia]. People protected each other, everyone was on the street with the same goal.”

Unlike other protests in Latin America, the protests in Colombia were not fighting for a single issue. Instead, Colombians were voicing their criticism of the government’s lack of action in addressing major concerns over sec..