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The US is launching a new $40-million Gender Equity Grants Programme in Pakistan to advance women’s rights and support the Government of Pakistan’s policies against gender inequities. ‘The US and Pakistan are focused on empowering women and advancing women’s rights,’ Ambassador Anne W Patterson said.

In a Semarang court in Indonesia`s Central Java, a prosecutor groped a transgender woman charged with running away as well as having sex with a teenage girl, and said: ‘You have breasts, you`re a woman’. In Indonesia, where heterosexual relationships are considered the norm, discrimination and violence against people with different sexual orientations and gender identities is widespread.

The Netherlands was the first country in the world to grant same-sex marriages and allow gay and lesbian couples to adopt children. Now the Dutch are taking the next logical step and are introducing same-sex couples into the nation`s schoolbooks. Two fathers go out to buy a guinea pig that costs 17.95 euros in the pet shop. The shop owner gives them a discount of 20 per cent. How much must Jan`s fathers pay? In the near future, math books could be posing this question, or one like it, to school kids in the Netherlands.

Stressing the need for a broader outlook on rights of transgender people, sexual minorities on Wednesday organized a tribunal to look at Millennium Development Goals (MDG) from their point of view. According to a study, 90% transgender people in Bangalore have been found to be alcoholic. There is no programme to tackle these issues.

‘My male employer was a womaniser and he liked to touch me and told me not to tell his wife. I felt so uncomfortable,’ says Chompoo, who was just 15 years old when she served – and suffered abuse – as a domestic worker here in the Thai capital. ‘So I told my mom that I don’t want to work in this house anymore and I quit without salary,’ says Chompoo, who originates from Tavoy, a south- eastern city in Burma.