Getting hitched? We take a look at ways you can celebrate your love without compromising your values.

1. Don’t accidentally buy blood diamonds

Adopt a zero tolerance policy to blood diamonds, like Tiffany and
Zoara.

Save the environment (and money) by shopping in antique stories
or (gasp!) on eBay.

Buy from Do Amore — for every ring sold, two people in the
developing word get clean water, FOR LIFE.

2. Trawl second-hand websites and stores

Most of us have better things to drop thousands of dollars on than a
dress we’ll wear once, right? Well! Save some cash AND help the
homeless by getting your frock from a charity shop such as Vinnies.

Other awesome “pre-loved” gowns can be found at I Do Gowns,
Savvy Brides and The Barefaced Bride.

3. Buy a Fairtrade dress

Stuck for dress that matches your values? Consider making a trip to
the US (um, see no. 10 on offsetting your carbon footprint).

Marcie Muehlke searched for a wedding dress matching her human
rights and environmental values but came up short. So, to help other
brides in the same boat she founded Celia Grace.

Her gorgeous dresses are Fairtrade and eco-friendly and for each
one sold, a water filter is donated to a family in need. Tingles!

4. Go eco with your invites

Wanna go eco but fancy sending something a little more special
than an email? Then visit Earth First for a huge list of eco-friendly
stationary suppliers in Australia.

Never used Etsy? DO IT NOW! You’ll find an endless supply of
wonderful handmade save-the-date cards and wedding invites.

5. Re-think the wedding gifts

If you’re a couple that has everything, consider setting up a registry that raises money for a worthy cause. Karma Currency is an online not-for-profit company that connects gift giving occasions with worthy charities.

Or you can cut out the middle man and ask your guests to donate to Amnesty International and help us fight for human rights around the world.

6. Do your guests a favour

Donate the money you were going to spend on bonbonniere
(wedding favours) because, let’s face it, no one really needs that
keychain with the cute photo of the two of you in it.

Or, if you really love the idea of giving your guests a gift to thank
them for celebrating with you, there is another option. Make a
donation in their name to Operation Smile, an amazing organisation
that provides free surgeries to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other
facial deformities for children around the world.

7. Eat and drink ethically

Consider going vegan or vegetarian for the day. If that doesn’t
appeal to you, then just make sure your suppliers use local produce
and free range meat.

To cut down your carbon footprint even further, buy wine and beer
from the country you are marrying in. Oh, and consider buying
organic or Fairtrade.

And don’t forget to recycle those bottles!

8. Brighten someone’s day

To cut costs, opt for seasonal flowers as they’re likely to be cheaper
because of their abundance.

Other options include recycling your flowers or using artificial ones
which can be just as beautiful as the real thing!

For that extra feel-good feeling, you could give your beautiful
flowers to a local hospital or care home after your wedding day.

9. Over-ordered on the catering?

Your caterer should always ask whether you would like to keep the
leftover food from your wedding reception. If you don’t want it, the
food will either be given to the catering staff (fine) or thrown away
(not fine).

There are many people around Australia who don’t have enough to
eat and that’s where you come in. To avoid chucking out perfectly
edible (and probably expensive) food, arrange to donate your
yummy leftovers to a homeless shelter.

For tips on how to do this in your area, check out Give Now.

10. Be wary of paradise

Think carefully about into whose pocket your honeymoon dollars
are going. Often, those destinations we think of as paradise can be
hiding human rights abuses so do your research!

If you’re having your wedding somewhere exotic or guests are
flying long haul to party with you, start thinking about your carbon
footprint and visit the WWF to find out how to offset it.

Make your honeymoon a ‘staycation’. Whether you decide to help
out the cute Ningaloo turtles in WA or volunteer with Amnesty International in Sydney, an Australian honeymoon would undoubtedly be
special.

11. Here’s a wacky idea: don’t get married!

Make like David Pocock and Emma Palandri and don’t “officially” tie
the knot.

The pair had a wedding ceremony in 2010 but won’t sign on the
dotted line until marriage equality exists in Australia.

Despite around 65 per cent of the Australian population being in
support of marriage equality, same-sex couples are still fighting for
the right to have their love recognised in the eyes of the law.

Article by Katie Young, Online editor

Holocaust denial and racial abuse on public transport could be considered okay under proposed changes to Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act.

As public discussion around the proposals intensifies we explain what the RDA is and how the proposed changes might affect Australia.

What is the Racial Discrimination Act?

It’s pretty simple, really. The RDA is a law passed in 1975 by the Whitlam government to make sure everyone in Australia was treated equally and given the same opportunities - regardless of their background.

The Act was last updated in 1995 after three major national inquiries  –  the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody – the National Inquiry into Racist Violence and the Australian Law Reform Commission Report into Multiculturalism and the Law  – found a strong link between racist conduct in public and racially-motivated violence.

At the core of the changes made in 1995 is Section 18C, which makes it unlawful for someone to “offend, insult or humiliate” a person based on the colour of their skin or their cultural background. It also provides recourse for victims of racism to make a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), which then tries to resolve the complaint before it goes to court. And the AHRC actually does this really well  – in 2015–16, only one complaint went to court, and in the past five years only three per cent of finalised complaints proceeded to court.

The lesser known Section 18D, brought in at the same time, exempts artistic works, academic and scientific debate and “fair and accurate” reporting of any events or matters of public interest made “reasonably” and in “good faith”.

Why does the RDA regularly make headlines?

Well, in 2014, for the first time in almost 20 years, the Australian Government announced its intentions to make changes to the Act, when Attorney-General George Brandis released draft changes to the RDA. Brandis argued the RDA amounted to “political censorship”, while the laws he proposed were “the strongest protections against racism that have ever appeared in any Commonwealth Act.”

Incidentally, when talking about his proposed changes to the RDA, Brandis claimed that Australians have “the right to be bigots”.

Critics of the RDA claimed that free speech in Australia is too heavily restricted, whilst those in support of the Act argued that the proposed changes would green light racism across the country.

Amnesty has made a submission supporting no changes to the RDA.

Okay, so what exactly are the changes?

Remember we talked about Section 18C? Well, it’s up for the chop.

The government is proposing to remove the text that makes it unlawful to do or say things that “offend”, “insult” or “humiliate” a person due to their race, ethnicity, colour, or immigration status. Instead, only doing or saying racist things that intimidate or “vilify” someone would be against the law.

But intimidate doesn’t have its normal meaning, it only means ‘fear of physical harm.’ And guess what? Vilify doesn’t have its normal meaning either, in the changes it only means inciting, or stirring up, others to be racially hateful. An obvious problem with this is the difficulty a racism victim could have in convincing authorities that they had, in fact, felt physically intimidated during an attack or that others were stirred up, or encouraged to join in the hatred.

Oh, and under the changes, whether a person was vilified or intimidated would be determined by the standards of ‘an ordinary reasonable member of the Australian community not by the standards of any particular group.’ Which means you can’t consider the particular history and situation of a cultural or ethnic group and how the use of certain slurs impacts them.

We also talked about 18D. For the last 20 years this has been one of the few protections of freedom of speech in Australian law. This will be gone. Under the draft proposal it will be okay to use racist “words, sounds, images and writing”, as long as it’s in the “public discussion of any political, social, cultural, religious, artistic, academic or scientific matter”.

Other sections to potentially be cut are 18B and 18E. These are about how authorities interpret an act that is done for more than one reason and employers needing to take steps to prevent racial abuse by their staff.

What impact would the changes have?

It is all little hard to be 100% clear about this. It would depend a bit on how courts interpret the changes and there are some state laws that deal with racial vilification (but, for example, there is nothing but the RDA in the Northern Territory). But let’s start with that last point. If racism is deemed fine in the context of so many spheres of public discussion, the proposed legislation send the message that racist speech, no matter how untrue or repulsive or harmful it may be.

Although freedom of expression is paramount in a democratic society, we still need laws that ensure free speech doesn’t cross the line and become hate speech. And there is every possibility that doing away with Section 18C and 18D would lead to hate speech being tolerated.

In real terms, the new legislation could also mean that an ordinary person sitting on a bus who is racially vilified by a stranger will no longer have an opportunity to have their complaint proceed under the RDA. Unless it has caused them to fear physical harm or has roused others to hatred in a way that ‘an ordinary reasonable Australian’ would recognise, there is no legal protection. Even though the psychological effect may be profound.

In its current form, the RDA balances our right to freedom of expression with our right to be protected from racist abuse. But if the changes are adopted, this balance could be tipped way off. Suddenly, we’re making it okay for someone to verbally attack another person on public transport for race reasons without legal ramifications unless it approaches violence. And for those of you fortunate to have never experienced or witnessed such attacks, watch these videos of a racist attack on an Asian couple on a Sydney bus and a foul-mouthed racist rant on a Melbourne train to see what it looks like.

The reality is that the proposed changes to the RDA will make our race hate laws so narrow that they will scarcely provide protection against racial hatred at all.

Everyone should be protected from abuse and intimidation based on race or ethnicity. It’s a human right and should be protected under the law. The government needs to safeguard against making our race hate laws so narrow they scarcely provide protection against racial hatred at all.

Article by Katie Young, Online Editor

Could the results of Afghanistan’s presidential election see the return of the Taliban? And what would that mean for the future of Afghan women?

As 8 candidates battle it out in the Afghanistan presidential election*, women in the country are growing increasingly worried.

Combine an early withdrawal of international forces with the fact that many of those running for power are backed by warlords and fundamentalists who share the Taliban’s hardline views, then, for the women of Afghanistan at least, you’ve got a disaster in the making.

What’s life like for Afghan women right now?

While there have been some gains made since the Taliban was overthrown in 2001, life for women and girls in Afghanistan — particularly in rural areas — is still very difficult.

The few women who have actually been able to make the most of the new opportunities presented to them, such as education and employment, still continue to face inequality and danger at every turn.

Lora Hares, a mother and full time student from Kabul and currently living in Melbourne, worked as a gender specialist in Afghanistan, often received threats because of her work.

“My job was to empower women economically in the country’s rural areas. I received many death threats because working in the government or for an international organisation is very risky for a woman in Afghanistan.”

Lora worked on a national, government-led program with the aim of jump-starting private sector growth in rural Afghanistan. For Lora, this meant visiting women in rural areas to help them start making a living for themselves.

Typically, this was achieved by encouraging the women to form “saving groups” — a group of around 10 to 20 women who would club together to save money on a weekly basis. Each week they would meet and combine whatever they had managed to save — usually the equivalent of up to 50 cents. After doing this for three to six months, members of the group could then apply for a loan from the money saved and use it to start a small business.

“It can be hard for women in rural areas to get employment so with this money they are able to start a very small business using the skills they have. Some women buy a cow with their loan and use the milk to make dairy products like cheese and yoghurt to sell at market.”

However, many rural areas are now back under the control of the Taliban and their influence could continue to expand after the presidential elections, which would put an immediate stop to any dreams of financial independence for Afghan women.

At least girls are being educated now, right?

Yes and no.

According to the Afghan Ministry of Education, the enrolment of pupils has risen from 900,000 in 2001, with few girls, to 10.5 million pupils, of whom 42 per cent (4.4 million) are girls.

Although this is a great achievement, the vast majority of girls still leave school when they are between 12 and 14 years old, often due to family pressure, and the fact that it is deemed unacceptable for girls to be taught by a man unless women are present…but there’s a shortage of female teachers.

However, while the challenges currently faced by Afghan women and girls are huge, they are nothing compared to a return to the Taliban-era repression of old.

Wait a minute, is that a possibility?

A scary thought, but the answer is yes. The Taliban’s star could once again be on the rise.

In February this year, it was widely reported that President Karzai was having clandestine chats with the Taliban in an attempt to broker a peace deal before his term in office expires.

Plans to sign a security pact with the US, allowing some troops to remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014, were put on hold by Karzai whose condition for signing is that the US re-start peace talks with the Taliban. Whereas the Taliban have long said that getting rid of foreign troops is one of their main aims.

Lora is concerned that the situation is already getting worse for Afghan women.

“The process of peace talks with the Taliban has really worried a lot of women. The Taliban’s agenda towards women, prior to 2001, deprived women of all their basic human rights.

Women are really afraid about what might happen to them if the Taliban is reconciled into the future government and able to push for their anti-women agendas to be implemented.”

What would this mean for Afghan women?

In a nutshell: a complete decline in rights and return to the days of the Taliban’s extreme interpretation of the law.

Worryingly, we are beginning to see an impact on women’s rights in the country and there already seems to be a surge in the number of violent attacks against women.

Despite living in Australia, Lora closely follows the rise in violence against women in her home country.

“There was a 25 per cent increasein violence against women in Afghanistan in 2013 alone. When I heard the news about the woman whose husband cut off her nose and lips, I realised just how bad the situation is getting for women in Afghanistan.”

Once again, women are uncertain about their future in Afghanistan.

“International troops are leaving and the country is going into political transition with the elections. A lot of women are very worried about their future.”

The kind of work Lora does is vital in improving the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan but support for women’s rights need to exist in practice, everywhere. And serious changes must be made by those in power to ensure the economic growth of women.

Lora believes the rest of the world can help achieve this goal.

“There’s a lot the international community, including the Australian Government, can do for the women of Afghanistan. They can help to fund education for women and push the government in Afghanistan to take seriously the issues of Afghan women.”

*The Afghan presidential election takes place on Saturday 5 April 2014.

Article by Katie Young, Online Editor

Proud and ancient, Egypt is a country rich with history and culture, but standing at a crossroads between a free and bright future or repeating the mistakes of its past. Here we shed light on what is happening in Egypt and why.

Location, location, location

Okay, it’s slightly complicated. Type ‘Where is Egypt?’ into Google’s search bar and you’ll notice it appears in two lists: Middle East and Africa.

What does this mean? Well, geographically, Egypt is largely situated in the north-easternmost point of Africa; however, the part of the country known as the Sinai Peninsula borders Israel and the Gaza strip. In fact, its full name is the ‘Arab Republic of Egypt’ and its main language is Arabic.

It’s home to the Nile, the pyramids and some 80 million people. Although there are large communities of Coptic Christians living around the country, Egypt’s predominant religion is Islam.

What’s been going on the past 30-ish years?

For almost the whole of the 70s Egypt’s president was a guy called Anwar Sadat who held power for full decade before his in 1981.

His replacement was Hosni Mubarak, former Vice-President and deputy leader of the National Democratic Party. As a former military leader, Mubarak certainly didn’t find it difficult to get into power: he allegedly received 99.999 per cent of the votes in a national referendum and followed this up with 99.98 per cent of the votes almost 20 years later in the 1999 election.

The above figures are somewhat startling considering that during his time as President, Mubarak ruled with an iron fist. Civilians were subject to military trials, torture was rampant and political dissent was severely punished, particularly if members of the Muslim Brotherhood were involved.

Things got progressively worse during Mubarak’s presidency, with terrorist attacks like the tourist massacre at Luxor and the bomb attacks at Sharm al-Sheikh, and allegations of torture and illegal detention. By 2011 the Arab spring was gathering momentum and the Egyptian people spent 18 days carrying out mass protests against the regime, culminating in Mubarak’s resignation on 11 February that year. The next day Egyptians began celebrating a ‘new dawn’ for their country.

And then what happened?

Setting up shop after a revolution isn’t the easiest task. Egypt’s military body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, stepped into the void left by Mubarak’s sudden departure, until a democratically elected government could take over.

Egypt was in the early stages of what would become an ongoing struggle for power.

At first the situation looked pretty good – anti-Mubarak protesters had even chanted ‘The army and the people, hand in hand!’ – but things went downhill fast.

Shortly after the military gained power, security forces began beating protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square who were calling for a quicker transition to a democratic government. The Muslim Brotherhood, which had rallied in Tahrir Square to unseat Mubarak, stayed largely quiet as the army and military police began locking up dissidents.

Eventually, the Egyptian army organised some elections to try and get things back on track. First up were the parliamentary elections in November 2011, and the Muslim Brotherhood pretty much swept the board, winning the majority of seats. The presidential elections began in May 2012, with the candidates being whittled down to two finalists: Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, and Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister under Mubarak.

Morsi got the job and was sworn in as Egypt’s next president on 30 June, but not before the military shut down parliament and awarded itself sweeping new powers, watering down the power of the president in the process.

Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood eventually ordered the army’s top generals to retire and basically pretended the power grab had never happened. In fact, in November 2012, Morsi granted himself more power, sparking further protests.

Was Morsi any good?

Well, to kick things off, according to the Nadim Centre for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims, 34 deaths and 88 cases of torture occurred during the first 100 days of Morsi’s rule so it’s perhaps unsurprising he lasted only one year in power.

Morsi was also accused by his critics of failing to deliver in a number of basic ways, including concentrating too much power in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, mishandling the already-shaky economy, and failing to respond to calls for human rights and social justice to be upheld.

Ironically, despite being Egypt’s first democratically-elected leader, Morsi failed to rule in a democratic fashion. Not only did he crack down on free speech, frequently arresting journalists, but he also pushed through constitutional change granting him far-reaching powers which, it turns out, was a bit of a deal-breaker for the Egyptian people.

To cut a (very) long story short, after a turbulent year in power, punctuated by violence and anti-government protests, millions of people took to the streets of Cairo and other cities around the country on 1 July 2013, demanding the President’s resignation.

Two days later, Morsi was ousted, and the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, stepped up as interim head of state.

Things are okay now though, right?

Far from it, actually.

After 30 years of repression, two major uprisings, military leadership and a former Muslim Brotherhood president in detention it would be an understatement to say tension still exists between rival groups in the country.

During August last year, shortly after Morsi was deposed, around 600 of his supporters were killed by Egyptian security forces during sit-ins in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square. Not a single member of the police or security forces has been charged with the deaths. And in a single shock ruling, the Egyptian authorities recently sentenced 528 alleged Morsi supporters to death, sending a clear message: fall in line or prepare to die.

To compound the devastating effects of violence, Egypt’s jails are fit to bursting, filled with around 16,000 political activists. And imprisonment is not just limited to pro-Morsi supporters and the Muslim Brotherhood, either. Three Al Jazeera journalists, Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, are facing lengthy prison sentences on trumped up terrorism charges and Ahmed Mahir, a liberal political activist and key organiser of the 2011 protests at Tahrir, faces jail for holding an ‘illegal demonstration’.

The international community is appalled at Egypt’s crass abuse of its justice system and every day, media workers and everyday folks around the globe call for Egypt to #FreeAJStaff.

What next for Egypt?

What happens next is really up to Egypt. The country is at a crossroads, with further elections due in 2014.

Each regime so far has committed serious human rights abuses and there is little point arguing about who was worse – the focus should now be on figuring out who’s going to fix the mess. It’s unclear whether Egypt will continue to be a country whose citizens live in fear, dissidents are executed and journalists do as they’re told, or whether future leaders will learn from the mistakes of the past.

Article written by Katie Young, Online Editor