49 year-old civil servant slumps as Court dissolves her 21-year-old marriage on grounds of childlessness.
“It is on record that both parties have consented to the dissolution of the marriage and the respondent has asked the court to grant her husband prayer of divorce. In view of this, the Court has no other choice than to grant the petitioner’s prayer for divorce. The marriage is hereby dissolved. The petitioner has waved the K5,000 bride price he paid. Hence the respondent has no need to return it”. The Court held.
“My Lord, I have just 9 years to retire from civil service. I don’t have any child. I am exhausted in this marriage. I have tried my best to have at least child from my wife but all attempts have failed. Separate us, my Lord. The petitioner had earlier told the Court.
On her part, the respondent told the Court that she had prayed and visited doctors but no child.
“My Lord, I have gone to different places and taken different concoctions, all to no avail. I had told my husband to go out and impregnate any young girl and allow me to still remain his wife but he still insisted on divorce. Where do I go at my age.” she said.
Why this matters
Because gold gets refined over and over again and moves all around the world, it is hard to be certain if gold bought on the open market is ethically and legally clean, said experts – and that its money trail is free of laundering and crime.
A watch might have been made with pieces of gold from a conflict region, or a bar of gold was melted with parts of smuggled gold.
The never-ending loop of melting, selling, buying and melting again obfuscates any trace of the gold’s origin, making it particularly difficult for law enforcement agencies to build evidence against suspected smugglers.
Nonprofits, such as Global Witness and Corruption Watch, and organisations, such as the International Monetary Fund (PDF) and the OECD, have called for increased scrutiny of gold, like the Kimberley Process for the diamond industry. The Kimberley Process has tried to prevent the sale of blood diamonds, plundered from conflict zones. But so far, there is no similar regulation in the gold industry.
“When you talk about gold, some people actually think that ‘oh, this doesn’t affect us, this is just for the rich people or for a small segment of society that care about gold’,” Rihan, the former Ernst & Young partner said. “But the reality is, gold enters our lives and we interact with gold all the time, pretty much on a daily basis, because even the phones and the laptops that we use, they use gold.” Many everyday electronic devices use small quantities of gold in their circuit boards.
“We all have a responsibility to ensure that we receive clean gold and we also have the right as people to know that the gold we use is clean.”