International

We, the undersigned organisations and individuals across the globe, are alarmed and disappointed that the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) failed to adopt agreed conclusions at its 56th session. This failure has diminished the considerable work, energy, time and costs that women all over the world invested on the 56th session of the CSW.  The advancement of women’s human rights should not be put on hold because of political battles between states.  We say NO to any re-opening of negotiations on the already established international agreements on women’s human rights and call on all governments to demonstrate their commitments to promote, protect and fulfill human rights and fundamental freedoms of women. 

This book breaks the myth of Muslim women being passive, oppressed and apolitical. It retrieves the mostly forgotten lives and voices of women from the eighth to the early twentieth centuries in Muslim countries and communities who asserted rights for themselves and for other women, promoting justice in the home and in the public sphere.

One of the most fundamental stumbling blocks encountered and reported by the project partners of the WRRC-SWG was the difficulty of adequately addressing the many and diverse issues around the denial and oppression of women’s rights in sexuality, especially in the context of fundamentalist and anti-women ‘religious’ interpretations and practices, which are spreading in many parts of the globe, in particular, in Asian and African countries, with disastrous consequences for women’s rights and well-being.

Oxfam is a global movement of people working with others to overcome poverty and suffering.