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7/12/2009
Arab World: Research Leads to Rights Breakthrough for Women

Women in Arab countries are making human rights history as they break down barriers to being treated as full citizens in their own countries. In the past few years, women in Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco married to foreigners have won the right to convey their citizenship to their children. Algerian women can also now extend citizenship rights to their spouses.

7/12/2009
Afghanistan: Extremist Threat to Women Increasing

Eight years after the fall of the Taliban, women and girls suffer high levels of violence and discrimination and have poor access to justice and education, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.  The Afghan government has also failed to bring killers of prominent women in public life to justice, creating an environment of impunity for those who target women.

4/12/2009
International: The pitfalls of monitoring and evaluating gender equality programmes

A summary of Part I “Capturing change in women’s realities: The challenges of monitoring and evaluating our work” a paper by Srilatha Batliwala* and Alexandra Pittman.** Monitoring and evaluation now form an integral part of women’s rights and gender equality programmes as we attempt to measure how effectively we work. But are the frameworks we use able to perform this ambitious task? In their paper Capturing change in women’s realities: The challenges of monitoring and evaluating our work Srilatha Batliwala and Alexandra Pittman assess the “ifs,” the “whys” and the “hows” of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in women’s rights, women’s empowerment and gender equality. They observe that “over the past few decades, important strides have been made in developing ways of capturing a whole range of abstract but vital social realities, and particularly in trying to quantify them.

4/12/2009
Middle East: Bloggers targets of government suppression
In the Middle East and North Africa, where political change occurs slowly, blogging has becomes a serious medium for social and political commentary as well as a target of government suppression, writes Mohamed Abdel Dayem. Before the June presidential election, the Iranian government blocked access to more than a dozen social networking sites and online news sources perceived as favoring opposition candidates. Hours before polls opened, SMS, or short message service for mobile phones, was disrupted and remained offline for weeks. The day after the election, the government shut down mobile phone service for an entire day.
4/12/2009
Sudan: Girl lashed 50 times for "indecent" skirt

A 16-year-old south Sudanese girl was lashed 50 times after a judge ruled her knee-length skirt was indecent, her lawyer and family said in the latest case to push Sudan's Islamic law into the spotlight. The mother of teenager Silva Kashif told Reuters on Friday [Nov 27] she was planning to sue the police who made the arrest and the judge who imposed the sentence, as her daughter was underage and a Christian. The case will add fuel to a debate already raging over Sudan's decency laws after this year's high-profile conviction of Sudanese U.N. official Lubna Hussein, who was briefly jailed for wearing trousers in public.

4/12/2009
ASEAN Region: APMM Statement on the growth of politicized Islam

Southeast Asia Muslim human rights advocates express concerns on the growth of politicized Islam in the ASEAN region and makes recommendations to ASEAN leaders at the 15th ASEAN Summit. A regional meeting of Southeast Asian human rights advocates was held in Jakarta on 16-17 October 2009 to examine how certain interpretations of Sharia laws are affecting the rights of the women in Muslim contexts in the region and undermining secularism and democratic institutions in such countries as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.

3/12/2009
Iran: Interview with Mother of Imprisoned Campaign Activist Mehrnoosh Etemadi

Interview with Sadighe Shalbafian, Mother of Imprisoned Campaign Activist Mehrnoosh Etemadi: "We Remain in a State of Limbo and Uncertainty". Change for Equality has conducted an interview with Sadighe Shalbafian regarding the situation of her daughter Mehrnoosh Etemadi. Etemadi who is an activist in the One Million Signatures Campaign was arrested on November 23, 2009 after security officials searched her home and seized property. While she has contacted her family by phone a few times, her status in prison and the charges against her remain unclear. The interview with her mother, Sadighe Shalbafian follows:

3/12/2009
Lebanon: Nationality Campaign

“It is not my right to get the Lebanese nationality; it is that of my mother who is a Lebanese citizen.” – Khaled. More than 130 women and men gathered at the Order of Engineers on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, 25 November 2009, to take part in the press conference called for by the Arab Women’s Right to Nationality Campaign.

2/12/2009
Iraq: Temporary Marriages Boom in South

Samira Abdullah Shehim, a mother of three, could not believe her ears when she was approached by her late husband’s friend with a proposal she never imagined to hear one day. "He was offering me a temporary marriage in exchange for a good gold piece and some monthly income," the 32-year-old widow from the southern city of Najaf told IslamOnline.net. "He told me that it was going to be a marriage for pleasure and he could end it any time he wanted," she explained.

2/12/2009
Morocco: Mobilization Caravan in Morocco to promote a Law on Violence against Women

Global Rights Maghreb recently conducted a three-week Women’s Human Rights Mobilization Caravan across Morocco to generate national support for our legislative advocacy initiative to promote a Violence against Women Law, now in its third year.  Over the 21 days we travelled more than 4000 kilometres around the country, stopping in 33 diverse cities, towns and villages to hold awareness raising and advocacy activities on violence against women, including 20 round tables with over 700 local NGO members, legal professionals and decision-makers, as well as 17 human rights mobilization meetings with over 1100 women at the grassroots level.