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13/8/2013
Syria: Refugees struggle to protect their daughters from explotation

When I met them in early June, Abu Nizar, his wife and their three daughters — aged 22, 18 and 14 — were perched on threadbare mattresses in a rundown house in Ramtha, Jordan, where they survive on charity from the local community. Blankets covered the windows to keep out the mid-afternoon heat. Inside, a musty darkness hovered.

12/8/2013
Iran: Predicaments of Being a Sportswoman in Iran

Ahmadinejad is leaving, but the memories of his era linger, bitter mostly, for some more than others, none, perhaps, more bitter than those of the Iranian sportswomen, athletes whose challenge begins way before the starting gun and ends... well it never really ends. Here, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, whatever the name, discrimination is the game.

9/8/2013
Niger: Most brides are children

NIAMEY , Jul 30 2013 (IPS) - For El Hadji Souley Moussa, a 60-year-old retired bank employee in Niger, “marrying off a daughter when she is young is a source of great pride. This way, she is protected from pregnancy outside of marriage.”

It is no wonder that a population and health survey conducted in 2012 by the Ministry of Public Health, and released this July, revealed that 75 percent of girls get married before the age of 18 in this Sahelien country of 16 million inWest Africa. According to the study, young girls aged between 15 and 19 years are the most vulnerable.

 

9/8/2013
Zanzibar: Acid attack on two UK women

Kirstie Trup and Katie Gee, both 18 and from London, had acid thrown on their faces, chests and hands. The island's Police Commissioner Musa Ali Musa told the BBC that there was "no prime suspect" for the attack. He said that a lot of people had been questioned

26/7/2013
Iraq: gendering authoritarianism

Women in Iraq bear the brunt of increasing levels of gender-based violence, inadequate infrastructure and poverty. Yet women activists recognize that their struggle for equality and social justice as women cannot be separated from the wider struggle against authoritarianism and sectarianism.

22/7/2013
Nigeria: The Senate revokes the amendment to marriage age limit!

Recently, the Nigerian Senate proposed and passed an amendment to delete an existing clause in the Constitution that allows girls under 18, if married, to renounce their Nigerian citizenship. 

19/7/2013
Egypt: Closing the Rift

As a young Egyptian woman who participated in the revolution and who has been involved with several women’s groups and initiatives that have proliferated during the past two years, I do not wish to talk about how great the participation of Egyptian women was during the revolution, how they were marginalized afterward, or how they faced violence and a setback in political rights and freedoms despite their numerous contributions. These are all issues that I am sure can be addressed by experts in a more holistic and professional way.

17/7/2013
Karima Bennoune on Human Rights, Religion, and Democracy in the Arab Spring

MRB: Tell us briefly about your recent work on the interface between religion and international human rights.

Karima Bennoune: For my forthcoming book, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, I have interviewed about 300 people from almost 30 Muslim majority countries – from Afghanistan to Mali – about their opposition to fundamentalism. I use the definition of fundamentalism given by  Algerian sociologist Marieme Hélie-Lucas: “political movements of the extreme right, which in a context of globalization … manipulate religion … in order to achieve their political aims.” There are many other Islams, as the stories in my book indicate. My work is about foregrounding those diversities, and thinking about what international human rights norms mean in light of them.

17/7/2013
Algeria: the real lessons for Egypt

For all its problems, Algeria never became an Islamic state. Like Algerian progressives in the 1990s, Egyptian progressives now have to carve out the space to construct a credible alternative under the shield of the new transitional process, and simultaneously challenge the military’s human rights abuses. 

17/7/2013
Indian Women Protest Triple Talaq (Divorce)

It all started with chicken curry, a delicacy her daughter loved. One fateful day 11 years ago, when Farhana Parveen carefully picked out small pieces from the chicken curry for her daughter, her husband was offended. Pregnant with her third child, Farhana had cooked a lavish meal for her in-laws and family. “I made five kilos of chicken curry along with biryani and some ten other items. But when my husband saw me feeding my daughter, he asked me why I had not given it to his mother instead. I was accused of being partial to my children,” says Farhana. The next morning, Salim left the house with his mother after uttering that dreaded word three times: “Talaq Talaq Talaq”.