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12/11/2011
Libya: CLADEM Stands in Solidarity with Women Living Under Muslim Laws

CLADEM[1] states its deep concern and indignation on account of the public
 statements made by the National Transition Council (NTC) of Libya on October
23rd last, declaring that the "Sharia" (Islamic Law) shall be a source of
 legislation for the new regime, establishing the immediate incorporation of 
polygamy, without any impediments, based on the fact that the Islamic Law 
does not prohibit it.



11/11/2011
International: 'UN Expert Calls for Integration of Gender Perspective into Criminal Justice Systems'

A gender perspective needs to be integrated into countries’ criminal justice systems to ensure women are not “ruled out of the law,” the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers Gabriela Knaul said today.

3/11/2011
China: 'China's Great Gender Crisis'

His parents knew exactly what they wanted from their son: they called him Famiao, or "produce descendants". Yet when their first grandchild arrived, they refused to step across the courtyard of the family home to see the new baby. Qiaoyue was a girl.

When finally obliged to meet her, "they didn't even wash her face or comb her hair. I was furious," says their daughter-in-law, Chen Xingxiao.

"My father-in-law's friends would ask him, 'How come you haven't brought your grandchild out for a walk?' He would say, 'If it was a boy I would have done. She's a girl, so I won't.'"

1/11/2011
Israel/Lebanon: 'The Making of a Secular Democracy: Law, Marriage, and Empirical Irrelevance in Israel and Lebanon'

On any given weekend, Israeli and Lebanese citizens can be found standing together in an orderly line before a Cypriot magistrate. They shuffle forward, couple by couple, in line to get married. The distance to Cyprus is roughly the same for an Israeli or a Lebanese couple, as is the reason why these couples choose to get married there. And no, it is not due to the beautiful weather, the beaches, or the nightlife in Cyprus, which most Israelis and Lebanese would insist to the reader, with a swish of nationalist bravado, are inferior. These are not marriages between Lebanese and Israelis. Rather, these couples leave their countries and travel by boat or by plane to a country that has what Israel and Lebanon both lack: a civil marriage law. To put it more simply, they do not have a marriage law that is adjudicated by secular, and not religious, authorities. Despite the fact that interfaith marriages cannot take place in either country, in Lebanon the lack of civil marriage is understood to index both the lack of secularism and liberalism and the primordial and patriarchal nature of the Lebanese state, while Israel continues to enjoy the ideological capital that its status as “the only [secular] democracy in the Middle East” ensures and unleashes.

30/10/2011
Yemen: 'Yemen women burn veils in Sanaa in anti-Saleh protest'

Hundreds of women have set fire to their traditional veils in Yemen in protest at the violence used against anti-government demonstrators. The women, in the capital Sanaa, made a pile of veils in the street which they then doused with petrol and set alight.

Women have played a key part in the uprising against Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

A Yemeni woman activist, Tawakkul Karman, was joint winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. She received the award for her role in the struggle for women's rights and democracy in Yemen.

30/10/2011
Egypt: 'One brave woman's fight against virginity-test ordeal in Tahrir Square'

Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, Tahrir Square has been an inspiration to pro-democracy activists across the globe. Now one woman is fighting to make sure the public space, which became the focal point of the demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak's government in Egypt, does not become a symbol for state-sponsored misogyny too.

28/10/2011
MENA: 'Manifesto for a Secular Middle East and North Africa'

FOR A FREE AND SECULAR MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

76 secularists and human rights campaigners, including Mina Ahadi, Nawal El Sadaawi, Marieme Helie Lucas, Hameeda Hussein, Ayesha Imam, Maryam Jamil, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasrin, Farida Shaheed, Fatou Sow, and Stasa Zajovic have signed on to a Manifesto for a Free and Secular Middle East and North Africa.

26/10/2011
Mexico: 'Women Reject Normalisation of Gender Violence'

Ninety percent of the non-governmental organisations in Mexico are founded and run by women, says journalist and women's rights activist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, even as crimes against women remain cloaked in impunity.

Cacho was recently in New York, where she was awarded the Civil Courage award from the Train Foundation, and also spoke at a special event hosted by Columbia University.

26/10/2011
Tunisia: 'Women Seek to Set their Stamp'

Nine months after a popular election toppled the dictatorship of former Tunisian president Zine Abidine Ben Ali, voters headed to the polls Sunday to cast their ballots for fresh leaders to rewrite the laws of the country’s political system.

The election campaign in the birthplace of the Arab Spring has been, among other things, a battleground for women’s rights as voters set out to choose from about 11,000 candidates, half of them women.

24/10/2011
Yemen: 'Tawakkul Karman as Cause and Effect'

Political activist Tawakkul Karman has brought Yemen’s revolution to New York, speaking directly on October 20 with Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and organizing rallies at the United Nations headquarters in lower Manhattan, the largest of which is slated for the afternoon of October 21. The purpose of her visit is to keep pressure on the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that reflects the aspirations of the overwhelming numbers of Yemenis who have sustained peaceful calls for change for the nine long months since protests began in late January.