Empowerment

Afghanistan: Critical concerns and challenges of ageing women

INTRODUCTION

In some countries, power comes with age, but not in Afghanistan where wholesale denial of rights and opportunities are imposed against women throughout their life spectrum. With a society that supports gender-based oppression and an economy that is held hostage by armed conflict, corruption, weak human resources, and wayward politics, Afghanistan may be the worst place in the world for women to grow old.

Sri Lanka: Mourning Tireless Rights Advocate Abeysekera

(New York) – Human Rights Watch mourns the death of Sunila Abeysekera, a prominent and highly respected Sri Lankan activist who spent more than two decades documenting human rights violations in Sri Lanka. Abeysekera passed away in Colombo on September 9, 2013, following a long illness.

Let the spring flowers blossom: The rise of Arab trade union women leaders

They continue to live with the realities of ongoing wars and revolutions, discrimination and abuse, but Arab women are finding ways to organise for a better future through sisterhood and trade union solidarity across borders.

Les Femmes de La Révolution

Les tunisiennes ont impressionné le monde entier en se levant pour défendre leurs droits en tant que femmes et en tant qu'êtres humains. Epaules contre épaules elle se sont soulevées aux côtés des hommes afin de défendre leur nation pendant la révolution.

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.

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.

10 Ways to Help Girls Transform the World

Crowd sourced solutions for girls’ access to education.

Sisters of Somalia

Asha Hagi Elmi is a humanitarian activist, internationally recognised for her work helping to build peace and defend the rights of women in Somalia. Witness journeys with Asha to the refugee camps of Mogadishu, swelled to bursting point in 2011 by tens of thousands of Somalis fleeing drought and the threat of famine.

Asha, her sister Amina and other women from the NGO she founded, Saving Somali Women and Children (SSWC), distribute food, clothing, medical and practical aid, lend an ear to the refugees' stories and, most of all, attempt to restore dignity to the lives of the often traumatised and extremely vulnerable women and children they meet in the camps.

الكويت:«الشؤون»: إنهاء معاناة حجب المساعدات عن المواطنات المتزوجات بغير كويتي

وضعت وزيرة الشؤون الاجتماعية والعمل ذكرى الرشيدي حدا لمعاناة المواطنة المتزوجة من غير كويتي، والتي تسبب فيها التعميم الإداري الصادر أخيراً عن الوزارة بشأن منحهن المساعدات الاجتماعية، والزام مشرفي الوحدات الاجتماعية في جميع المحافظات بعدم صرف المساعدات لهن، إلا بعد إحضار استمارة فحص طبي من المجلس الطبي العام للزوج، سواء كان خليجياً أو عربياً أو من فئة غير محددي الجنسية (البدون)، تثبت أن عمره 50 عاما، وغير قادر على العمل.وقالت الرشيدي في تصريح صحافي أمس: «لقد تم إنهاء هذه المشكلة التي كانت بسبب قوانين سابقة من المجلس المبطل الأول، الذي لم يشمل اسم المرأة الكويتية ال

WLUML Deputy Director Mariem Omari Joins Women’s Rights and Peace Activists at the Nobel Women’s Initiative Conference in Belfast, 28-30 May 2013

There was a quiet moment in the conference room in the Culloden Hotel in Belfast, Northern Ireland as six women: Mairead Macguire (Northern Ireland) Leymah Gbowee (Liberia), Tawakkol Karman (Yemen), Shirin Ebadi (Iran), Rigoberta Menchu Tum (Guatemala) and Jody Williams (USA), all recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, joined together to welcome us – women activists from all over the world – to the fourth biennial conference of the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

Some women were there to discuss women’s rights, some women were there to discuss peace, but regardless of each woman’s motivation, there was one thing that we all agreed on - it is women that have to “invade (or reinvade) the spaces we need to invade” in order to highlight the devastating impact of war and conflict on women.