Egypt

المهندس الميكانيكي أحمد عز يتحدث عن عمله التطوعي في قوة ضد التحرش/ الاعتداء الجنسي الجماعي، وهي حركة ناشطة مركزها في القاهرة، ومعروفة بتدخلاتها في حوادث الاعتداءات الجنسية الجماعية في ميدان التحرير.

وعندما يعلم الناس أن امرأةً تعرضت للتحرش والاعتداء الجنسي يكون رد فعلهم الأول هو: “كانت لابسة اه؟ إنهم دائماً يضعون اللوم على النساء أنفسهن، وقد شهدتُ ذلك الأمر مرات عدة.

We are extremely proud to announce that WLUML networker Yara Sallam has been awarded the North African Human Rights Defender Shield 2013. 

Yara Sallam is a researcher on transitional justice at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). Yara previously worked as the Women Human Rights Defenders Program manager at Nazra for Feminist Studies (Egypt), a professional legal assistant at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) in The Gambia, as researcher on Freedom of Religion and Belief at EIPR, and as a research assistant at the Institute of Research for Development (IRD) focusing on women’s rights in Egypt.

Egypt is the only country in North Africa where the practise of female genital mutilation remains widespread – despite an official ban and many public information campaigns for women. Anna Kölling reports from Cairo

According to estimates, over 90 per cent of all Egyptian women of childbearing age are affected by genital mutilation. The scale of this practice first became apparent in 1994 with a study conducted on population development and health. Activists have been fighting against female circumcision for decades and, after the popular uprising in early 2011, women's rights once again became a prominent topic in the media. Although women and men have fought side by side on the streets, the rights of women are nevertheless becoming increasingly jeopardised. Ultra-conservative groups, for example, are calling for the lifting of the ban on female circumcision, which was enacted into law in 2008.

Women’s organisations in Egypt continue the struggle to put women’s rights on the agenda. Recently, 800 women’s organisations met in Cairo to discuss the way forward during this crucial transitional period.

In the end of September, The Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation’s partner organisation Alliance for Arab Women, together with the Solidarity Ministry in Egypt, organised a national conference on women’s role during the transitional period in the country.

”Women are now organised in such a way that they can put pressure on the government. But the conference also showed that NGOs are willing to cooperate with the government, as long as the government is willing to recognize women,” says Hoda Badran, chairperson of Alliance of Arab Women, one of the organisations that Kvinna till Kvinna supports in Egypt.