Bibliographies & Resources

Chic Resistance - Women, Fashion, and Politics in Iran

Women’s bodies have long been a site of cultural, religious, legal, and political struggles. Recognized as a potent medium of ideological communication, women’s clothing has interested both conservative and liberal states. Historical accounts have often presented women as passive objects of these political struggles waged through and on their bodies. Filtering these histories through a feminist lens we see that women have adopted, adapted, resisted, or subverted imposed regulations of their dressed bodies, asserting their autonomy and fighting for social and political rights.

Promotion and protection of human rights: human rights questions, including alternative approaches for improving the effective enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms

Building on her previous report on diverse forms of fundamentalism and extremism as threats to cultural rights, the Special Rapporteur elaborates on their grave impact on the cultural rights of women. She stresses that a human rights-based response to fundamentalism and extremism must by fully gender sensitive, centering the cultural rights and equality of women, and defending universality. Women’s human rights, including cultural rights, are an essential part of the fight against fundamentalism and extremism, without which it cannot succeed.

Special Issue: Gender and Fundamentalism

This special issue is based on a series of symposia on Gender and Fundamentalisms conducted over the last four years on different aspects of the relationship between gender and fundamentalisms. These symposia took place once a semester at SOAS and were organised by Nira YuvalDavis from the Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) of the University of East London and Nadje Al-Ali from the Centre of Gender Studies (CGS) at SOAS University of London.

Women's Sport as Politics in Muslim Contexts

This book provides an urgently needed analysis of the bravery and creativity exhibited by women in the realm of sports, which has emerged as a major realm of contestation between proponents of women’s rights and political Islamist forces in Muslim contexts. Through focused case studies, this volume tracks the many sophisticated, context-specific, and constantly evolving strategies of women’s resistance to their exclusion in sport. Integral in their struggles for full inclusion in competitive sports, as both players and spectators, is women’s claim to their full and equal citizenship.

Reclaiming and Redefining Rights: ICPD+20: Status of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the Middle East and North Africa

Executive Summary

The year 2014 was meant to be the year that ended the Program of Action adopted by the Cairo Conference for Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994. The document was a paradigm shift in understanding and framing reproductive health and rights and prioritizing individuals’ rights to choose and make decisions with regards to their own bodies. Now that the General Assembly extended the PoA indefinitely, and will review country progress at its 2014 session, it is the right moment to evaluate the extent to which different countries in the region implemented the PoA and how this has changed the realities lived by women and youth regarding their sexual and reproductive health and rights. In the MENA region, acknowledging reproductive rights in a UN consensus document has greatly contributed in enhancing the countries’ policies especially in maternity care, family planning services and HIV/AIDS. Yet, cultural and religious discourses still play a major role in holding back sexual rights especially for young people. Women’s autonomy over their bodies is still a highly debated issue because of the deeply embedded patriarchal culture, which is also reflected in an unprecedented increase in the level of sexual violence against women.

Discrimination Against Women in Bahraini Society and Legislation

The attached report was submitted by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights to the CEDAW (Convention for the Eliminatin of Discrimination Against Women) Committee.

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights is is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization, registered with the Bahraini Ministry of Labor and Social Services since July 2002. Despite an order by the authorities in November 2004 to close it, the BCHR is still functioning after gaining wide internal and external support for its struggle to promote human rights in Bahrain. The co-founder and former President of the BCHR is Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, who is currently serving a life sentence in prison for charges related to freedom of speech. The current President is Nabeel Rajab, who is serving a two year prison sentence for his work as a human rights defender. The Acting President is Maryam Al-Khawaja.

Substantive Equality and Reproductive Rights: A Briefing Paper on Aligning Development Goals with Human Rights Obligations

Executive Summary

This briefing paper is intended to provide guidance on how to incorporate the principles of substantive equality into the Post-2015 Agenda. Specifically, when considering reproductive rights and gender equality in these programs, states should take the following steps:

•Ensure that human rights guide and are present in all goals, targets, and indicators.

•Ensure that the core principles of human rights—including the need for states to respect, protect, and fulfill rights, ensure equality for all, and promote accountability for rights violations—are mainstreamed throughout the new framework.

•Use the principle of substantive equality to address underlying causes of gender inequality and other bases for discrimination such as race, disability, migration status, age and others that manifest as reproductive rights violations.

•Use the framework provided by international human rights law concerning the right to health (Accessibility, Availability, Acceptability, Quality (AAAQs)) to guide implementation of all goals, targets, and indicators on health.

•Ensure that women are able to meaningfully access effective administrative or judicial remedies for violations of reproductive rights, including access to information and comprehensive services, and that states promptly implement these decisions.

Our Motherland, Our Country: Gender Discrimination and Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa

Except of Executive Summary

Gender discrimination in nationality laws occurs when women cannot acquire, change, retain or pass on their nationality to their children and/or non-national spouses on an equal basis as men. Gender discrimination in nationality laws can result in statelessness where children are born to a mother who is a national, reside in their mother’s country and cannot obtain any other nationality for many reasons which include:

• The father died before the birth of the child

• The father is unknown

• The father is stateless and has no nationality himself

• The father is unable to confer his nationality

• The father is unwilling or unable to take the necessarynecessary steps to acquire a nationality for his child

How to follow up on UN Human Rights Recommendations: A practical guide for civil society

What is follow-up and why is it important?

Follow-up activities aim at ensuring that recommendations and decisions by human rights mechanisms and bodies are implemented so as to

improve respect, protection and fulfilment of all human rights for all. UN human rights mechanisms and bodies seek to improve the

realization of human rights in all countries of the world. Resolutions adopted by the Human Rights Council, the findings of Commissions of

Inquiry, recommendations of treaty bodies, special procedures and the universal periodic review, and decisions of treaty bodies on individual

cases all aim at closing protection gaps and indicate ways for States and other stakeholders to advance towards the full realization of human

rights. All these findings, recommendations and decisions aim at producing a change for the better in the lives of rights-holders. The primary obligation to realize such change lies with States, which bear the duty to respect, protect and fulfil human rights. However, all parts of society, from individuals to the private sector, the international community and CSAs have a role to play in the realization of human rights. Civil society, in particular, can play a crucial role in following up on human rights recommendations.

"Maybe we are hated": The experience and impact of Anti-Muslim hate on British Muslim Women

A report by Dr Chris Allen and his team at the University of Birmingham based on data from Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Hate).

The report discusses the disproportionate targetting of women in Anti-Muslim abuse and concludes that women showing 'visible identifiers' of 'Muslimness' - i.e. headscarves - suffer such abuse at higher levels.

The read the full report, click here or download the pdf.