Jane Gabriel

Iranian journalist Zhila Bani Yaghoub and her husband Bahman Ahmadi Amooyi were arrested in Iran over the weekend after government forces reportedly raided their home.  Yaghoub is a veteran journalist who has worked to promote women's rights in Iran. She spoke recently at the Nobel Women's Initiative conference on 'Redefining Democracy' held in Guatemala.

The Nobel Women's Initiative issued a statement saying:

"We are worried for the safety of Zhuila, her husband and the countless other Iranian activists and protesters currently being detained in Iran. We encourage your support in this ongoing struggle"

Read more

 

Jane Gabriel

Activists, scholars and policy makers from more than thirty countries are heading for Antigua, Guatemala, this weekend for the Nobel Women’s Initiative second international conference ‘Women Redefining Democracy’. openDemocracy will be covering three days of debate as the women examine women’s experience of democracy in different contexts, from both inside and outside the structures of power.

Jane Gabriel

If there is such a thing as ‘choreographed chaos', it's been happening here at the CSW  for the past two weeks in the Vienna café in the UN.

Jane Gabriel

Every one of the hundreds and hundreds of women who are here at the CSW is trying to build a ‘common understanding', by accurately describing the daily lived reality in their country or region.

Jane Gabriel

The Arab Women's Network "ROA" meaning ‘Vision', held a session called ‘Occupations in the Arab region contribute to maintaining Gender Inequalities'. The panel of women from Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine described the impossibility of working for women's rights and the alleviation of women's suffering in an area of endless conflict.

Jane Gabriel

On my way to the canteen I met Margaret Owen who is the director of Widows for Peace through Democracy,   she told me that she every year she swears to herself that she's never coming back. But this is her  eleventh time - so I asked her why she's here again.

Jane Gabriel

Today the 53^rd session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women gets underway for ten days of meetings, greetings, roundtables and interactive panels and dialogue. This afternoon two roundtables, each with representatives from more than 95 countries will begin the discussion on this year's priority theme  "The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including care-giving in the context of HIV/AIDS".

The ‘context' is that 33 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, and of the 10 million who are in need, only 3 million are receiving treatment. It's estimated that 90% of all HIV/AIDS related care is given by women and girls who are facing deepening poverty, stigma, discrimination and isolation in their communities. As is the way with the CSW, it has already published its ‘Agreed Conclusions' with more than thirty policy recommendations, and over the next ten days these will be debated and negotiated by the states.

But this session is taking place in the shadow of the financial crisis and climate change, something that is reflected in the titles of many of the parallel events that are sponsored by the Permanent Missions to the UN - for example: Iceland - Gender Equality and Climate Change,  India - Women and the Financial Crisis, and Turkey - Supporting Women Entrepreneurs.  And Japan, South Korea and the Pacific Islands Forum are all offering examples of national and local gender equality initiatives.   It's only 16 years since women's rights were recognised as human rights and there's a real sense that these rights may be pushed further down the global agenda as political interests compete in the face of the current crises.  One session, a joint UK/Netherlands sponsored event, bluntly named ‘Gender, Sex and the Power to Survive', feels as if it just about sums up the struggle this year.... 

Meanwhile across the road at the Church Centre more than 250 NGO's will hold sessions. It's a great place of meeting, much greeting and an eclectic range of topics up for debate. It also has the great advantage that we don't have to queue for up to an hour each time - in zero degrees - to get into the building.  Here are just a few of the scheduled sessions that have caught my eye. With a particular focus on the men there is ‘Fostering the Caring Nature of Men', ‘Positive Masculinities' and ‘How Men Can Act Against Violence Towards Women'. Then there are sessions on ‘Digital Story Telling', ‘Women Victors and Heroines', and ‘Celebrating 30 Years of CEDAW'.  Other sessions are based on the grassroots testimony of women's lives in the current crisis, such as ‘Perspectives of Rural Women on the Financial Crisis' and ‘Human Trafficking'. But the variety is vast because for instance there is also ‘The Grail Story: Healing Psyche, Patriarchy and the Planet......

 

 

Jane Gabriel

Legal reform in Egypt establishing Family Courts with mandatory mediation ( see Mulki Al-Sharmani: Egypt's family courts: route to empowerment? )   and the introduction of no fault divorce proceedings known as ‘khola'  is prompting discussion about relations between men and women in marriage, including women's sexual rights. As the government and women's rights organisations talk about further legal reforms, the assumptions of the law makers are increasingly being called into question.

Mulki al Sharmani and Sawsan Sherif  are based at the Social Research Centre of the American University in Cairo and have been monitoring the work of two family courts, looking at how the reforms are working for women on the ground. They spoke to Jane Gabriel in Cairo about some surprising findings of their research. Listen now.

Jane Gabriel

A new report produced by the Karama network ‘Refugee and Stateless Women across the Arab Region: stories of the dream of return, the fear of trafficking and the discriminatory laws' (pdf) is a ground breaking work written collaboratively by women from Syria, Palestine, Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Somalia and Morocco. It combines original research and personal testimony with historical and political analysis, to call for a response to refugees that moves beyond relief services to the promotion of rights. The authors address in detail the particular problems faced by Iraqi women living in Syria, Egypt and Jordan, Palestinian women living in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, Sudanese women living in Egypt and Somalian women living in ‘a nation without a state'.

Jane Gabriel

The theme of this year's CSW is Financing for Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality. There are dozens and dozens of NGO's here with ideas about how to demand the resources and there are daily sessions sponsored by the UN missions, but with only two days to go I haven't found anyone who is optimistic that this year's CSW will have the slightest impact on women's empowerment.

Jane Gabriel

I attended the session on The Impact of Guns on Women's Lives, hosted by the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs and IANSA the International Action Network on Small Arms. The panel of women speakers came from Argentina, the DRC, Iraq, Canada and India.  Binalakshmi Nepram is a young woman from India and founder of Control Arms Foundation of India.  She opened her speech by saying " This is my first address to the United Nations, a place where everyone comes for final justice."  She dedicated her speech to the 5000 women who have died by gun violence in her region by state and non-state actors, and went on to say "My very presence here is proof that women are taking action to stop gun violence". She spoke of her pain as a young woman born in the country that gave birth to non violence and is today the largest democracy in the world, knowing that India is  "arming itself to the teeth" and has 40 million fire arms, the majority of which are in private hands. She'd recently attended an arms bazaar in New Delhi where one of the 450 arms dealers had told her that in India "gun shops are mushrooming like phone booths".

Jane Gabriel

The permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations sponsored the session on ‘Dignity and the Politics of Financing of Women’s Rights’, and Karama organised the panel. It took place in the Dag Haamarskjold Library Auditorium of the UN (which they had fought ‘tooth and nail’ to get). Earlier in the week they’d been worried that the room was too big, but after four days of raising Arab women’s voices at every and any opportunity during the CSW, they attracted a large audience. Afaf Jabiri opened the session by saying “we want to talk about violence in relation to the reality we live in, which in our region is one of conflict war and occupation, so one of our priorities is to work with refugee women and statelessness”. The panel was made up of Sabah al_Hallaq from Syria, Afaf Marei from Egypt, Joumana Merhy from Lebanon, Saadia Wadah from Morocco, Rugaia Abdelgader from Sudan, Teraza al-Ryyan and Afaf Jabiri from Jordan.

Jane Gabriel

Between sessions here at the CSW the choice is to sit in the hallways or what's called the Vienna café - the equivalent to sitting in a giant ashtray - while planning the next move. The Karama women barely had time for a cigarette between them today. At 9am they were in the Conference room ready to read the report of the Caucus meetings to the NGO Morning Briefing. They asked whether there would be an Arabic interpreter and were told by the chair "there is always an interpreter for every official language of the UN, unless there isn't." She beamed at them. At that point Nadia, their interpreter, did the planned 'Karama run' and made it to one of the interpreter booths at the back of the hall. They were the first to speak and Taryza Al Ryyen from Jordan gave their report of the work of the Western Asia caucus meetings. Nadia ended up interpreting for the whole session. The General Discussion session followed on immediately at 10am, Karama were told they had been accepted to speak for two minutes and Azza Kamel had the final document in her hands. At this session NGO's have to wait until all the delegates have said their bit, which today left the NGO's only 20 minutes of a 3 hour session. Azza was refused a glass of water. Only delegates are allowed to drink the water.  The NGO's spoke one by one and there were just two more to speak when the chiar closed the session Karama was one of the two. So here is the statement on ‘Refugee and stateless women and financing for gender equality and women's rights' that they did not have the chance to make.

Jane Gabriel

The inappropriately named ‘Western Asia and Middle East' caucus met again today and attracted double the number of people from yesterday. Karama ran again, shut the door promptly and chaired the meeting. Each day they encourage someone in their group who is feeling nervous to speak up or chair a meeting - one way of empowering themselves as they navigate what has to be calculated chaos here at the UN CSW. The idea that this Commission is about ‘empowering women' is wearing thin. At the caucus everyone was given a chance to speak and additions were made to the statement including some about the specific situations of Kurdish and Saharan women refugees. The report was then submitted, all twenty two copies, font size 12, double spaced and in English. When Karama speak about the statement on Friday they will do so in Arabic and have been told that in this case they will also have to submit it in Arabic as well. They call it the "humiliation of the regulation."

Jane Gabriel

The Karama women are still jet lagged, so many of them were awake at 4.30am they met at 5am to start work on the alterations they want to submit to the Agreed Conclusions after taking them to the second meeting of the ‘Western Asia and Middle East Caucus' for discussion and agreement. When they spoke at this morning's NGO caucus at which everybody briefs everybody about what they are doing, they spoke in Arabic. An interpreter was produced by the CSW but he interpreted the word ‘refugee' to mean ‘people'. Their entire statement is about the special conditions of women refugees in their region. The women in the audience simply gave up and took off their ear pieces. The brilliant interpreter Karama have brought with them, Nadia Al Sharif, will now run if she has to, in order to get to the interpretation booths first when it comes to the Conference hall proper. Karama are getting very good at this running (and it does make a change from the queuing). Their passes into the building expired today. They queued twice for two hours earlier in the week only to be given temporary ones and were told to start again today to get formal ones. They queued for hours. They missed one key session and were refused entry to another for being late. They finally got the formal passes. They leave on Friday. The title for this year's CSW they say should be "Queuing for women".

Jane Gabriel

The UN press office told me today that "no specific budget has been approved yet" for the new campaign to end violence against women launched on Monday with such fanfare by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. I was told that "the idea is that there will be additional money, but that it's not known how much this will be or when it will be determined."  In the meantime "the agencies already working to end violence are to continue their work". The whole focus of this year's CSW is ‘Financing for gender equality and women's empowerment.'

Jane Gabriel

The Karama delegates met last night to prepare two statements they want to add to the CSW  'Agreed Conclusions' which they'll take to the second meeting of the Middle East caucus for discussion. Each evening they gather in the hotel lobby, share chairs and sit on the floor, but found this evening that another delegation had caught on and got there first. They squashed in anyway amidst the potted plants, laptops balanced on their knees and got down to business. First thing in the morning the delegates will divide up. Some will go to a breakfast with a key Karama funder and some will head straight for  the NGO morning briefing where they'll inform other NGO's that "there is an Arab NGO taking part in the CSW this year" and announce the round table they are hosting called ‘Dignity and the Politics of Financing for Women's Rights' on Thursday.  

Jane Gabriel

"I call on men around the world to lead by example: to make clear that violence against women is an act perpetrated by a coward, and that speaking up against it is a badge of honour. I call on Member States around the world: the responsibility, above all, lies with you. I call on all of you to pledge with me: United We Shall Succeed"

Jane Gabriel

They made it. A Karama delegate, Amal Mahmoud Fayed from Egypt, chaired the caucus. One of them shut the door to the room on the dot of 10am and sat by the door throughout the meeting quickly and firmly dispatching anyone who wandered in to pick up literature, disturbing the discussion. (An American representative from the Good Shepherd International left half way through). The conversation stayed on the core issue, order was kept, time was kept and business was done. Delegates from Turkey and Pakistan came on board and the first Asian president of the National Council of Women of Australia, Hean Bee Wee, asked for an alliance with the caucus and was welcomed gladly. The Pakistan delegate said that she had been unable to find anyone to join with until then. A draft of the changes they'll suggest was circulated at the end of the meeting and everyone will consider them overnight. Things are going well -

Jane Gabriel

 

The Karama group met at 7am this morning in the hotel lobby, shortage of chairs meant some of us sat crossed legged on the floor. In one hour flat this extraordinarily well organised group had decided their strategy for the Western Asia (Middle East) NGO Caucus today for two possible scenarios: if they were the only people there, and if other people showed up. In case of the second scenario, they decided to get there first to avoid a repetition of last year when they had to ‘fight' to chair the Caucus. This year three of them will "run together like football team" to make sure their chair person gets there first. They will lead the dialogue to produce strategies and recommendations and avoid talk of problems and the causes. If they want the chance to make an oral statement in general discussion, they only have until tomorrow at 10am to come up with the changes the caucus wants to this year's Agreed Conclusions (which the whole conference is now discussing) and the caucus is only for one hour.

Jane Gabriel

 

The need to "redefine and reproduce a strong Arabic presence and not let others do it on our behalf" was the key feeling last night when I sat in with the twelve women from Karama as they met to debrief each other on day one at the CSW. They are here from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Sudan, Somalia and Morocco and had split into twos and threes to attend different sessions. Key points that came up were:

Jane Gabriel

UNSecretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the UN's multi-year campaign ‘UNite to End Violenceagainst Women' today. I'd planned to attend but missed it, so spoke afterwardsto Rugia Abdelqader from Sudan who welcomed the establishment of a mechanism to tackle violenceagainst women, and to Joumana Merhi from Lebanon who said that the campaign wasimportant because it was a qualitative change and meant that the women'smovement had "managed to break through the wall of silence about violenceagainst women". It's taken determination and a great deal of patience by the women working in Unifem ( amongst others) to get this far; when they first talked of violence against women as a public issue in 1995 they met with a wall of resistance. Today the campaign was greeted with real enthusiasm, but no one could tell me how much money was being allocated, so I rang the press office to find out. I was told that they hadn't"referenced that" in the launch and that they'd get back to me when they had foundout how much money was behind the campaign. I'm still waiting to hear back from the press office.The theme of this year's CSW is, after all, finance for women's empowerment and gender equality......

Jane Gabriel

I've just come out of a session called 'The Politics of Funding and Funding Politics' hosted by the Women's Intercultural Network and the Coalition of Women from Asia and the Middle East. It started with two American speakers talking about selling ‘your product', ‘seducing the funder', grant writing tips and advice to us on telephone manners when speaking to funders. The talk was of funding being both an art and a science. The meeting ended with a woman from Somalia saying that it wasn't about either: it was about politics and that it was disheartening that American foreign policy had "come down to the woman having the right to an abortion or not, that it's far more complex, has nothing to do with proposal writing and is all about race and politics".

Jane Gabriel

Half way to 2015, the shortfall in funding necessary to achieve Millennium Development Goal Three "to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women" is already $8.6 billion and is expected to grow to $23.8 billion. The picture of financing for women's empowerment is a bleak one. The second Fundher report by AWID into funding for women's rights work makes depressing reading (it's a brilliant piece of work and worth reading if you can face the bad news). More than a thousand women's rights organisations were surveyed around the world and more than half reported a drop in income since 2000. Two thirds had incomes of less than $50k a year and one third has less than $10k.

Jane Gabriel

On Monday the 52^nd session of the CSW opens in New York. Last year the theme was the ‘Elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child' and the UN launched a 10 agency programme to Stop Rape Now. I can still hear the impassioned pleas from women in Nepal and Liberia and the silence in the packed conference hall as Eve Ensler read from the Vagina Monologues.

Jane Gabriel

Roja Bandari wrote of the courage of Iranian women behind the One Million Signature Campaign during openDemocracy's coverage of 16 days Against Gender Violence.

Jane Gabriel

Afaf Jabiri wrote from Jordan about honouring Mahfoutha Shtayyeh from Palestine in the 50.50 blog 16 Days Against Gender Violence. This week women's rights advocates working with Karama in Palestine www.elkarama.org have issued a statement about the living conditions in Gaza:

"This the most difficult period we have ever experienced. They are targeting the basic needs of us. What we are asking for is not luxury material but the most basic of the basics to live humanely. Injured people have no hope of survival--if injured, there is no means to reach the hospital, and if they reach the hospital, then there is not any medicine for treatment. Women and children are the most affected of all by what's happening: children have not been able to take their needed vaccines and medical check-ups for months, and women face serious danger giving birth in people's houses without any medical observation.

Jane Gabriel

As George Bush leaves Israel and the West Bank and heads for Gulf states talks, Robi Damelin, a member of Parents Circle Families Forum, laments the failure of leaders to understand that the same pain is shared by all.

Robi Damelin writes: Roll up roll up and join the queue to receive your certificate for missed opportunities. Spread the red carpet from Ben Gurion to Har Herzl or Kiriat Shaul and let them pontificate over open graves. Play the National Anthem and let's listen to all the voices of doom and gloom. Fly the flag and stay glued to your identity. (more...)

Jane Gabriel

by Jane Gabriel, who reports from Amman where Karama activists from across the Middle East and North Africa are meeting.

When representatives from Karama attended an International forum of the Association for Women's Rights in Development in 2005, they found little attention to their region's priorities and a dearth of Arab women's voices in the conference. Hibaaq Osman, founder of Karama, political strategist and campaigner for women's human rights, decided that it was time to find the resources that would allow them to participate. Working with women's organisations that rely so often on western donor funding, Hibaaq says that she comes up "against blocks wherever there is a new idea, either the donor doesn't understand the idea itself, or has their own idea of what women's rights work is; that if it's new and from the ground they find it very difficult to understand".

Jane Gabriel

by Jane Gabriel, who reports from Amman where Karama activists from across the Middle East and North Africa are meeting.

The World Health Organisation's report on Women's Health and Domestic Violence against Women published in 2005 was based on interviews with more than 24,000 women from 10 countries. The incidence of violence by intimate partners ranged from 15% to 71% in each country. But women from countries in the Middle East and North Africa were not included in the survey.

Partly in response to this Karama was formed - an organisation of women in nine Arab countries working to address violence against women. Tired of the incongruity between the intense geo-political activity focused in the Arab world, and the absence of their voices from the international circuit Karama is a network of activists working to "break the cycle of Arab women's absence from the global arena and to generate a base line of information, consolidate networks of activists, and carry out tangible actions by women in the Middle East and North Africa to end violence on our own terms".

If the WHO had included interviews about violence with women in these regions, it would have found that in:

- Egypt 34% of ever married women had been physically abused by a partner or spouse.

- Jordan saw a 20% increase in recorded incidents of gender violence in 2005.

- In the West Bank 52% of women had experienced domestic violence

- and in the Gaza Strip 62.5%.

According to WHO nearly half the world's women who die from homicides are killed by current or former husbands or partners. But in the Middle East and North Africa the trend is differentiated by the number of women murdered by a male relative rather than her spouse. In a study of female homicides in Alexandria 47% of the women killed had been raped and then killed by a relative for loss of "honor". In Lebanon 70 -75% of the perpetrators of female homicides were the victim's brothers carrying out retribution to uphold "honor".

Choosing Karama - meaning ‘dignity' in Arabic, this network of women has a unique way of addressing violence.

Karama, Arabic for ‘Dignity'

To a western ear, the name ‘dignity' resonates well for an Arab women's anti-violence network. To an Arab ear ‘dignity' carries profound repercussions.

Dignity is a fundamental social concept in Arab society. It is at the root of many of the Arab world's most remarked-upon social customs including generosity when there is little to share, selflessness in the face of great danger and abundant hospitality. However, it is also invoked for acts of violence against women in the Arab world, particularly ‘honor' killings. Foreign occupations compound a sense of collective humiliation and hardship whose results can be seen in domestic violence, rape and murder.

In Karama we are rethinking the very definitions and dimensions of violence against women. We question whether violence is indeed a humiliation committed against a woman, her family, her community and her society or whether it might also influence public health and well-being; civic discourse and politics; ingenuity and education; belief and religion; legal protections and the judicial system; creative arts and cultural expression; public discourse and the media; and economic opportunity and advancement.

We, as women of Karama, believe in our own power, identity, and opportunity to strengthen our societies. In a 2005 survey in eight Arab countries, women's greatest concerns were not the headscarf and driver's licenses, but lack of Muslim unity, violent extremism, and political corruption or violence. We are debating and discussing military violence as much as domestic violence. We find its roots and reach in sectors of our societies that are also awaiting greater progress for women: politics, economics, health, education, and media images.

We view our mission as one not only to widen the constituencies working to end violence against women, but also to widen the roles and opportunities for women in the key sectors thus strengthening society. Karama is devising a home-grown response to violence against women that takes into account its root causes and social consequences.