Queuing for Women - in Arabic,

Jane Gabriel — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:13:41 +0000

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".

open Democracy News Analysis - Queuing for Women - in Arabic, - Comments

Queuing for Women - in Arabic,