Zohra Moosa

Zohra Moosa is Senior Policy Officer for Race & Gender at the Fawcett Society where she runs Seeing Double, a national campaign on the experiences and needs of ethnic minority women. She has campaigned nationally and internationally on equality, social and environmental justice and has a background in international development.

Zohra is currently a trustee for the Women's Environment Network and Housing for Women and can be found blogging at The F Word.

Recent articles

The last time I was at a UN conference was in 2001 when I attended the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa as an NGO delegate. I found it overly bureaucratic and seemingly designed to confuse. I learned that force of will was the best way to navigate the system and keep frustration to a minimum.

I'm sitting in the airport lounge getting ready to fly to New York so that I can attend my first CSW as a blogger for openDemocracy. For the last three days I've been visiting with family and friends and whenever anybody has asked what I'll be doing in New York for the week, I've been excitedly saying, "I'm going to the biggest UN conference on women's rights." This seemed to be the easiest way to explain what the CSW is to those who are not already au fait with UN mechanisms and bureaucracies.

Being a victim of violence is about losing power: the power to protect one's body or mind from abuse; the power to have some control over how one is physically, psychologically or emotionally treated.

Being a survivor or a resister of violence is about reclaiming a sense of power. Feeling empowered is an important part of healing after being a victim of violence. It is also a key ingredient for resisting violence, whether or not one has already been a victim. The link between empowerment and agency is a strong one as Andrea Cornwall dissects.

We need a way of positively tackling the under representation of ethnic minority women, at all levels of government