News

15/4/2011

Even as the Arab spring unfolds across the region, I learned with profound astonishment that Mr. Jack Persekian, director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, has been dismissed as “punishment” for allowing an artist invited to the Sharjah Biennial total freedom of expression. I am the artist in question. My installation “Maportaliche/Ecritures sauvages” [It has no importance/Wild Writings] has been censored and removed from the Biennial. 

13/4/2011

PEN American Center today named Nasrin Sotoudeh, a writer, lawyer, and leader of the women’s and children’s rights movement in Iran, as the recipient of its 2011 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. Sotoudeh was arrested on September 4, 2010, and is now serving an 11-year sentence for her outspoken advocacy in defense of her clients arrested after the June 2009 presidential elections and interviews she gave to human rights organizations and media about their cases.

13/4/2011

Hundreds of Syrian women have marched along the country's main coastal highway to demand the release men seized from their hometown, human rights activists said. Security forces, including secret police, stormed the town of Baida, going into houses and arresting hundreds of men after locals joined anti-government protests, according to the activists. Video showed a large crowd, most of them women, marching along the road leading to Turkey as they chanted: "We want the men of Baida."

12/4/2011

It is not a new thing that the Syrian government traffics women like some religious figures who have sold their consciousness, values and humanity to enable their masculinity to enslave women. The government seems ready to do this again again. What is really scary this time round is that the government started to pay “the cost” of the attitudes taken by few of those religious figures, and it seems that women would be again the victims of this compromise in many ways.

12/4/2011

Kenza Drider stood defiantly outside Notre Dame, adjusting her niqab to reveal only a glimpse of her eyes. Scores of police with a riot van and several lorries stood by as she and another woman in a niqab staged a peaceful protest for the right "to dress as they please". On the first day of France's ban on full Islamic face-coverings, this was the first test.

8/4/2011

The Egyptian Center for Women's Rights and the Egyptian Coalition for Civil Education and Women's Participation follow up the regressive calls for repealing the social laws in Egypt such as the personal status code and the children’s code in a great worry. These codes were previously amended in order to guarantee the rights of human-beings, including women and children. Those amendments did not reach the extent of an approval of the rights of women and children as fully eligible citizens.

8/4/2011

Israeli troops have stormed Awarta village in the northern West Bank, arresting more than 100 women as they hunted the killers of an Israeli family from the illegal settlement of Itamar, officials said. The military also used bulldozers to destroy Palestinian houses in a northern farming village east of Tubas, in an area under Israeli control, according to Palestinian security officials. In Awarta, hundreds of troops entered the village shortly after midnight on Thursday and imposed a curfew after which they began rounding up women, many of whom were elderly, local council head Tayis Awwad told the AFP news agency.

6/4/2011

The Egyptian Center for Women's Rights held a seminar entitled "Towards a fair representation in the Parliament" on Monday, April 4, 2011. 70 male and female participants including heads of parties, political experts, legal experts, activists, heads of NGOs and male and female parliamentary representatives as well as male and female media workers attended the seminar. The seminar started with a speech by Mrs. Nehad Abul Komsan, head of ECWR, who tackled political problems and challenges that Egyptian women face after the 25th of January Revolution. She outlined the outputs of a report on the status of Egyptian women after the revolution and praised the stance of the Tagammu' party that submitted a draft law stating the necessity of women's representation in nomination with a minimum percentage of 30%. She praised the initiative of young men of the Muslim Brotherhood that involved women in all organizational structures of the party or the group with a minimum percentage of 25%. Mrs. Mageda Abdel Badel, member of the Women's Union at the Tagammu' Party, outlined a draft law the party had previously submitted which assures the necessity of voting through a proportional representation list system with a minimum representation of 30% of any of the two genders in order to guarantee a better representation of women.

5/4/2011

 (Cairo, March 28, 2011) The Egyptian Center for Women's Rights received the news on incidents in Minufiya governorate, for it witnessed a dangerous incident for the first time: 350 Salafis confronted the state law and surrounded a house of a woman in Sadat city, forced her out of her house, threw her house's furniture on the street, burned the house and threatened to kill her if she returned to her home. They did so claiming that her conduct was immoral and dishonorable. When they broke into the house, she was alone; they terrified her and took her out of the house by force. This is considered a dangerous incident, especially as it is not the first time something like this happened.

1/4/2011

Recalling the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, in particular paragraph 260 concerning Palestinian women and children, the Beijing Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women and the outcomes of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”, Recalling also its resolution 2010/6 of 20 July 2010 and other relevant United Nations resolutions, including General Assembly resolution 57/337 of 3 July 2003, on the prevention of armed conflict, and Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) of 31 October 2000, on women and peace and security,