‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات women_right. إظهار كافة الرسائل
‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات women_right. إظهار كافة الرسائل

12/16/2013

Father demands 'one million likes' dowry for daughter Yemen Facebook

Father demands 'one million likes' dowry for daughter



A Yemeni young man who sought to marry his sweetheart was shocked when her father demanded “one million likes” on Facebook as a dowry for her.

The father, Salim Ayyash, asked the would-be husband he must write the word “like” one million times over a period of one month in all his tweets and contacts with friends on Facebook. But the father quickly assured the daunted young man, identified as Osama, that he might consider cutting that number before the end of the deadline.

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Ayyash, a well-known Facebook personality in the western Yemeni province of Taizz, also told the suitor that he would be watching his Facebook and Twitter activity to check whether he was making progress.
“Ayyash said he was watching Osama’s online activities as he set off to accomplish that dowry task



…he also told him that before the end of the month, he would evaluate his achievement and could reduce the dowry if he is satisfied with his achievement,” the Saud Arabic language daily Sada said in a report from Yemen.

It said the rare request by Ayyash came amidst soaring wedding expenses and dowries (money paid by grooms to their brides under Islamic law) in Yemen.
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11/29/2013

#Israel girls army


11/26/2013

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy again ! #egypt

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Part 1

11/18/2013

Female genital mutilation in #Egypt #UNICEF #women_right




Female genital mutilation in Egypt "the highest in the world."



According to UNICEF, 91% of women in Egypt are victims of female genital mutilation (FGM) - the largest number in a single country in the world.



The image below was shared by CNN in 1996 and caused outrage, and shows a 10-year-old girl being mutilated at a barbershop in Cairo.

Due to this, there are many misconceptions surrounding the legality and religiosity of FGM.
FGM was illegalized in Egypt in 1996 (except in hospitals). However, it was the death of an 11-year-old girl in 2007 that led to the complete ban of FGM in Egypt.
In 1997, Egypt's Al-Azhar Institution, the highest authority in the Sunni Islamic world, stated that female circumcision is "un-Islamic" and has nothing to do with religion. The former Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi, even declared that his own daughter had not undergone the operation.

--> In the past two years, Al-Azhar has reiterated that FGM is un-Islamic and should not occur under any circumstances. Nevertheless, Al-Azhar's calls were silenced during Morsi's regime which was dominated by ultra-conservative Islamists.


While more than three-quarters of Egyptian girls are said to have had their genitals mutilated by this illegal act that violates basic human rights, the government (both current and past) continues to ignore the problem and fails to raise awareness.


Prevalence of FGM in Africa. For more detailed maps, see Mackie and UNICEF 2013, p. 26.
--> Information about the prevalence of FGM has been collected since 1989 in a series ofDemographic and Health Surveys and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). In 2013 UNICEF published a report based on 70 of these surveys, indicating that FGM is concentrated in 27 African countries, as well as in Yemen and Iraqi Kurdistan, and that 125 million women and girls in those countries have been affected
The practice is mostly found in what political scientist Gerry Mackie describes as an "intriguingly contiguous zone" in Africa, from Senegal in the west to Somalia in the east, and from Egypt in the north to Tanzania in the south, intersecting in Sudan.[72] According to UNICEF, the top rates are in Somalia (with 98 percent of women affected), Guinea (96 percent), Djibouti (93 percent), Egypt (91 percent), Eritrea (89 percent), Mali (89 percent), Sierra Leone (88 percent), Sudan (88 percent), Gambia (76 percent), Burkina Faso (76 percent), Ethiopia (74 percent), Mauritania (69 percent), Liberia (66 percent), and Guinea-Bissau (50 percent).
Around one in five cases is in Egypt. Forty-five million women over the age of 15 who had experienced FGM were living in Egypt, Ethiopia and northern Sudan as of 2008, and nine million were in Nigeria.[74] Most of the women experience Types I and II. Type III is predominant in Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan, and in areas of Eritrea and Ethiopia near those countries. USAID estimated in 2008 that around eight million women in Africa over the age of 15 were living with Type III.
Outside Africa FGM occurs in Yemen (23 percent prevalence), among the Kurds in Iraq (giving the country an overall prevalence rate of eight percent), Indonesia and Malaysia.[76] It has been documented in India, among the Bedouin in Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and by anecdote in Colombia, Oman, Peru and Sri Lanka.[77] There are indications that it is performed in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, although no nationally representative information is available for those countries.[78] There are also immigrant communities that practise it in Australia and New Zealand, Europe, Scandinavia, the United States and Canada.[11]
In 2013 UNICEF reported a downward trend in some countries. In Kenya and Tanzania women aged 45–49 years were three times more likely to have been cut than girls aged 15–19, and the rate among adolescents in Benin, Central African Republic, Iraq, Liberia and Nigeria had dropped by almost half.[79] In 2005 the organization reported that the median age at which FGM was performed had fallen in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Kenya and Mali. Possible explanations include that, in countries clamping down on the practice, it is easier to cut a younger child without being discovered, and that the younger the girls are, the less they can resist.

7/23/2013

Brave Little Girl Flees Forced Marriage, Records Powerful Testimonial #yemen


Brave Little Girl Flees Forced Marriage, Records Powerful Testimonial

 


The longstanding severity of Yemen's child marriages is gaining some much needed sunlight this week after a young survivor of this shocking custom took it upon herself to speak out on behalf of the untold many who can't.

Nada al-Ahdal, an 11-year-old from Sana’a, had been promised by her parents to an adult suitor not once, but twice.
The "gifted singer" had been raised by her uncle Abdel Salam al-Ahdal since practically birth, and had been given the opportunity to go to school and learn English.
Abdel Salam, who was also raising a nephew and his aging mother, attempted to guard young Nada from any attempt by her biological parents to marry her off to a rich groom, having experienced the death of his sister by self-immolation over an arranged marriage.
When Nada turned 10, Abdel Salam learned that Nada's mother and father had indeed sold her off to a Yemeni expat living in Saudi Arabia.
He phoned the groom in a panic, desperate to get him to rescind his offer.
"I called the groom and told him Nada was no good for him," Abdel Salam told the Lebanese publication NOW. "I told him she did not wear the veil and he asked if things were going to remain like that. I said ‘yes, and I agree because she chose it.’ I also told him that she liked singing and asked if he would remain engaged to her."
The man was persuaded to call the whole thing off, leaving Nada's parents "disappointed."
Months later they arrived in Sana'a, ostensibly to visit their daughter, but in reality were there to kidnap her and attempt another arranged marriage.
Nada asked to be returned to her uncle, but was told she had already been promised to someone.
Saying she would run away, Nada's family reportedly threatened her with death, but were unable to stop her escape.
She reunited with her uncle, who took her straight to the authorities.
After an investigation was opened into the forced marriage allegations, Nada's dad suddenly backed off the idea, and permitted her to continue living with her uncle.
"I managed to solve my problem, but some innocent children can't solve theirs," Nada said in a confessional released yesterday by MEMRI-TV. "[A]nd they might die, commit suicide, or do whatever comes to mind...It's not our fault. I'm not the only one. It can happen to any child."

7/11/2013

#Egypt needs a revolution against #sexual_violence


In November 2011, after I joined a protest on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in Cairo with a friend, Egyptian riot police beat me – breaking my left arm and right hand – and sexually assaulted me. I was also detained by the interior minister and military intelligence for 12 hours.
After I was released, it took all I had not to cry when I saw the look on the face of a very kind woman I'd never met before, except on Twitter, who came to pick me up and take me to the emergency room for medical attention. (She is now a cherished friend.)
As I described to the female triage nurse what had had happened to me, she stopped at "and they sexually assaulted me" to ask:
how could you let them do that to you? Why didn't you resist?

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It had been about 14 or 15 hours since riot police had attacked me; I just wanted to be X-rayed to see if they had broken anything. Both arms looked like the Elephant Man's limbs. I explained to the nurse that when you're surrounded by four or five riot police, whacking at you with their night sticks, there isn't much "resisting" one can do.
I've been thinking a lot about that exchange with the nurse. Whenever I read the ghastly toll of how many women were sexually assaulted during last week's protests against Mohamed Morsi in Tahrir Square, I have to wonder about such harshness after brutality.

Activists with grassroots groups on the ground who intervene to extricate women from sexual violence in Tahrir said they documented more than 100 cases; several were mob assaults, several requiring medical attention. One woman was raped with a sharp object. I hope none was asked "why didn't you resist?"

This isn't an essay on how Egyptian regimes like Mubarak's targeted female activists and journalists as a political ploy. Nor is it about how regimes like Morsi's largely ignored sexual violence, and even when it did acknowledge it, blamed women for bringing assaults upon themselves. Nor is it an article about how such assaults and such refusal to hold anyone accountable have given a green light to our abusers that women's bodies are fair game. Nor will I tell you that – were it not for the silence and denial surrounding sexual assault in Egypt – such assaults would not be enacted so frequently on women's bodies on the Egyptian streets.
I don't know who is behind those mob assaults in Tahrir, but I do know that they would not attack women if they didn't know they would get away with it and that the women would always be asked "why didn't you resist?"




From the ground up, we need a national campaign against sexual violence in Egypt. It must push whoever we elect to govern Egypt next, as well as our legislators, to take sexual assaults more seriously.
If our next president chooses – as Morsi did – to address the nation from a stage in Tahrir Square for the inauguration, let him (or her) salute the women who turned out in their thousands upon thousands in that same square, knowing they risked assaults and yet refusing to be pushed out of public space. The square's name literally means "liberation", and it will be those women who, in spite of the risk of sexual violence, will have helped to enable his (or her) presence there as the new president of Egypt.
Undoubtedly, the Egyptian interior ministry needs reform, especially when it comes to how it deals with sexual assault. The police rarely, if ever, intervene, or make arrests, or press charges. It was, after all, the riot police themselves who assaulted me. Their supervising officer even threatened me with gang rape as his conscripts continued their assault of me in front of him.



--> Any woman who ends up in the ER room deserves much better than "why didn't you resist?" Nurses and doctors need training in how best to care for survivors of sexual assault and how to gather evidence.Female police units are said to have been introduced at various precincts, but they need training. They also need rape kits – in the unlikely event any woman actually gathers herself enough to report rape in Egypt. When I was reporting on sexual violence in Cairo in the 1990s, several psychiatrists told me their offices were the preferred destination for women who had survived sexual violence, be it at home or on the streets, because they feared being violated again in police stations.
While that fear is still justifiable today, something has begun to change: more and more women are willing to go public to recount their assaults. I salute those women's courage, but I wonder where they find comfort and support after their retelling is over. PTSD therapy is not readily available in Egypt. We need to train more of our counsellors to offer it to those who want it.
We need to recruit popular football and music stars in advertising campaigns: huge, presidential election campaign style billboards across bridges and buildings – addressing men with clear anti-sexual violence messages, for example – as well as television and radio spots. Culture itself has a role to play in changing this culture: puppet theatre and other arts indigenous to Egypt can help break the taboo of speaking out; and we need more TV shows and films that tackle sexual assaults in their storylines.
There is an innate and burning desire for justice in Egypt. Revolutions will do that. We need to coordinate efforts and aim high to ensure such a campaign meets the needs of girls and women across the country, not just Cairo and the big cities.
In January 2012, I spent a few days with a fierce 13-year-old girl we'll call Yasmine, for a documentary film, on which I was a writer, called Girl Rising. The film paired nine female writers with girls each from their country of birth whose stories they recounted to illustrate the importance of girls' education.
Five months before we met, Yasmine had survived a rape. My arms were still broken and in casts when we met and I naively considered removing the casts and pretending I was OK in order to "protect her". I did not want her to think that 30 years down the line, at my age, she could still be subject to such violation.
She certainly did not need my protection and I'm glad I kept my casts on, because as soon as we met, she simply and forthrightly told me:

I'm going to open my heart to you and you're going to open your heart to me, OK?
She then went on to recount what happened to her. I admired her courage and her insistence on going to the police with her mother to report the rape. She was lucky she found an understanding police officer who took her complaint seriously.
When I told her what had happened to me, she was shocked that it was police who'd attacked me. "Have you reported what happened to you? Have you taken them to court?" she asked me.
Yasmine has not had a single day of formal education. She believed she deserved justice. We all do.

6/06/2013

#Egypt: Time to address violence against women in all its forms

Violence against women in Egypt gained national and international attention following a series of well-publicized sexual assaults on women in the vicinity of Tahrir Square earlier this year during protests commemorating the second anniversary of the “25 January Revolution”.
Unfortunately, these instances of violence against women were neither isolated nor unique.


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Whether in the public or private spheres, at the hands of state or non-state actors, violence against women in Egypt continues to go mostly unpunished.



Most cases go unreported for a plethora of reasons that stem from discriminatory gender stereotypes, the lack of women’s awareness of their rights, social and family pressures to remain silent, discriminatory legislation and women’s economic dependence. Even when women do surmount these obstacles and turn to state institutions for protection, justice and reparation, they are often confronted with dismissive or abusive officials who fail to refer cases to prosecution or trial, and lengthy and expensive court proceedings if they want to get divorced. Women who do manage to obtain a divorce then face the likelihood that court orders for child support or spousal maintenance will not be enforced.
In recent weeks during an Amnesty International mission to Egypt, I met several women and girls who were assaulted by their husbands and other relatives. Many suffer in silence for years while they are subjected to beatings, severe physical and verbal abuse and rape.
Om Ahmed (mother of Ahmed) told me that her husband began drinking and beating her after three years of marriage. She recounted daily abuse, punctuated with particularly vicious attacks. In one instance, her ex-husband smashed a full glass bottle on her face, leaving her without her front teeth. She stayed with him for another 17 years, partially, she explained, because she had nowhere else to go, and partially because she did not want to bring “shame” on her family. She never considered approaching the police, shrugging:
“The police don’t care, they don’t think it is a problem if a husband beats his wife. If you are a poor woman, they treat you like you don’t even exist and send you back home to him after hurling a few insults.”
Eventually, Om Ahmed’s husband kicked her out of their home, and for the next year she lived with her three children in an unfinished building in an informal settlement without running water and electricity. After two years in family court, she was awarded a meagre 150 Egyptian pounds (approx. US$21) per month for her daughter’s child support (her other two children don’t qualify for it as they over 18). Her own spousal maintenance decision is still pending.
Unlike Egyptian Muslim men who can divorce their wives unilaterally – and without giving any reason – women who wish to divorce their abusive husbands have to go to court and prove “fault” or that their marriage caused them “harm”. To prove physical harm, they have to present evidence, such as medical reports or eyewitness testimony, in proceedings that are drawn out and expensive. Many women’s rights lawyers and lawyers working in family court cases told me that this is a very difficult task for many women because they don’t always report the abuse to the police, and neighbours, who are usually the only witnesses other than household members, are reluctant to get involved.
I met one woman who had a particularly striking case. She told me:
“We [my ex-husband and I] only lived together for a few months, but it took me six years to get a divorce, and I am still in court to get my full [financial] rights back. Problems started soon after we got married, and he would beat me. His mother and sisters were also abusive… After a particularly bad beating, I went to the police station to lodge a complaint, but I withdrew it under pressure [from my husband who threatened me]. The case took so long because he had good lawyers who knew all the loopholes in the law.”
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In 2000, a second option for women seeking divorce was introduced, whereby women can obtain khul’ (no-fault divorce) from the courts without having to prove harm, but only if they forego their right to spousal maintenance and other financial rights. These court proceedings can still take up to a year and put women who are financially dependent on their husbands at a severe disadvantage. Despite this, several divorcees told Amnesty International that they opted for khul’ after waiting for a court fault-based divorce for years.
Twenty-four-year-old Om Mohamed (mother of Mohamed) told Amnesty International:
“We have been separated for over four years, but I am still neither married nor divorced… I was trying to prove all this time in court that he didn’t spend any money on me or our son, and that [my husband] used to beat me with whatever he could find under his hands, including belts and wires. Every time I go to court, the hearing is postponed, and I need this or that paper. I spent a lot of money on lawyers, and got nowhere… Eventually, I gave up and in January [2013] I raised a khul’ case.”


During my visit to Egypt in May and June this year, I also met women and girls who suffered violence and sexual abuse at the hands of other relatives. A 17-year-old girl told me that she ran away from home after a particularly brutal beating by her brother, who stabbed her in the nose with a kitchen knife, and burned her with a hot iron. Her scars corroborated her story. She was too scared to report the incident at the hospital where she sought treatment, as her brother had accompanied her and threatened to kill her if she spoke out. She spent months wandering the streets before being admitted into a private shelter for children.
Another woman who fled home after her brother sexually assaulted her found temporary protection in a shelter run by an association under the Ministry of Insurances and Social Affairs. She fled from the shelter after the administration insisted that she give them her brother’s contact details, to try to set up a “reconciliation meeting”.
There are only nine official shelters across Egypt, which are severely under-resourced and in need of capacity-building and training. Most survivors of domestic violence don’t even know they exist. The idea of shelters is not widely accepted, because of the stigma attached for women living outside their family or marital homes.
A staff member at a shelter recounted to me how, after an awareness-raising session in a village in Upper Egypt, a village leader got up and – in front of all those gathered – threatened to “stab to death” any woman who dared to leave an abusive household and run to a shelter. In another instance, the husband of a woman living in a shelter threatened to set it on fire.
In May, the authorities announced the establishment of a special female police unit to combat sexual violence and harassment. While this may be a welcome step, the Egyptian authorities need to do much more to prevent and punish gender-based violence and harassment, starting by unequivocally condemning it. They also need to amend legislation to ensure that survivors receive effective remedies. They must also show political will and tackle the culture of denial, inaction and, in some cases complicity, of law enforcement officials who not only fail to protect women from violence but also to investigate properly all allegations and bring perpetrators to trial.
Egyptian women were at the forefront of the popular protests that brought down Hosni Mubarak’s presidency some two and a half years ago. Today, they continue to challenge the prevailing social attitudes and gender biases that facilitate violence against women, in all its forms, to continue with impunity – while they continue their fight against marginalization and exclusion from the political processes shaping the country’s future.
Meanwhile, with the help of human and women’s rights organizations, seven women who were sexually assaulted around Tahrir Square lodged a complaint with the prosecution in March 2013 calling for accountability and redress. Investigations were started, but have since stalled.
One of the lawyers for the women was told by a prosecutor that the case was not that “important” compared to other cases on his desk. But the plaintiffs are not giving up. As one of them told Amnesty International: “Even as I was being abused, I felt that I will not stay quiet, I will not back down. They have to be punished.”

By Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Egypt researcher

أمة متدينة

نحن أمة متدينة .. ولكننا نحتل المركز الأول على العالم في البحث عن كلمة SEX في جوجل



نحن أمة متدينة .. ولكن نسبة التحرش الجنسي لدينا هي الأعلى على مستوى العالم

نحن أمة متدينة .. ولكننا نُكفِّر كل من يخالفنا الرأي متناسين حرمة التكفير في ديننا
...
نحن أمة متدينة .. ولكننا عندما نشتم بعضنا البعض نسب الرب ولا ننسى المحصنات

نحن أمة متدينة .. ولكننا لا نعتبر المرأة إلا أداة للمتعة والانجاب

نحن أمة متدينة .. ننظر للغرب على أنهم كفار ولكن في نفس الوقت نتسابق على أبواب السفارات للهجرة

نحن أمة متدينة.. ولكننا ننظر لأي امرأة تتزوج من شاب أصغر على أنها لعوب واستغلالية .

نحن أمة متدينة.. ولكننا نخشى العباد .. أكثر من خشيتنا لرب العباد !!!!

نحن أمة متدينة.. ولكننا لسنا أمة مؤمنة
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6/05/2013

A Shameful Neglect

 Afghanistan's iniquities are grotesque. At Kabul University last week, zealots -- all men -- protested a law that would abolish child marriage, forced marriage, marital rape, and the odious practice, called ba'ad, of giving girls away to settle offenses or debts. Meanwhile, in jails all over the country, 600 women, the highest number since the fall of the Taliban, await trial on charges of such moral transgressions as having been raped or running away from abusive homes. 




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It is tempting to wring our hands at such obscene bigotry, to pity Afghanistan's women and vilify its men. Instead, we must look squarely at our own complicity in the shameful circumstances of Afghan women, billions of international aid dollars and 12 years after U.S. warplanes first bombed their ill-starred land.
I have been traveling to Afghanistan since 2001, mostly to its hardscrabble hinterland, where the majority of Afghans live. Over the years, I have cooked rice and traded jewelry with Afghan women, cradled their anemic children, and fallen asleep under communal blankets in their cramped mud-brick homes. I have seen firsthand that the aid we give ostensibly to improve their lives almost never makes it to these women. Today, just as 12 years ago, most of them still have no clean drinking water, sanitation, or electricity; the nearest clinic is still often a half day's walk away, and the only readily available palliative is opium. Afghan mothers still watch their infants die at the highest rate in the world, mostly of waterborne diseases such as bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis, and typhoid.
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Instead of fixing women's lives, our humanitarian aid subsidizes Afghanistan's kleptocrats, erects miniature Versailles in Kabul and Dubai for the families of the elite, and buys the loyalty of sectarian warlords-turned-politicians, some of whom are implicated in sectarian war crimes that include rape. Yet, for the most part, the U.S. taxpayers look the other way as the country's amoral government steals or hands out as political kickbacks the money that was meant to help Afghan women -- all in the name of containing what we consider the greater evil, the Taliban insurgency. In other words, we have made a trade-off. We have joined a kind of a collective ba'ad, a political deal for which the Afghan women are the price.
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To be sure, a lot of well-meaning Westerners and courageous Afghans have worked very hard to improve women's conditions, and there has been some headway as far as women's rights are concerned. The number of girls signed up for school rose from just 5,000 before the U.S.-led invasion to 2.2 million. In Kabul and a handful of other cities, some women have swapped their polyester burqas for headscarves. Some even have taken jobs outside their homes. But here, too, progress has been uneven. A fifth of the girls enrolled in school never attend classes, and most of the rest drop out after fourth grade. Few Afghan parents prioritize education for their daughters because few Afghan women participate in the country's feudal economy, and because Afghan society, by and large, does not welcome education for girls or emancipation of women. To get an idea about what the general Afghan public thinks of emancipation, consider this: the post-2001 neologism "khanum free" -- "free woman," with the adjective transliterated from the English -- means "a loose woman," "a prostitute." In villages, women almost never appear barefaced in front of strangers.
Doffing their burqas is the least of these women's worry. Their real problem is the intangible and seemingly irremovable shroud of endless violence. It stunts infrastructure and perpetuates insecurity and fear. It deprives women of the basic human rights we take for granted: to have enough food and drinking water that doesn't fester with disease; to see all of their children live past the age of five. The absence of basic necessities and the violence that has concussed Afghanistan almost continuously since the beginning of recorded history are the main reasons the country has the fifth-lowest life expectancy in the world. The war Westerners often claim to be fighting in the name of Afghan women instead helps prolong their hardship -- with little or no compensation. And now, as the deadline for the international troop pullout approaches, the country is spinning toward a full-blown civil war. A handful of hardline men shouting slogans at Kabul University fades in comparison.
How to help Afghan women? The road to their wellbeing begins with food security, health care that works, and a government that protects them against sectarian violence. Right now, none of these exist. I wish I could offer an adequate solution to the tragic circumstances of the women of Afghanistan's back-of-beyond. There does not appear to be one. Hurling yet more aid dollars into a intemperate funnel that will never reach their villages is not the answer: there is little reason to believe that we can count that such funding would be spent on creating enough mobile clinics to pay regular visits to remote villages; build roads that would allow the women and their families easy access to market; facilitate sanitation projects that would curb major waterborne diseases. The impending troop withdrawal means that women's security will likely go from bad to worse.
Is it possible to ensure that some of the funding we now hand to Karzai and Co. -- an estimated $15.7 billion in 2010-2011, according to the CIA (and that's not counting the infamous ghost money) -- is distributed among the small non-profits that actually are trying to make life in Afghanistan livable, organizations that create mobile clinics to pay regular visits to remote villages, build roads that allow villagers easier access to market, facilitate sanitation projects that curb major waterborne diseases? This could be a start, but only if these organizations continue to work in Afghanistan after NATO troops leave. That, too, is in question now: this week an attack against the International Committee for Red Cross led the organization to suspend its operations in the country for the first time in almost 30 years. But wringing our hands at Afghan women's abysmal state and shaky social status is not a way out. It is a navel-gazing conversation that avoids looking squarely at our role in perpetuating the very dire condition we condemn

5/09/2013

Domestic violence in Saudi Arabia made headlines worldwide

 domestic violence in Saudi Arabia made headlines worldwide

Saudi Arabia, a country not exactly known for progressive attitudes toward women, has launched its first major campaign against domestic violence  — its latest effort to embrace, at least superficially, some women’s rights reforms.
The ads in the “No More Abuse” campaign show a woman in a dark veil with one black eye. The English version reads “some things can’t be covered.” The Arabic version, according to Foreign Policy‘s David Kenner, translates roughly as “the tip of the iceberg.” A Web site for the campaign includes a report on reducing domestic violence and emergency resources for victims.


Exact figures on domestic violence are hard to come by. The State Department’s most recent human rights report cites estimates that 16 to 50 percent of Saudi wives suffer some kind of spousal abuse. Saudi law does not criminalize domestic violence or spousal rape, and social repercussions can make reporting violence of any kind difficult. Both rape and domestic violence “may be seriously underreported,” according to the State Department report.


The Saudi government has begun to address the problem, at least in name. In 2008, a prime ministerial decree ordered the expansion of “social protection units,” its version of women’s shelters, in several large cities, and ordered the government to draft a national strategy to deal with domestic violence, according to the United Nations. Several royal foundations, including the King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue and the King Khalid Foundation, have also led education and awareness efforts.
None of this changes the fact, of course, that Saudi Arabia remains an often difficult place to be a woman. The World Economic Forum ranks the country 131st out of 135 for its record on women’s rights, citing a total lack of political and economic empowerment.
The country has a strong record on women’s health and education, however: On metrics such as enrollment in higher education, Saudi Arabia actually scores well above the global average.
Some of those well-educated women are leading the fight against domestic violence now. Maha Almuneef, a pediatrician, directs the National Family Safety Program, an anti-violence effort that has also benefited from the patronage of Saudi Arabia’s Princess Adela.
“Reporting violence and abuse should be compulsory, and there should be a witness protection program,” Adela said at a 2009 conference on ending the country’s domestic abus

5/08/2013

A Man Dresses As A Woman To Experience Cairo's Street Harassmen

A Man Dresses As A Woman To Experience Cairo's Street Harassmen

 

4/11/2013

الجنس في مجتمعنا " الشرقي " و نظرة الناس المزدوجة ليه


الجنس في مجتمعنا " الشرقي " و نظرة الناس المزدوجة ليه

الجنس هو أقصى درجة من ممارسة الحب بين الاحباء فيعتبره أغلب الرجال شيئا عظيما

و في نفس الوقت إذا أراد أحدهم إهانة شخص ما وصفه بألفاظ جنسية هو أو أمه أو زوجته و كأن الفعل الجنسي هنا إهانة أو ازدراء لا معنى عظيم للحب

إذا وجد الرجل في شريكته درجة ما من المعرفة الجنسية أو التجاوب الجنسي اعتبرها " شمال " و شك في أخلاقها

و إن وجد فيها جهلا أو عدم تجاوب اعتبرها " باردة " و غير مؤهلة لممارسة الحب معه ..

البنت تربى طول عمرها إن عيب تكلم الولاد أو تختلط بيهم .. الرجال جميعا أشرار و في نفس الوقت نطلب منها مرة واحدة أن تتعرى و تمارس الجنس مع زوجها الذي ربما لم تعرفه بالقدر الكافي و ربما يختلط لديها مفهوم الفضيلة فيخلق لديها مفهوم سلبي عن الجنس و مقاومة لا إرادية حتى مع زوجها


هي لا تعرف هل الجنس عيبا أو حراما أو مصدرا للسعادة

هي لا تعرف هل جسدها مصدر للنشوة أو الازدراء

هذه الازدواجية في مفهوم الرجال عن الجنس تجعل المرأة في حيرة في التعامل مع هذه الغريزة الراقية

4/09/2013

Brides Bought, Sold and Resold







With millions more men than women in India,  many wonder about the state of bachelorhood in IndiaOffering.  Jaisalmer.

There have been arguments that this “shortage” of women [as if women are a commercial resource] would force the ‘gender’ ratio to fix itself! But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

The gender ratio keeps plummeting, and you don’t have communities going into panic saying “We need to find a woman for sex and reproduction!!”   Why is this economic/ “women as commodity” theory not working out the way it was assumed it would?


Perhaps because Indian men indeed view women as “commodity!”  And since there is a shortage of “female commodity” the users have found other methods of procuring women! They are now BUYING, SELLING, AND RECYCLING! It is another response to “commodity shortage”, and is essentially the Indian version of DOMESTIC SEX-TRAFFICKING.   This is a practice in India that is as old as female gendercide, and there are reports that it existed even as early as the 1900s.  Only now, with plummeting gender ratios, the practice is out in the open and increasing rapidly.  It is often referred to as ‘BRIDE-TRAFFICKING.’



Much of this sex-trafficking is in the guise of ‘marriage.’   Each family, community and people involved call it a ‘marriage.’  The girl or woman is sold as a ‘bride’ to a man.  She may be married to one man in a family but is used for sex and reproduction by the other men within the same family.  She is then re-sold again as a ‘bride’ to another family.  Some women are sold and resold up to four times, and there are indications that there are thousands of such ‘brides’ being trafficked in the name of ‘marriage.’ Most of these girls are 15 years or younger and often kidnapped and sold into “bride-trafficking”.

Government officials explain their lack of action against this form of sex-trafficking with, “”If they are legally wedded, what can we do.”

However, from many rural areas, families will often sell their daughters to a commercial “agent” for as little as U.K. £15

There is one report of a man beheading his “bought” wife for refusing to sleep with his brothers.

Munni who was forced to have sex with her husbands brothers, has had three sons from them.  It is interesting that all her children are boys, no girls.   It is believed that there may be many more women like Munni in the region. Here is Munni’s story in her wordsBride of India:

“My husband and his parents

said I had to share myself with his brothers…

They took me whenever they wanted – day or night.

When I resisted, they beat me with

anything at hand…Sometimes they threw me

out and made me sleep outside or they poured kerosene over

me and burned me.”



ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHERS: Claire Pismont and Delphines are members of The 50 Million Missing Campaign’s Photographers Group on Flickr.   supported by more than 2400 photographers from around the world.   To see more of each of their works, please click on the pictures.





how horrible !!!!! Proud Muslims raping Coptic Christians in #Egypt in the daytime

how horrible !!!!! Proud Muslims raping Coptic Christians in in the daytime




Proud Muslims raping Coptic Christians in Egypt in the daytime from semo on Vimeo.