Kosovar women fight patriarchy - 20 years after the war

The art installation Thinking Of You, by the Kosovan-born, London-based artist Alketa Mrripa-Xhafa, in Pristina, Kosova – 2015. Photograph: Hazir Reka/Reuters

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This month, 20 years ago, the 1988-89 Kosovo war ended. It was a particularly brutal conflict that led to allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity, and the controversial involvement and bombings from NATO. During that war, 90 per cent of the population was displaced and some 20,000 women and girls were systematically raped - a crime that was used as a weapon of "ethnic cleansing."

In this predominantly traditional ethnic Albanian country, the rape’s stigma is so strong that many women have never talked about what happened to them during the war and never sought help. Some of their husbands have left them, unable to endure the shame.

Two decades later and despite years of international supervision that was supposed to bring gender equality, rates of sexual assault and domestic violence remain worryingly high. In a 2015 survey, 68% of women reported that they had suffered from domestic violence at one point in their lives.

In Europe’s newest country (which declared independence from Serbia in 2008), women struggle every day for social and economic equality in a rigid patriarchal society where men have the final say in all family matters and women are left with very limited access to education, health, property, protection and job opportunities. More than three quarters of women don’t have jobs - Kosovar women have the lowest employment rates and education levels in all Europe. Many have been widowed during the war and placed in the role of primary provider for their families, but without access to skills and resources, they are unable to make ends meet.

But many are fighting back.  Some have formed associations that give women the tools and resources they need to rebuild their lives and their communities, while others have run for office.  Others yet have launched small business, like Zarie Malsiu, from Kacanik municipality, a mother of five who married young and dropped out of school, like many young women at that time. After the war, she enrolled in a training for social and economic empowerment run by local NGO Kosova – Women for Women. She has formed her own agriculture association, collecting and selling medicinal and aromatic herbs and forest fruits. Her organization now counts 100 women. Kosova – Women for Women, a local independent organization affiliated to Women for Women International, has trained over 33,000 women in over 30 communities across the country, in life and vocational skills and rights awareness.

Women have also fought for justice and campaigned for women’s rights.

Among them is the amazing Dr Feride Rushiti, a physician who is the executive director of the Kosovo Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims in Pristina. Through almost two decades of research and advocacy, she has secured access to healthcare and justice for civilian victims of war. In 2017, her campaigning work led to a landmark government decision to fund pensions for Kosovo’s victims of wartime sexual violence. And now, after many years of silence, hundreds of survivors have started to come forward.

Kosovar women’s braided stories show the enormous challenges women still face in the country, but also how they have managed to become self sufficient and obtain recognition and reparation - and the impact it has on themselves, their families, communities and the next generations.

I wanted to report this story with Arben Llapashtica, a brilliant photographer based in Pristina, as well as a cameraman and documentary filmmaker, but sadly we couldn’t get a commission. If you know a publication that might be interested, please let us know.

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Iran - human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh sentenced to 33 years in prison.

Prominent Iranian human rights lawyer and women’s rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh has been sentenced to a shocking 33 years in prison and 148 lashes.

The sentence, reported on her husband Reza Khandan’s Facebook page, brings her total sentence after two grossly unfair trials, to 38 years in prison. In September 2016, she was sentenced in her absence to five years in prison in a separate case. 

The latest sentence is the harshest sentence Amnesty has documented against a human rights defender in Iran in recent years, suggesting that the authorities are stepping up their repression.

Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director, said: “It is absolutely shocking that Nasrin Sotoudeh is facing nearly four decades in jail and 148 lashes for her peaceful human rights work, including her defence of women protesting against Iran’s degrading forced hijab (veiling) laws.” 

Sotoudeh was recently informed by the office for the implementation of sentences in Tehran’s Evin prison where she is jailed, that she had been convicted on seven charges and sentenced to 33 years in prison and 148 lashes. The charges, which are in response to her peaceful human rights work, include “inciting corruption and prostitution”, “openly committing a sinful act by ... appearing in public without a hijab” and “disrupting public order”. 

Meanwhile, in a confusing development, earlier today the Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Mohammad Moghiseh told journalists that Sotoudeh has been sentenced to seven years in prison: five years for “gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security” and two years for “insulting the Supreme Leader”. 

This report did not provide further details or clarify whether the judge was referring to a separate case.

 “Nasrin Sotoudeh must be released immediately and unconditionally and this obscene sentence quashed without delay,” Luther said. 

 “Governments with influence over Iran should use their power to push for Nasrin Sotoudeh’s release. The international community, notably the European Union, which has an ongoing dialogue with Iran, must take a strong public stand against this disgraceful conviction and urgently intervene to ensure that she is released immediately and unconditionally.” 

Nasrin Sotoudeh’s sentence made me think of an interview I recently did for Lacuna Magazine with another Nasrin, also a human rights and women’s rights defender. 

Writer, artist and human rights campaigner Nasrin Parvaz was arrested at the age of 23 by the regime’s secret police after having been betrayed by a comrade. She was tortured and sentenced to death, but her death sentence was commuted to 10 years in prison.

She spent eight years in the same Iranian prison where Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is now being held, and has used the experience as inspiration for a novel and a book of memoirs. Speaking in London, Parvaz told me there are echos of Nazanin’s story in prisons across Iran, where rights defenders have been subjected to rape, routine humiliation, torture and execution. 

“The Islamic regime is a master of concealing and deception. When the UN human rights inspectors came to visit Evin prison in 1990, they built a new wall across our corridor to conceal us. We never met the inspectors. While president [Hassan] Rouhani [elected in 2013] publicly promised reforms, behind closed doors, there are still too many prisoners dying in detention.

“Prisons are still full of men and women fighting for civil rights. Questioning how and why the regime operates is still dangerous.”

How terribly true…

You can read her story of activism and time in Iran’s prisons in Lacuna Magazine here.

Meet Sakena Yacoobi – Afghanistan’s mother of education

Sakena Yacoobi in Sayabad learning centre in Afghanistan/  © courtesy of WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education) 

 

 

 

 

I wanted to follow Sakena Yacoobi to remote communities in Afghanistan to see how she teaches women and children how to think for themselves and stand up for their rights.  But here I was at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel in London on a rainy day. 

Yacoobi is one of my heroes: someone who makes a difference, who makes the world a better place. She is called “Afghanistan’s mother of education” and for more than two decades she has been transforming lives through community-based education. 

I was so excited to meet her, but she was jet-lagged and drained – a small figure a bit hunched, wrapped in black, with a slow, tired voice. But when she started talking about education, she grew taller, her voice stronger, her eyes shone and her whole being was infused with passion.

Yacoobi was born in Herat, Afghanistan, and could have led a comfortable life in the US where she had studied, then settled as a university professor.  But when Russia invaded Afghanistan, she decided to go to Pakistan where many Afghans had sought refuge and set up schools in refugee camps.  She then moved back to Afghanistan where she opened schools for girls in defiance of the Taliban who had banned education for girls and set strict laws dictating what children could learn.   She wanted to “counteract ignorance” and give thousands of girls, women and unprivileged children a  better chance in life. 

She created the Afghanistan Institute of Learning (AIL) in 1995 and her organization now runs 44 learning centers for women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as four clinics, a hospital, an orphanage, a program for street children and a radio station that brings education to isolated regions.  

She says she has dedicated her life to promoting education because it is the only way to bring peace. “Conflict is the result of ignorance. International governments spend billions of dollars on weapons – just think what that money could do if it went towards education.”

You can read my interview with Yacoobi in New Internationalist here.

Trouble in Paradise: Solomon Islands’ traditions foster inequality

Solomon Islands/ credit: olli0815 /bigstock.com

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Solomon Islands, the string of paradise-looking green islands tucked away in the South Pacific, is a place of exotic beauty where life flows at a gentle pace.  But it also a country with one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world.  And the violence is widely accepted as "the way things are".

A new report by the Equal Rights Trust shows that strong traditions, such as Kastom (Pijin for custom) and Wantok ('one talk') reinforce clan ties, but also emphasise differences and foster discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, gender, disability and sexual orientation.

In particular, the report highlights widespread discrimination against women, which is directly connected to Kastom - in this case, the patriarchal attitudes and gender stereotypes typified by the Bigman culture, whereby communities look to a strong male figure to provide leadership and consider women as inferior to men.

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Members of Solomon Islands YWCA march during International Women’s Day in Honiara by DFAT/Credit:Jeremy Miller

“We found that women are effectively second-class citizens in Solomon Islands; they are invisible in all areas of politics and government and do not participate equally with men in any area of life. Violence against women is alarmingly widespread and widely accepted by both men and women,” said Executive Director of the Equal Rights Trust, Dr Dimitrina Petrova.

Statistics highlighted in the report are startling: more than half of all women experienced sexual violence by an intimate partner and 64% of women between 15 and 49 suffered violence at home.

During a focus group discussion for the report, one woman summarised male attitudes towards women in these terms: “You women are here on earth to give birth and work for us men, and we are your bosses; so do as we say.”

In travel guides, the former British protectorate south-east of Papua New Guinea is presented as a friendly melting pot of cultures and traditions, but the report found serious discrimination between those of different Wantok, community groups based on shared linguistic and cultural heritage.  “Our research found compelling evidence of concern amongst Solomon Islanders that those in positions of power abuse their authority and make corrupt decisions in favour of their Wantok group,” says Petrova.

In addition, the report found that people with disabilities are perceived as “cursed” and denied equality of participation in education, employment and healthcare. And lesbian, gay and bisexual persons are subject to severe social stigma.

The report argues that if Solomon Islands is to move on from the civil unrest, which brought the country to the brink of collapse between 1998 and 2003, its people must stand up and fight traditions which exacerbate difference on the basis of ethnicity, gender, disability and sexual orientation. 

Women refugees face assault, exploitation and sexual harassment journeying through Europe

These women and girls have fled war in Syria and Iraq, walked for days across  hostile terrains, put their lives in the hands of ruthless traffickers, crossed seas on flimsy dinghies and finally made it to Europe.  Safe at last? No, these women and girls who have fled some of the world’s most dangerous areas, faced assault, exploitation and sexual harassment at every stage of their entire journey, including on European soil, according to a new report by Amnesty International released this week.

Amnesty interviewed 40 refugee women and girls in Germany and Norway last month. They had travelled from Turkey to Greece and then across the Balkans. All the women, who had endured the horror of war in their countries, said they felt threatened and unsafe during the journey. Many reported that in almost all of the countries they passed through, they experienced physical abuse and financial exploitation, being groped or pressured to have sex by smugglers, security staff or other refugees. 

“Nobody should have to take these dangerous routes in the first place. The best way to avoid abuses and exploitation by smugglers is for European governments to allow safe and legal routes from the outset. For those who have no other choice, it is completely unacceptable that their passage across Europe exposes them to further humiliation, uncertainty and insecurity, says Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director Tirana Hassan said:

Women and girls travelling alone and those accompanied only by their children felt particularly under threat in transit areas and camps in Hungary, Croatia and Greece, where they were forced to sleep alongside hundreds of refugee men, according to the report. In some instances women left the designated areas to sleep in the open on the beach because they felt safer there. 

Women also reported having to use the same bathroom and shower facilities as men. One woman told Amnesty that in a reception center in Germany, some refugee men would watch women as they went to the bathroom. Some women took extreme measures such as not eating or drinking to avoid having to go to the toilet where they felt unsafe. 

It is shameful that governments and aid agencies cannot give basic protection to these women and girls who have risked everything to find safety in Europe. It seems extraordinary that they cannot provide at the very least single-sex toilets and safe sleeping areas.  

Gallery Olympe de Gouges in Paris honours women's rights pioneer

Olympe de Gouges Gallery/credit: Veronique Mistiaen

“DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN AND THE FEMALE CITIZEN” 

These red letters  (in French) on a large poster in the window of the new art gallery rue de l’Odéon in Paris 6^th stopped me in my tracks.

I read the poster: it was about an avant-garde woman who cherished freedom and opposed discrimination, violence and oppression in all its forms.  And she wrote the remarkable “Declaration of the rights of woman and the female citizen” in 1791. Her name was Olympe de Gouges.   I am ashamed to say that I didn’t know her.

Intrigued, I stepped inside. The lovely gallery’s manager, Victoria Otero, told me that Olympe de Gouges was a political activist and one of France’s first feminists. Although she was born in a modest family, she found her political voice by writing an astonishing number of pamphlets and posters that she freely disseminated around Paris.  Her pamphlets promoted bold, new ideas, such a total equality between sexes, female emancipation and abolition of the death penalty and slavery.  Ahead of her time, she was guillotined for her ideas in 1793.

The Olympe de Gouges gallery was conceived by a French entrepreneur whose offices were in the old building where Olympe de Gouges lived - on Servandoni street near St Sulpice Church, in the heart of the historic 6^th arrondissement. To pay tribute to her,  he not only placed a commemorative plaque on the façade of his building, but decided to open an art gallery a few steps away. 

Olympe de Gouges's house/credit: Veronique Mistiaen

New in the golden triangle of Parisian galleries, the gallery Olympe de Gouges wants to “reinstate Olympe de Gouges,  talk about this woman too avant-garde for her time and pay tribute to her strength and convictions,” says Otero.

The gallery features artists who, like Olympe de Gouges, have a critical view on our contemporary world, fight against all forms of inequality and are not afraid to take risks.  As the art market tends to favour men, they also want to provide a space for women artists.  Exhibitions change monthly, which allows the gallery to showcase a wide variety of artists from all over the world.

Until November 11, the gallery featured the Sino-Irish artist Mia Funk. One of her most famous – and controversial – piece, "An Audience with the Queen" (Price Thames and Hudson 2010),  shows the British monarch and Lucian Freud seated naked on a couch sipping tea and eating Pot Noodles.  The work was meant to be exhibited in Dublin for the Queen’s first state visit, but  had to be quickly taken down following protests.

Their November exhibition will focus on immigration with Marc Bellini, a French photographer artist of Corsican origin, who through herbarium photograms traces the routes of migrants to Europe.

Morocco - First female Muslim leaders lead quiet revolution

 

This is a little gem I’ve found on the Frontline Club website: Casablanca Calling, a documentary about women leading a quiet revolution in Morocco. I love this story because it shows strong women taking control and making changes in their own terms. They are neither following Western dreams nor accepting their country's repressive views of Islam.  It reminds me of the Queen Mothers of Ghana, who are reinventing their traditional roles to improve the lives of girls and women in their communities. I am going to Ghana in June with filmmaker Dominique Chadwick to report on that story.

Casablanca Calling, by documentary filmmaker Rosa Rogers and triple BAFTA winning producer Hilary Durman takes us into the heart of this quiet social revolution in Morocco through the lives of the women at its forefront.  It is  the story of a society in transition and a mission to educate a nation.

In a country where 60% of women have never been to school, a new generation of women have started working as official Muslim leaders or Morchidat.  The Morchidat, the world’s first female Muslim leaders, are setting out to change their country: empowering women through the teachings of Islam and challenging the attitudes which breed extremism. 

They work in some of the poorest communities in Morocco to separate the true teachings of Islam from some of the prejudices emanating from a largely conservative culture. They work to support education for girls and campaign against early marriages.  And they encourage young people to build a more progressive Morocco, as opposed to pursuing the agenda that many young people in the country do, which is aspiring to a life in the West.

Through personal stories, family dramas and everyday lives, Casablanca Calling gives a unique perspective on women’s lives in contemporary Morocco. It tells the story of committed people, social change and a sacred mission.

The film will be presented at theFrontline Club on Friday 30 January 2015 at 7:00 PM. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Rosa Rogers and producer Hilary Durman.

International Women's Day: Equal pay? Wait 100 years or become a man

 

To protest against unequal pay, Annelie Nordström, President of Sweden’s largest trade union Kommunal, temporarily became a man 

To celebrate International Women’s Day today, I wanted to look at positive examples of gender equality, so I looked at Scandinavian countries – and Sweden in particular, which is considered one of the most equal countries in the world.

I was surprised to find out that even there, the gap between men's and women’s salaries has hardly changed at all for the past thirty years. At the current pace, it will take more than a century to reach equal pay. 

To protest against this, Annelie Nordström, President of Sweden’s largest trade union Kommunal, temporarily became a man.  She wanted to highlight the absurd fact that the easiest way for a woman to get a raise is to become a man.  She is asking women across the globe to join her in the campaign Be a Man. The international initiative aims to become the world’s largest protest against unequal pay, starting today, on The International Women’s Day (March 8^th).



You can watch a video of her transformation here.

When it comes to wages, Sweden is among the world’s most equal countries. According to The Global Gender Gap Report, published by the World Economic Forum, the country is placed fourth, globally.  However, Swedish women earn only 82 % of what the nation’s men do.  Measured in time, men only need to work until 3:52 PM, whilst a woman has to work until 5 PM to earn the same amount. At the current pace, it will take more than a century before men and women earn the same amount of money for the same work.

 ”It’s sad that Sweden is considered to be a global example of equal pay, given how far we have left to go,” says Nordström.

 

And if that is the situation in equal Sweden, how much further women in less equal countries will have to go…
 

By using either a smartphone app or visiting the Be a Man website,  women from around the globe can create a male version of any photo of themselves. The image is then shared in social media on The International Women’s Day, creating the largest protest against inequality ever.


Come on, have a go!

Women's Rights in the Arab World - Egypt worst country for women

Women were supposed to be one of the prime beneficiaries of the Arab Spring, but they have instead been some of the biggest losers, as the revolts have brought conflict, instability, displacement and a rise in Islamist groups in many parts of the region, according to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Thomson Reuters Foundation's third annual poll of gender experts gives a snapshot of the state of women's rights in Arab states three years after the Arab Spring and as Syria's conflict threatens further regional upheaval. Surprisingly, Egypt tops the list of 22 Arab states as the worst country for women. Yes,  Egypt!  Not Syria, Yemen, Somalia or Saudi Arabia as you might have expected, but Egypt. The country achieved such dismal position in the poll because of

sexual harassment, high rates of female genital cutting and a surge in violence and Islamist feeling after the revolution toppled long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

"We removed the Mubarak from our presidential palace but we still have to remove the Mubarak who lives in our minds and in our bedrooms," Egyptian columnist Mona Eltahawy says in an article about the poll by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"As the miserable poll results show, we women need a double revolution, one against the various dictators who've ruined our countries and the other against a toxic mix of culture and religion that ruin our lives as women."

Iraq ranked second-worst after Egypt, followed by Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen. Comoros, where women hold 20 percent of ministerial positions and where wives generally keep land or the home after divorce, came out on top, followed by Oman, Kuwait, Jordan and Qatar.

The poll by Thomson Reuters' philanthropic arm surveyed 336 gender experts in August and September in 21 Arab League states and Syria, which was a founding member of the Arab League but was suspended in 2011.

The poll assessed violence against women, reproductive rights, treatment of women within the family, their integration into society and attitudes towards a woman’s role in politics and the economy.

Visit this page for full coverage of the poll and for more information, read this great article by RTF's Tim Large.

Women Farmers Grow Food and Peace

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In periods of affluence, most people get along fine – even when they are from different ethnic or religious backgrounds, but when resources are scarce, former friends and neighbours often turn into foes. We have seen this too many times throughout history. Across the world, food insecurity fuels conflict and in turn, conflict fuels food insecurity, creating a vicious circle.  For example, when in 1994, genocide engulfed Rwanda, this human catastrophe was fuelled by ethnic hatred, but economic crisis, poverty and hunger also played their part.

This vicious circle is found around the world and women can play a vital role in breaking it. One in seven of the world's population is malnourished. The UN Food Agency estimates that by giving equal rights to women farmers – meaning giving them the same access as men to productive resources such as land and credit – 100 to 150 million people would be lifted out of hunger.

The charity, Women for Women International, which aids women who have lived through wars around the world, has launched an innovative programme, helping women to put food on the table, earn an income and move from victim to productive member of society.  The Commercial Integrated Farming Initiative (CIFI) programme trains women in organic farming techniques and food production in Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan and Afghanistan.

To find out more or sponsor a woman, click here and watch this video:

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