There have been so many years when this prize has gone to men responsible for horrendous acts of war and violence while so many brave women throughout the world work to end war and achieve peace even as bullets fly around them and they themselves are victims of horrendous personal violence such as rape. It is time for the Nobel Peace Prize to only be given to those who wage peace, not those who use it as a hollow excuse for war.
As we celebrate this prize, let us also celebrate and honor the work of women throughout the world who work for peace and give them the recognition they also deserve.
You know the feeling–it’s Monday afternoon and already you’re tired, stressed out and the weekend is so four days away. Maybe clicking on the links to these stories about very inspiring women will help:
Well, I found out the hard way about what things worked to get corporations, agencies, and politicians attention. In Texas and especially the isolated rural place I was from, it certainly wasn’t working ‘inside the box’. I could have worked inside the box for the rest of my days, dotting every i and crossing every t and what i would have gained was a couple parts per million on chlorine or vinyl chloride. Nothing in fact. So, at the risk of losing my bay and an entire culture where I grew up, I took a risk—and did a hunger strike. That hunger strike worked because it was using a different kind of energy–i think it was heart energy, as gandhi talks about–and also it was something the corporations could not control. And it worked. i think we citizens of this globe need to get eyeball to eyeball with corporate ceo’s and tell them we will take NO MORE.
In her most recent protest, Gump and other anti-nuclear protesters trespassed July 5 at the Y-12 National Security Complex, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney William Killian’s office.
Jean will turn 84 in prison this week. You can send her a card to this address:
Jean Gump
Blount County Adult Detention Center
920 E. Lamar Alexander Parkway
Maryville, TN 37804-5002
Forgive my for not standing up and clapping, but pledging support now for Aung San Suu Kyi isn’t all that impressive. Imagine support, real support, during all the years she was imprisoned. We could have, should have done more, much more if we truly cared about human rights instead of worrying about our relationship with the Myanmar regime. In this case, a phone call is an inadequate measure of support.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton telephoned Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday, marking the first U.S. Cabinet-level conversation with the Nobel Peace laureate in more than 15 years, according to U.S. officials and Burma experts…
…Clinton wrote to Suu Kyi after the Burmese leader was released from house arrest in November and followed up with Wednesday’s call, in which she “pledged to support [Suu Kyi] in her efforts to strengthen civil society and democracy in Burma.”
This comment at the end of the article by Tom Malinowski, director of Human Rights Watch’s Washington office has it right:
“I’m very glad that Secretary Clinton reached out to Aung San Suu Kyi. It’s a good way of showing American solidarity with her. But ultimately, what Suu Kyi needs from the U.S. is action.”
Funding social justice work is never easy. You know this because you probably get umpteen requests in your inbox every day from all manner of worthy organizations–stop the war, clean up pollution, feed children. It is endless and there is no way to give to everything, you have to make choices and they aren’t easy ones. But perhaps the hardest to fund is work that enables women’s lives and work.
The reasons aren’t hard to understand. You would think that while maybe these issues wouldn’t be at the top of the radar screen for men (although they should), at least women would be all over this, after all it is our own lives we are talking about. But while many women are very, very generous, the bottom line is that women not only tend to have less to give, they also tend to prioritize everything but their own lives, Add to that that when women’s concerns come up within the social justice framework, it is all too common for them to be framed as something to be taken care of after we worry about the ‘big’ issues.
That is a paradigm that Women Moving Millions, “a partnership of visionary donors and the Women’s Funding Network,” is working to change.
The Women Moving Millions campaign aims to inspire gifts of a million dollars and above in support of women’s funds across the globe.
The campaign is a partnership of visionary donors and Women’s Funding Network, a global movement of 150 women’s and girls’ funds that invest in women-led solutions to critical social issues like poverty and global security.
In May 2009, Women Moving Millions announced that more than $181 million has been raised through partnerships between 101 donors and 41 women’s funds! This groundbreaking achievement exceeds the original goal of raising $150 million!
This massive infusion of investment will be a force for lasting change in the life chances and opportunities of women and girls around the globe, with major reverberations for entire communities and countries. Together, women’s funds will create lasting advances in areas from community leadership and education to poverty eradication and healthcare access. Learn more about the impact of women’s funds.
The donors and founding partners are now gearing up to expand the power and reach of Women Moving Millions with new fundraising initiatives aimed at expanding the reach of the campaign. These include welcoming donor circles and men into the growing movement of trailblazers committed to women-led social change.
To learn more about this exciting and important campaign, click here. Of course all of us aren’t millionaires. In fact, most of us aren’t. But at every economic level, when you consider giving, please consider focusing your giving on efforts that enable the work and voices of women and girls. The payoff for all of us will be enormous.
And yes, the Feminist Peace Network gratefully accepts donations of any size.
While we continue to pour billions down the drain fighting ‘terrorism’ and the ‘enemy’, we continue to harm the women of Afghanistan by fomenting a continuing state of militarism with only lip service and a pittance of funding given to help them to fight the very real terrorism of violence against women. Via RAWA:
As the world marks International Women’s Day, ambivalence, impunity, weak law enforcement and corruption continue to undermine women’s rights in Afghanistan, despite a July 2009 law banning violence against women, rights activists say.
(WARNING–VERY Disturbing film)
A recent case of the public beating of a woman for alleged elopement – also shown on private TV stations in Kabul – highlights the issue.
In January domestic violence forced two young women to flee their homes in Oshaan village, Dolaina District, Ghor Province, southwestern Afghanistan. A week later they were arrested in neighbouring Herat Province and sent back to Oshaan, according to the governor of Ghor, Mohammad Iqbal Munib.
“One woman was beaten in public for the elopement and the second was reportedly confined in a sack with a cat,” Munib told IRIN.
According to the governor, the illegal capture of the women was orchestrated by Fazul Ahad who leads an illegal armed militia group in Dolaina District. Locals say Ahad, a powerful figure who backed President Hamid Karzai in the August 2009 elections, has been running Oshaan as his personal fiefdom.
“When the roads reopen to Dolaina [closed by snow] we will send a team to investigate,” said the governor, adding that he was concerned that arresting Ahad could cause instability. “We have asked the authorities in Kabul for support and guidance.”
IRIN was unable to contact Fazul Ahad and verify the charges.
Self-immolation in Afghanistan
Domestic violence, forced marriage and lack of access to justice force some Afghan women to commit self-immolation and suicide.
“I poured fuel over my body and set myself ablaze because I was regularly beaten up and insulted by my husband and in-laws,” Zarmina, 28, told IRIN. She, along with over a dozen other women with self-inflicted burns, is in Herat’s burns hospital.
Over 90 self-immolation cases have been registered at the hospital in the past 11 months; 55 women had died, doctors said.
“People call it the `hospital of cries’ as patients here cry out loudly in pain,” Arif Jalali, head of the hospital, told IRIN.
Beneath the cries lie cases of domestic violence and/or disappointment with the justice system.
“Self-immolation proves that the justice system for female victims is failing,” said Movidul-Haq Mowidi, a human rights activist in Herat.
Barriers to justice
Despite laws prohibiting gender violence and upholding women’s rights, widespread gender discrimination, fear of abuse, corruption and other challenges are undermining the judicial system, experts say.
“Women are denied their most fundamental human rights and risk further violence in the course of seeking justice for crimes perpetrated against them,” stated a report by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan on the situation of Afghan women in July 2009.
Orzala Ashraf, a women’s rights activist in Kabul, blames the government: “Laws are clear about crimes but we see big criminals thriving and being nurtured by the state for illicit political gains,” she told IRIN, pointing to the government’s alleged failure to address human rights violations committed over the past three decades of conflict.
“Because no one is put on trial for his crimes, a criminal culture is being promoted: violators have no fear of the law, prosecution and a meaningful penalty,” said Ashraf.
Deep-seated ambivalence to women’s rights is evident from a law signed off by President Hamid Karzai in early 2009: The Shia Personal Status Law, dubbed a ‘rape legalizing law’, was amended after strong domestic and international pressure.
“The first version [of the law] was totally intolerable,” said Najia Zewari, a women’s rights expert with the UN Fund for Women (UNIFEM). “Despite positive changes in the final version, there are articles that still need to be discussed and reviewed further,” she said.
Another example of this ambivalence is the case of the men who threw acid in the faces of 15 female students in Kandahar city in November 2008: Karzai publicly vowed they would be “severely punished” but court officials in Kandahar and Kabul have said they are unaware of the case and do not know where the alleged perpetrators are.
“Judges say the men were wrongly accused and forced to confess,” Ranna Tarina, head of Kandahar women’s affairs department, told IRIN.
Violence database
Over the past two years more than 1,900 cases of violence against women in 26 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces – from verbal abuse to physical violence – have been recorded in a database run by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and UNIFEM.
One recorded case is the murder, by her in-laws in Parwan Province north of Kabul, of a young woman who had refused to live with her abusive husband. Another is the regular physical and mental torture meted out to a woman by her husband and mother in-law in Kabul.
“The database does not give a perfect picture but it helps to highlight some of the common miseries of Afghan women,” UNIFEM’s Najia Zewari told IRIN.
UNIFEM is keen to make the database publicly available on the internet.
“Violence against women is not a new phenomenon in Afghanistan but it is good to see crimes do not remain confined to a home and a village,” said activist Orzala Ashraf.
