B-Naam

Here are 10 of the worst

Here are 10 of the worst countries in the world to be a woman today:
• Afghanistan: The average Afghan girl will live to only 45 – one year less than an Afghan male. After three decades of war and religion-based repression, an overwhelming number of women are illiterate. More than half of all brides are under 16, and one woman dies in childbirth every half hour. Domestic violence is so common that 87 per cent of women admit to experiencing it. But more than one million widows are on the streets, often forced into prostitution. Afghanistan is the only country in which the female suicide rate is higher than that of males...
• Iraq: The U.S.-led invasion to "liberate" Iraq from Saddam Hussein has imprisoned women in an inferno of sectarian violence that targets women and girls. The literacy rate, once the highest in the Arab world, is now among the lowest as families fear risking kidnapping and rape by sending girls to school. Women who once went out to work stay home. Meanwhile, more than 1 million women have been displaced from their homes, and millions more are unable to earn enough to eat."
//www.thestar.com/News/World/article/326354

Women of Iran, we do not forget you!

Women’s Rights

To all Iranian women engaged in the fight for equality,

On International Women’s Day, 8 March, as we reaffirm that women’s rights are human rights, on behalf of FIDH and its member organizations around the world, I wish to express our solidarity with you, the women of Iran who continue your daily fight for equality and dignity.
Whilst repression against civil society movements generally has increased over the past years in Iran, we are aware that those fighting for women’s rights are a particular target of this repression. Today we wish to reaffirm our support for the courageous combat that the women of Iran are leading.
We express our strongest support and admiration for the initiative you launched over a year and half ago: the Campaign for Equality, known worldwide as the "One Million Signatures Campaign"aimed at the abolition of discriminatory laws and raising general awareness on women’s rights. Your movement is an example to all of us, for its peaceful action, its legitimate goals and its wide reach. We admire your persistence despite the risks, repression and the censure that you are undergoing. By uniting women and men, from diverse social backgrounds, you are succeeding in highlighting that women’s rights concern all of us and that progress can only result from a collective movement.
We express our solidarity with all the women who, on the basis of their engagement in this campaign, have been arbitrarily arrested, detained, and convicted, on the basis that defending women’s rights in Iran is today considered as a threat to State security. We express our particular support for Ronak Safarzadeh and Hana Abdi, arrested in October and November 2007 and arbitrarily detained since then, without any charge nor trial, for the mere peaceful exercise of their rights.
In the face of legislation denying women their most basic rights, you represent hope for all women in Iran. The hope that one day, women in Iran will not have to fear daily arbitrariness and torture for having looked for a decent future. Your commitment is not forgotten. You are not forgotten. We, defenders of human rights, pay respect to the force of your convictions, your courage and your perseverance.
On this day, a day dedicated to you, we think of those women who, in the face of grave threats to their freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly, cannot publicly mark this symbolic occasion. We look forward to better days when International Women’s Day will no longer marked by acts of repression against women in Iran, but by the celebration of women’s rights and equality.
Souhayr Belhassen President of the FIDH
//www.fidh.org/spip.php?article5322

The White Ribbon Campaign

Actually, while in India and a few other countries, the International Men’s Day has been initiated by right-wing men’s organisations such as Indian "Save Family Foundation", in Canada and over 50 other countries, there are Men’s Movements for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (The White Ribbon Campaign,) which celebrate, on November 25, the White Ribbon Day.

//www.whiteribbon.ca/about_us/

//www.whiteribbon.ca/international/