Karama’s delegation of 32 women from around the Arab world is headed to the UN in New York to participate in the 54th session of the Commission on the Status of Women.   During the session, Karama’s team will join women’s activists from around the world to present a detailed review of progress towards fulfilling the gender equality goals set fifteen years ago in the Beijing Platform for Action and ten years ago in the Millennium Development Goals.
More information on  Karama’s web site.

By Afsaneh Najmabadi -  The meaning of a Muslim woman’s veil is both multiple and historically contingent, its meaning has been subject to callenges and negotiations to which Muslim women themselves have been, and have become even more so today, a major party. As much as for some Muslim women the veil has become an oppressive requirement, for others its observance is what makes it possible to be part of modern public sociability.  See full text (pdf format)  -  Source: Monthly Review

The CEDAW is made up of 16 substantial and 14 procedural articles. It is a surprisingly significant convention because it deliberately goes beyond conventional equality approaches and puts forward “positive measures” to promote women, and contains active political and legal steps towards gender equality.  See WIDE information and analysis (pdf format).  See also WIDE - CEDAW Campaign and Blog .

Source : Gender Action - Gender Action  announces the publication of its fourth “Gender Action Link”, Gender, the IFIs and Debt, which highlights how International Financial Institution debt exacerbates the feminization of poverty and undermines gender equality. The Link specifically examines typical gender impacts of IFI loan conditions on female workers such as an increase in the amount of care-work for women and the exclusion of poor women and girls from essential health services.    (more…)

Sex workers in Denmark are protesting a campaign against prostitution during the UN Climate Change Conference. The city of Copenhagen wants to discourage delegates from buying sex, despite the fact that it is perfectly legal there and has nothing to do with climate change. The sex workers’ interest group, SIO (Sexarbejdernes Interesseorganisation), was not consulted and so, annoyed, they are offering free sex to any conference delegate who turns in his ridiculous postcard (see below), which also went to 160 hotels.   See full text on  “Border Thinking on Migration, Trafficking and Commercial Sex”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: The League of Arab States,  Karama,  and UNIFEM to Commemorate 30 Years of the CEDAW Treaty to End Discrimination Against Women

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Are women passively waiting for policymakers to decide their fate with respect to access to ICTs? “No” says Helen Hambly Odame, Associate Professor at the School of Environmental Design & Rural Development at the University of Guelph in Canada. She writes, “Women are not ‘waiting’ for access to ICTs, but rather using ICTs when they are available to get around the constraints they face in politics, society and economy.”  See full text

DAWN’s Supplement on ICPD+15: ICPD+15 at the Crossroads: Health, Rights and Citizenship; Advocating for Full Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: Still and Uphill Battle; Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Global Finance - Crisis or Opportunity?; ICPD Agenda Remains Fragmented.  See pdf: DAWN’s Supplement on ICPD+15

The Honduran crisis as reported by Honduran Feminists in Resistance

On June 28, the democratically elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was forcibly removed from power and exiled to Costa Rica by the Honduran military in a coup d’état. On September 21, Zelaya returned to Honduras with the support of the government of Brazil and has taken refuge in the Brazilian Embassy where thousands of people from around the country have amassed to show their support for a return to democracy. In response, the de facto government deployed the police and Armed Forces to control the demonstrations resulting in violent attacks against the thousands of peaceful protesters. Below are some of the highlights received from the women of the Honduran Feminists in Resistance who have been on the frontlines of pro-democracy actions and resistance since the coup occurred three months ago. (more…)

The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution that takes the next step in the process of creating the new women’s rights entity at the U.N. In the text below are the Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) talking points on the passage of the resolution. (more…)