While the world noted the international day against female genital mutilation (FGM) on 6 February, African women are making their own stand against the practice.
In Kenya, hundreds of girls ran away from home to escape FGM and are now in hiding. In Ethiopia, the wives of four African presidents led hundreds of women in Addis Ababa in a protest against FGM.
FGM is banned in many parts of Africa, but many families practise it in secret. The United Nations estimates that two…
When the voices of war and the “war on terrorism” are raised around the world, the voices of women, feminists with different opinions, perspectives and experience are silenced or drowned out.
This volume of essays, personal stories, poetry and statements is a welcome collection of voices from around the world. In the words of the dedication, “... women who have struggled to perfect the difficult and valuable skill of surviving, who refuse to be overwhelmed by the…
Dozens of Afro-Colombians fled from their home village, Villahermosa in the department of Choco;, in 1997, caught between guerrillas and paramilitaries. Some 6,000 displaced people from 49 villages, including Villahermosa, fled to Pavarondo;. After some months there, the women among them issued a statement:
“We women from Pavarandó want and need our voice to be known in the country and in the world because of what we have been living through for the last nine months…
Some politicians are currently selling the idea that total war is “The Choice” to change the history of violence in Colombia once and for all. The Colombian women's movement, however, does not just bring attention to the situation of women, we also do not believe in war as an option, or that the ends justify the means. We do not believe in violence as the best path for our country, nor for the rest of the world. Many women and men in Colombia have opted for an ethical position of nonviolence…
The paramilitaries of the AUC arrived in Barrancabermerja, the capital of Magdalena Medio and the oil capital of Colombia, in 1998, and at the turn of the year 2000-2001 “our city underwent a pacification by blood and fire ... by which one armed actor was thrown out and another has taken control as overlord of the city”. The result has been displacement, assassinations and intimidation of social activists, and the imposition of a “Manual de Convivencia” (Handbook for Living Together) with…
Who said all is lost in Colombia? Women propose stopping the war now
We women saw the unsuccessful peace process between the government and the FARC as exclusionary, not based in the grass roots. Now we view with terror the spectacle of war: a patriarchal concept, both retrogressive and obtuse, has elevated war to the role of midwife of history and humanity, and unfortunately, at present, is defining the destiny of this country and of the world. We know, by the wisdom gleaned from centuries…
Nira Yuval-Davis' Gender and Nation is presented by the author as the culmination of her work in the areas of gender and ethnic studies beginning with her work in the 1980s on gender relations in Israel and the ways they have related to the Zionist settlement project and the Israeli-Arab conflict through to the Women, Citizenship and Difference conference at the University of Greenwich in 1996.
The book is organized in six chapters ("Theorising Gender and Nation"; "Women and the…
In south-eastern Nigeria, hundreds of unarmed Ijaw women used boats to occupy four Chevron-Texaco pipeline stations.
Protests against oil companies operating in Nigeria have been taking place for a while. These recent and dramatic actions were taken in response to the grinding poverty in which local people live in this oil-rich region. Chevron-Texaco have operated in the region for more than 30 years, but the activists say there is little to show for all the wealth generated.…
A Pakistani tribal council ordered the gang rape of an 18-year-old woman to avenge their tribal “honour” after her young brother's alleged illicit affair with a higher caste woman.
The teenager was raped in a room by four men, one of them a council member, reportedly while a large crowd of villagers laughed and cheered outside, in the remote village of Meerwala in southern Punjab on 22 June 2002. The young woman was threatened that if she did not accept the council's verdict and…
Peace News 2443 (Gender and militarism) began to open the door of a debate within the antimilitarist movement on activist responses to the changing military landscape. As western military forces adapt to new roles, how does that movement respond to the feminisation of the military, as seen in increasing numbers of women in the military, and in the deployment of armies in peace-keeping operations. How too, do we respond to the military's co-option of the traditional - and often…
War's Offensive on Women catalogues the failure of the international humanitarian community to address the needs - and rights - of women in war, and provides that community with concrete recommendations for respecting women's human rights in war.
Mertus makes a useful addition to the debate on gender-sensitive approaches to both the protection of refugees and internally displaced persons, and the administration of humanitarian and development assistance.
Identifying…
A small group of Cypriot women, calling themselves “Hands Across the Divide”, has started actively campaigning for peace in Cyprus. They have to communicate by email, because face to face meetings between people living in north and south Cyprus are so difficult to achieve.
Since 1974, the island of Cyprus has been divided by a barbed-wire fence, which runs from coast to coast and through the heart of the principal city of Nicosia. This UN partition line was set up during a period of…
Just how much freedom have women in Afghanistan actually gained since the interim government was put in place late last year, and what is the prospect for real change for them to become citizens enjoying full - and lasting - rights? Rather than nearing successful completion, the fight by women's rights activists and groups to secure a better future for Afghan women is in reality just beginning.
There can be no doubt that life for our Afghan sisters has improved considerably since…
This well-produced 10-minute film attempts to offer a vastly contracted version of the historic events at Greenham Common; from the occupation of the land by the military in the middle of the century, through to the return of the common to the people of Newbury at the end of it in April 2000.
As someone closely bound up with Greenham, I found the emphasis on the land issue (as opposed to nuclear weapons, militarism, women's empowerment, etc) a little disappointing.
However,…
We'moon on the Wall is a full colour, beautifully illustrated, month at a glance lunar calendar. With “Priestessing the Earth” as its theme, the 2002 version celebrates the work that women are doing all over the world to heal and tend the Earth, to empower women, and to make the world a safer place.
This focus on women's activity draws together the calendar’s poetry and exquisite pictures – the burst of gold that heralds July's “Sun Priestess”; the dynamism of March's “Amazon…
