FRIDAY FILE: On January 31, president Michelle Bachelet sent a Bill to the Chilean Congress to decriminalize abortion on three grounds: fetal malformation, when the mother's life is at risk, and where pregnancy is the result of rape. AWID spoke to feminist activists about this Bill and other pending sexual and reproductive health rights issues in this South American country.
FRIDAY FILE - Amidst the continuous struggle for women’s rights and social justice globally, it is important that we keep our collective hopes alive for a better world. With this in mind, AWID spoke to a number of feminists and women’s rights activists from around the world about their hopes, dreams and aspirations for 2015. Read theirs, and tell us what your hopes, dreams and aspirations for this year are.
FRIDAY FILE – To commemorate World Radio Day on February 13 AWID spoke with Anna Mayimona Ngemba, Director of Union Congolaise des Femmes des Médias [1] (Congolese Union of Women in Media - UCOFEM) to learn more about how radio, and media in general, is used do advance or hinder women’s human rights in Democratic Republic of Congo.
FRIDAY FILE: As we commemorate the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence (25 November to 10 December) under the theme “let’s challenge militarism and end gender-based violence”, AWID speaks to Lisa Davis, Human Rights Advocacy Director at MADRE, and to Nurcan Baysal, Kurdish activist and writer for the Turkish electronic journalT24, to learn more about the sexual and other violations of women’s and girls’ rights with the insurgency of the self-proclaimed "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS).
FRIDAY FILE: Palestinians, and people globally who stand in solidarity with Palestine, commemorate Land Day every March 30. On this day in 1976 thousands of Palestinians embarked on a general strike and protests against the Israeli government’s announcement to confiscate large portions of Palestinian lands for new Israeli settlements. The protests resulted in six Palestinians being killed, and hundreds injured and arrested by Israeli forces. Land Day has been commemorated every year since.
By Mégane Ghorbani
When you are faced with the task of moving an object but find it is too heavy to lift, what is your immediate and most natural response? You ask someone to help you lift it. And it makes all the difference.
And so in the face of unprecedented economic, ecological and human rights crises, we should not hunker down in our silos, but rather join together and use our collective power to overcome the challenges.
Her name is Suhair al-Bata’a. The 13-year-old Egyptian girl dreamt of one day becoming a journalist. In 2013, she was taken by her father to Dr Raslan Fadl Halawa’s clinic to undergo female genital mutilation, also known as FGM. She senselessly died at the hands of Halawa.
The Southern United States in the early 1970s was a time of both possibility and disappointment. As a result of the work of civil rights activists, the 60s had seen the creation of new laws seeking to guarantee racial equality across the country. But after these victories had been achieved, legislative changes often did not do enough to change people’s lived realities – particularly for black communities in the South.
AWID recently spoke with Ayat Mneina, co-founder of the Libyan Youth Movement, on the evolving civil war in Libya following the uprising, and subsequent fall of Gaddafi.