I have a feeling that our time has come. We, the people on the margins. The angry, disenfranchised people who pay too much for bread and fuel and rent and water and parking. We, the kids who grew up in the 80s. We, who are unamused by boring media and mindless entertainment. We, who’ve been struggling for years trying to create small, important projects that go nowhere and achieve nothing. Civil marriage. Women’s rights. Green spaces. Anti-corruption. Renewable energy. Equal pay. Migrant rights. Bicycle lanes. Refugee rights. Public schools. Public universities. Social security. Protect our beaches. Protect our workers. Protect our Internet. Protect love. Save our animals. Save our forests. Save our heritage. End torture. End the civil war. Build a public transportation system that works already!

How much longer are we supposed to fight – alone and secluded – for what is right? How much longer do we bang our heads against a Parliament that doesn’t give a damn? Over 300 laws they have in their drawers and they waste their time – time that we pay for with our sweat and hard work – to quarrel over issues that don’t even concern us. Better yet, they create issues and convince us that they are protecting us from each other. Who protects us from the daily struggle it takes to live in this country that millions of us have abandoned because it get more and more unbearable every day?

I have a feeling that thousands of you agree that enough is enough. And what’s different this time is that I have a feeling thousands of you want to do something about it. What better thing to do than take back Parliament? Why do we have to fight against a lazy, inefficient, dysfunctional Parliament that will never give us our basic socio-economic rights? Our basic human dignity? Why does Parliament have to be ruled by war lords and billionaires and dynasties of the same families replicating the same incompetent sectarian crooks that feed on the hatred of their own people?

We can imagine a better quality of life for ourselves and our children and our brothers and sisters. We can find it in our hearts to translate this (sometimes inexplicable) love for Lebanon into a revolution that gives victory to the poor and the wronged. We can rise above $100 bribes and family loyalties and herd mentality to put our votes where our hearts really are. We can find and vote for MPs that are young and secular and progressive and hard-working and feminist and independent and intelligent. We can take back Parliament – the highest legislative authority in the country – and set it back on its original mission: to organize the lives of its people in the best possible and most egalitarian way. We can convince everybody around us. We are the majority and there is not a single person suffering today from unemployment or poverty or stolen rights or that huge, enormous feeling of helplessness and depression that will not want to hold on to the dream that change is possible.

I have a feeling that our time has come.

And what else does one do with feelings but run?

Experts & activists from across the Middle East/North Africa convene in Istanbul to discuss region’s democratic transitions

Check out this terrific line-up of speakers! You can also watch the Live Webcast here.

April 17^th

3:00 – 3:30             Welcome and Introductions

3:30 – 6:00            Opening Plenary Session

Introductory remarks/chair: Thoraya Obaid

An Overview of the Geopolitical Landscape and Women’s Rights in the MENA Region
Deniz Kandiyoti, Jean Said Makdisi

Challenges and Opportunities for the Women’s Movement: Feminism, Fundamentalism & Patriarchy

Rabéa Naciri
Women’s Rights and Transitions in a Global Context

Jacqueline Pitanguy – Brazil

April 18^th

9:15 – 11:00      Lessons Learned from Recent Engagement with Political Transformations in the MENA Region
Introductory Remarks/Chair:  Zeina Zaatari
Amina Lemrini, Wajeeha Al Baharna, Amal Grami, Asma Khader, Sawsan Zakzak

11:00 – 11:15    Break

11:15 – 1:00      Lessons Learned in Other Regions: International Mechanisms, Transitional Justice, Legal Reform, Citizen Transformation

Introductory Remarks/Chair: Lydia Alpizar-Durán

Sapna Pradhan Mallah, Sanja Sarnavka, Claudia Samayoa, Daptne Cuevas, Shamim Meer

1:00 – 2:30      Break for lunch

2:30 – 4:15     Challenges Women and Feminist Movements Face: Fundamentalism & Patriarchy

Introductory Remarks/Chair: Mahnaz Afkhami

Haideh Moghissi, Maria Consuelo Mejia, Yakin Ertürk, Ho Yock Lin

4:15 – 4:30     Break

4:30 – 6:00    Where Do We Go from Here? Rethinking the Relationship between the State and Women as Individual Citizens

Introductory Remarks/Chair: Musimbi Kanyoro

Rahmah Bourkyah, Amal Abdel Hadi, Gina Vargas

6:00 – 6:30 Closing Remarks

]]> http://www.nadinemoawad.com/2012/04/womens-rights-in-transitions-to-democracy-achieving-rights-resisting-backlash/feed/ 0 http://www.nadinemoawad.com/2012/02/law-to-protect-women-from-family-violence-faces-horrible-distortions/ http://www.nadinemoawad.com/2012/02/law-to-protect-women-from-family-violence-faces-horrible-distortions/#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:35:53 +0000 Nadine http://www.nadinemoawad.com/?p=868 This is a translation of Farfahinne’s post: مشروع قانون حماية المرأة من العنف الأسري بعد التسريبات: تشويه ما بعده تشويه

Violence against women happens in two complimentary spheres. In the first, a number of cultural, political, and economic values and laws create an environment of violence in the public sphere. And in the second, violence is perpetuated privately within the family. They compliment and complete each other. For instance, laws and policies that discriminate against women economically stem from an attitude that places women in a traditional role within the family as house workers and not bread winners. And thus a woman is deprived of her right to insure her children with social security unless her husband is handicapped or deceased.

Families in Lebanon are engulfed in a shroud of holiness. What happens within their structures – even when violent – remains within a family. Like my neighbor who thought it a curse that his wife only bore 3 girls and would beat them for the stupidest reasons and drag them by the hair down the stairs. Their cries for help would fill the neighborhood for years until they grew up and found an escape, each in her own way. The neighborhood adapted to these cries, got used to them and eventually got bored with them. To many, they became a repetitive symphony that provided immunity from any attacks of conscience for ignoring the painful cries.

In Lebanon, women’s organizations have struggled for years to release violence against women from the captives of the private sphere, to find mechanisms to protect women. The law to Protect Women from Family Violence, presented to the government by Kafa, was the culmination of years of this hard work. It was formulated after years of listening to thousands of complaints from women who were beaten and raped by their spouses and fathers. It was put together based on research from hundreds of counseling and legal support cases. The proposed law is particularly for women because it saw that Lebanon’s penal and personal status laws awarded men with many privileges and that there should be a law that protects women in order to tend to the grave imbalance between women and men in family structures. It aimed to fight gender-based violence, to fight the violence that happens against women for the sole reason of them being women.

And so the law was supported by dozens of women’s and civil society organizations and presented to the government. It was then passed on – with little resistance – to Parliament, which then designated a side committee to study the law and then pass it on to a vote in Parliament. The law has been with the committee for 6 months although their deadline was 3 weeks.

Today, we have word that the committee has two weeks to finish its study and that it has already made terrible amendments that will actually take us hundreds of steps backwards.

The entire ethos of the law has been changed from one to protect women to one to protect all the members of the family from violence. It has, therefore, become entirely void of the gender dimension – despite all the studies and research and testimonies that prove that the problem of violence within families is a gender-based problem.

Some forms of violence have been deleted entirely in Article 3 – most importantly marital rape – which, in this maimed version, is not considered a form of family violence.

The procedure of reporting violence has been changed to prevent anybody from initiating a complaint via reporting it (which means that I cannot call up the police and report my three friends being beaten up by their father).

And perhaps the most dangerous of these alterations is the addition of Article 26 which gives priority and superiority of judgment to the personal status (i.e. religious sectarian) courts in case of any clash between the two laws. With this article, religious courts have the prerogative to judge if the act is considered violent and, therefore, if it should be criminalized or not. This article also discriminates among women in the implementation of the protection law because it will change according to religious denomination. And it’s considered a blow to the Child Protection law which has come under attack recently with demands to return matters of violence against children to sectarian courts as well.

And so, a law like this, in its distorted version, no longer achieves its intended result which was the protection of women from family violence and the open admission from the State that violence against women is a crime punishable by law, which would help fight the dominant cultural social values that justify violence against women.

The struggle is clear today between forces that are working with all their might against civil society to impose religious courts as the fundamental reference for family matters and forces trying to place the Lebanese State in front of its civil duties to protect women form violence.

Women’s organizations and namely Kafa have proven to be patient and persistent. Today, the law faces the grave danger of being born dead or maimed (at best). Women’s organizations and civil society – everybody who is fighting for a civil space, a civil state, civil laws – must fight to the bone for this law that will save many from misery and save many from murder.

The attempted rape and murder of Myriam Achkar in Sahel Alma has angered and outraged all of us. Myriam’s story is tragic and brings us face to face with the cruelest, most heinous of crimes. We are frustrated and enraged because it is unjust that she dies like this. A young woman, 28, takes a 20-minute walk from her home in the suburbs and gets sexually attacked and then murdered by a man.

That’s really what the story is: A young woman, 28, takes a 20-minute walk from her home in the suburbs and gets sexually attacked and murdered by a man.

But that’s not the story we’re hearing everywhere. What we’re hearing is: A young, Christian, virgin woman, 28, takes a 20-minute walk from her home to a church to pray, and gets sexually attacked and murdered by a Syrian worker.

And so the anger and outrage becomes Christian anger against Syrians. The family thirsts for his blood. They want to lynch him in the public square of Jounieh. They feel wronged as a religious community. This is violence from Syrians towards all Christians, and the Christians are too forgiving, they say. And they stress that Myriam was a practicing believer. She was not out in Gemmayze at 1am, they say. She was on her way to pray.

Nationality and religion have nothing to do with why Myriam was attacked. Really. I am not justifying the murder, God forbid anyone should justify the crime. And the rapist murderer, Fathi Jaber Al-Salatini should be tried, and if convicted, go to jail until he dies. I’m just stating a fact. Nationality and religion have nothing to do with the violence Myriam faced. What time it was, what she was wearing, what she was on her way to do, none of that matters. She was still brutally violated and her barbaric murder was not motivated by theft or hatred. It was motivated by rape.

Her story is, very sadly, not unique. I have heard dozens of stories about rape, from people and from survivors themselves. And so have you. If you haven’t, it just means that the women around you are not talking to you about it. In fact, the women in Lebanon are not talking about rape at all.

Our anger at this horrible crime – understandable anger, human anger – should be towards rape…

Towards the backwards rape laws in Lebanon.

Rapists most often get off the hook. Women are blamed. I don’t have statistics because we don’t have studies. But I know of many cases. Most recently, a European woman was raped and beaten up by two young Lebanese men. I met her and I saw the scars and bruises. The men have posted bail and are now building a case to fight her allegations in court. Our law, Article 503 says a rapist can be acquitted if he marries the victim. He would often get a reduced sentence if he proposes marriage. The maximum sentence is 5 years. Husbands are excluded from this law if they rape their wives. Rape is interpreted as a penis penetrating a vagina. All other forms of sexual violence are not criminalized. This is the law the governs rape in Lebanon. This is the law we should revolt against.

Towards the police who never take rape complaints seriously.

Our police force is not trained to handle rape cases. They ask a woman what she was wearing and why she was where she was. They ask her if she is married. The forensic doctor examines her on the same bed where police officers sleep between shifts. That is if a woman is brave enough or has enough faith in the police to report rape. In one rape case that happened in the summer, a woman had to return to the police station 3 times before they finally wrote down her complaint and promised to investigate it.

Towards the municipalities who don’t provide enough lighting or protection.

Our streets are unsafe. Women are subject to sexual harassment on the streets – any street in any part of Lebanon – 24 hours a day. Lewd comments, stalking, following in a car, propositions for sex, groping, you name it, it happens 24 hours a day to almost every woman, young women especially, every day. And our protective measure, often, is to tell women not to be on that street, at that time, alone. It’s a stupid measure. What we need is municipalities to take sexual harassment seriously, to have enough security that punishes harassment, to have adequate lighting, to respond to complaints. Outside one university campus in Metn is a women’s dorm where men gather every night to harass every woman who enters and exits. They have complained to the university and the municipality and nothing was done about it. When we allow, as a society, sexual violence to be dismissed and joked about and belittled, we allow for rape to go unaddressed.

Towards the sexist culture that promotes the sexual objectification of women.

Women’s bodies are used, haphazardly and illogically, to sell just about anything. Selling taouk? Put a naked women on the ad. Selling a carpet? Put a naked woman on the ad. Selling a gadgets magazine? Put a naked woman on the cover. Everywhere we go, the image of the Lebanese woman we are promoting is one of sex and desire and objectification. There are often no heads on the bodies even, no people behind the bodies. In a media and advertising culture that promotes women as sex objects, how can we raise our girls to love and claim ownership over their own bodies? How can we raise our boys to not feel entitled to consume women’s bodies at their will? How can we call for the sexual liberation of women when we only understand sexual liberation as the commercial objectification of women?

Towards the silencing of women’s stories when they want to talk about rape.

It is extremely difficult for women (here and anywhere) to talk about rape. The shame, the self-blame, the guilt, the taboos, the excuses we give rapists first before we condemn them. In our country, we tell women not to get raped. We don’t tell men not to rape. When they do speak up, we either silence them to protect their “honor” or we ask them a million questions as if it were their fault. Rape is never a woman’s fault. We have not opened up the space, as a women’s movement and as a society, for women to come forward with rape stories and get the justice they deserve. We have not created the proper support systems to give them the services (legal, health, psychological, community support) they need. We have not taught our mothers and fathers to encourage their girls to always speak up, that nothing is taboo, that they must report sexual violence when it happens. We protect our girls by teaching them to always speak up. A woman can survive rape. She always does. Thousands of Lebanese women – your friends, your sisters, your colleagues – have survived rape. What traumatizes them is the guilt and shame they feel because you won’t listen to them or you will blame them or you will make them feel worthless.

Towards the excuses we give rapists.

Boys will be boys. Boys need to have sex, it’s a physiological need. He was her boyfriend, it’s her fault for dating him in the first place. He was turned on by her short skirt. He couldn’t control himself. She looks Russian, he thought she was a sex worker. He misunderstood her and thought she wanted it. She was too drunk. He was seduced by her eyes. She had kissed him so he assumed she wanted to have sex. A million excuses we will give men. Illogical, stupid excuses, all part of a system that won’t teach kids proper sex education but will justify sexual violence when it happens. A culture that equates men’s honor with honesty and nobility and courage and equates women’s honor with their vagina. We need to draw the firm line against all rape excuses, all justifications. We need to see men and women as equal sexual beings and demand the same levels of bodily autonomy for everyone. We need to treat everyone’s body – no matter what gender we attach to it – with dignity and respect.

All these misdirected hateful sentiments that have come out of Myriam’s attempted rape and murder, these racist feelings towards Syrian workers, these sectarian feelings, these vengeful feelings. We can understand the feelings. But we cannot condone how they are directed.

We honor Myriam’s memory by directing our anger at sexual violence. May she rest in peace and may the right justice be served. Fight rape.

One of their categories is about traffic. We’ve all been there. Their video and photo galleries poke fun at our weird attitudes towards driving. I’m not sure if they are aware of it, but they’re also critiquing the link between masculinity and road rage, which is a terrific thing!

Their most popular campaign to date has been about the simple courtesy of standing in line (a rare phenomenon in Lebanon) and their latest is about corruption. Check out the video below and follow them on Facebook and Twitter to engage!

Here’s a list of the Arab blogger tweeps who are currently at the Arab Bloggers Meeting in Tunis. Palestinian bloggers were outrageously denied visas by the Tunisian government and were not able to make it to the meeting.

Tunisia

Sami Ben Gharbia @ifikra
Slim Amamou @slim404
Malek Khadhraoui @malekk
Sarah M @sarah81m
Fairouz Ben Jemia @rouza

Qatar

Abdurahman Warsame @abdu

Bahrain

Jordan

Mohammad alQaq @moalQaq
Ramsey George @ramseygeorge
Naseem Tarawnah @tarawnah
Nadine Toukan @nadinetoukan
Ola Eliwat @Ola_Eliwat
Jaber Jaber @jaber87

Egypt

Randa Aboeldahab @randoshka2000
Manal Hassan @manal
Alaa Abdel Fattah @alaa
Mohamed El Gohary @ircpresident
Ahmed Awadalla @3awadalla
Tarek Amr @gr33ndata
Lilian Wagdy @lilianwagdy
Wael Abbas @waelabbas
Ahmad Gharbeia @aGharbeia

Morocco

Hisham Almiraat @__Hisham

Saudi Arabia

Ahmed Al Omran @ahmed
Hasan Almustafa @halmustafa

Oman

Syria

Leila Nachawati @leila_na
Razan Ghazzawi @RedRazan
Yazan Badran @yazanbadran

Palestine

Saed Karzoun @Saedkarzoun
Irene Nasser @almagdela
Dalia Othman @DaliaOthman (didn’t make because Tunisia rejected visas of Palestinians)
Saleh Dawabsheh @Dawabsheh (didn’t make because Tunisia rejected visas of Palestinians)

Iraq

Hayder Hamzoz @Hamzoz
Noof Assi @noofasee
Dina Najem @dina_najem

Lebanon

Liliane Assaf @funkyozzi
Nadine Moawad @nmoawad
Mustafa @beirutspring
Jamal Ghosn @jamalghosn
Racha Ghamlouch @LebaneseVoices
Assaad Thebian @beirutiyat
Angie Nassar @angienassar
Mansour Aziz @AlAkhbarEnglish
Abir Saksouk @abirsasso
Thalia Rahme @Thalloula

Mauritania

Nasser Weddady @weddady

Libya

Ghazi Gheblawi @Gheblawi
Ahmad Bin Wafa @AhmadBlog
Ahmad El Bokhari @el_bokhari

Sudan

I have undoubtedly forgotten some people, please tweet me at @nmoawad so I can add them.

For example, I recently found out that the person handling the @Zaven_K account is not really Zaven (dunno why I was under the impression that it was – maybe it’s cos he has a laptop in front of him all the time), but a fellow tweep. Naturally, I felt a little uneasy knowing that I had tweeted to @Zaven_K thinking I was talking to Zaven. But what’s worse is I didn’t know I was talking to that particular tweep.

Has anyone else felt the frustration with this?

I feel it is getting a little silly – especially with a lot of tweeps becoming “social media experts” for hire. We think we are talking to management of a certain company whereas we are talking to the same people.

I think it is best practice that every non-person twitter account reveal who is tweeting behind it. For example, the @GIGAlb team does it well by adding ^initials to every tweet that is not a standard link. Or, another example is @iams who give you the handles of who is tweeting in the bio. I’m not saying it should go for every single tweet, but at least when conversing with people on twitter.

So if you’re tweeting for another handle, please reveal yourself in the bio, through ^initials, or through a list of tweeps who tweet from that account. Don’t hide behind handles – it can become deceptive.

First of all they say on Facebook that this “Just for Boys” workshop also welcomes girls. Well then why call it “just for boys”?

More importantly, they claim to be an “edutainment center for teens and tweens where your brain is pampered from right to left” I don’t see any “brain pampering” in what they actually have in store for girls:

Who paints girls’ faces with half a ton of make-up like that and calls it “pampering”? They also enter them into beauty contests with fake wigs and more make-up:

Even care bear looks like he’s lost his innocence. And look at this little girl – she is painted in even more make-up :-/

Keep your daughters and sisters away from FRIZZY!!

The Migrant Center will serve as a space where migrant and domestic workers meet, organize, plan events and celebrations, hang out, hold discussions and more. We are now cleaning, renovating, and painting the center in preparation for the opening on September 4, 2011. Here are some photos:

The Center is still empty and we need your help and contributions to the wishlist below.

You can email Priya, who will be the Center Coordinator on priyasubedi@gmail.com for more info on how to contribute. We are currently looking for:

DVD player
Chalk / Cork / White boards
Computers
Cool posters
Coffee tables
Closet
Couches
Carpets
Speakers
Stationary
Water dispenser
Printer
Photocopier
Paintings
Projector
Oven
Games (foozball, board game, etc…)
Nice lighting
Fans
Desk
Ladder
Library and books
Phone
Waste bins
Radio