One of the goals in a new report on women and Arab Spring by CARE International is to build bridges between religious and secular women. Gita Sahgal says this fails to address the real problem: the rise of fundamentalism and the lack of clarity on the need for a secular state.
Amira Osman is awaiting trial for refusing to cover her hair. She is one of thousands of Sudanese women who are being arrested under Sudan's criminal code, sentenced, and publicly lashed.
The only way out of the current stalemate is launching an inclusive reconciliation process in which all political forces admit their responsibility for the early failure of transition and show their willingness to move towards building a democratic state, says Rawia M.Tawfik Amer
Selective reporting by the western media, and expert opinion predicting Egypt's future based on the familiar pattern of drawing blueprints that are disconnected from the pulse on the street, are producing strong anti-western sentiment, says Mariz Tadros.
For all its problems, Algeria never became an Islamic state. Like Algerian progressives in the 1990s, Egyptian progressives now have to carve out the space to construct a credible alternative under the shield of the new transitional process, and simultaneously challenge the military’s human rights
Women in Iraq bear the brunt of increasing levels of gender-based violence, inadequate infrastructure and poverty. Yet women activists recognize that their struggle for equality and social justice as women cannot be separated from the wider struggle against authoritarianism and sectarianism
The only way to safeguard against the emergence of another dictatorship in Egypt is a political settlement that is premised on an inclusive rather than majoritarian political order
There is a perception among the non-Islamist political movements and civil society that there is a western conspiracy against the Egyptian people in support of the Muslim Brotherhood’s totalitarian regime, it is now time to switch sides before it is too late, argues Mariz Tadros
The promotion of women’s rights through the introduction of gender quotas in Jordan is being used to score points on ‘democratization’ and to present a ‘modern’ face to the world. What are the prospects for women’s empowerment?
The lack of institutional concern for epidemic levels of sexual harassment and assault in Egypt is part of the larger neglect of the issue of gender equality by the post-revolutionary powers, says Heather McRobie.
Democracy is more of a culture than a way of governing or a political system. It is a historical process that must go through its evolution. No country can be a quasi democracy. It is in fact democratic people that make a society democratic, says Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi
دموکراسی قبل از آنکه یک روش حکومتی و یا سیستم سیاسی باشد، یک فرهنگ و پروسه تاریخی است که باید سیر تکاملی خود را طی کند. هیچ کشوری یک شبه دموکرات نمی شود. در حقیقت .انسان های دموکرات هستند که جامعه را دموکرات می
