Violence Against Women: A Human Security Perspective

November 21, 2005: "Violence Against Women: A Human Security Perspective", a special session at the Middle East Studies Association 2005 Annual Meeting, provided a forum for scholar/activists from Muslim-majority societies to address major challenges to eliminating violence against women and girls from a human security perspective and to discuss grassroots, national, and regional measures needed to raise awareness, initiate reform legislation, and create synergy for ongoing efforts to prevent violence and to promote human rights of women. Violence against women, a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between men and women, remains one of the primary obstacles to empowering women and achieving peace and security for all.

November 21, 2005

PRESENTED BY
Women's Learning Partnership for Rights, Development and Peace
in collaboration with The Association for Middle East Women's Studies

At the Middle East Studies Association 2005 Annual Meeting

WHEN
Monday, November 21, 2005
7.30 PM - 9.30 PM

WHERE
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Washington, DC

The special session, Violence Against Women: A Human Security Perspective, will provide a forum for scholar/activists from Muslim-majority societies to address major challenges to eliminating violence against women and girls from a human security perspective and to discuss grassroots, national, and regional measures needed to raise awareness, initiate reform legislation, and create synergy for ongoing efforts to prevent violence and to promote human rights of women.

Violence against women, a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between men and women, remains one of the primary obstacles to empowering women and achieving peace and security for all. Women have been systematically deprived of knowledge and skills that might help them to become better equipped to protect themselves against violence, including knowledge of the existing laws, religious texts, international injunctions on human rights, and the demands made by other women for rights in their community and elsewhere.

In the last ten years, women's rights activists in Muslim-majority countries have taken significant strides in initiating legislation that helps improve the status of women, protect women from violence, and punish perpetrators of violence. Policy-makers enlightened and influenced by women activists are bringing about changes that will lead to eradication of violence against women in all its forms.

To launch a successful effort to eliminate violence against women in Muslim societies we need to link it to the process of empowerment of women and human security. This involves helping women to identify the sources of violence at the family, community, society, and state levels, providing the skills and venues for them to articulate and communicate their understanding of and information about violence to other women and men in their countries and abroad, and to mobilize to influence the state to take measures to eliminate violence against women.

PANEL SPEAKERS

Mahnaz Afkhami (Iran/USA), author and leading advocate of women's rights internationally for more than three decades, is Founder and President of Women's Learning Partnership. She is Executive Director of the Foundation for Iranian Studies and former Minister of State for Women's Affairs in Iran.

Nawal Ammar (Egypt/USA), Professor of Justice Studies at Kent State University, Ohio, is a cultural anthropologist whose area of specialization is the Middle East and North Africa. Her areas of expertise include: restorative justice, Islamic jurisprudence, women and the law in Arab Islamic societies, and social service delivery.

Zainah Anwar (Malaysia), a women's rights activist and well-published freelance writer, is Executive Director of Sisters in Islam. She was formerly a member of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, Chief Programme Officer for the Political Division at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, and Senior Analyst at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies.

Rabéa Naciri (Morocco), is a board member and former President of Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité, a network of women's associations and women researchers from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia committed to preventing violence against women. She has written extensively on Arab women and poverty, women and Islam, and capacity-building for women.