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Women's Human Rights
“It is necessary for us to reinterpret and redefine our cultures and to seek indigenous roots for our rights to change when we must, to search what is authentically supportive of our rights, and to replace what has been shaped to uphold patriarchal social structures.”- Mahnaz Afkhami, President & CEO, Women’s Learning Partnership
By advancing women’s leadership and facilitating communication and cooperation among and between women, WLP aims to realize the promise of women’s human rights.
We strive to raise public awareness of, and mobilize international support for, human rights claims made by women in the Global South, particularly women in Muslim-majority societies.
In cooperation with our partner organizations, we engage in campaigns for women’s human rights, such as Claiming Equal Citizenship: The Campaign for Arab Women's Right to Nationality.
As part of the WLP Translation Series, we publish unique advocacy tools for the advancement of women’s human rights, such as the Guide to Equality in the Family in the Maghreb, which focuses on strategies for the reform of family law in Muslim-majority societies.
To encourage cross-border solidarity and facilitate activists’ campaign research, we provide an online collection of national and international legislation with relevance to women’s human rights, including comparative information on family laws that affect the lives of women and girls in Muslim-majority societies.
We send out human rights alerts to raise awareness of urgent human rights challenges faced by our partner organizations, as well as to mobilize support for important campaigns.
We also host a poetry and literature series, Life Lines: The Literature of Women's Human Rights, in the belief that women’s writing connects readers to the challenges faced by women in realizing their rights and increases their responsiveness to calls for solidarity and action.
Resources on Women’s Human Rights
- Women's Human Rights Facts & Figures
- Profiles of Women's Human Rights Experts
- Multimedia: Leading to Change: Eliminating Violence Against Women in Muslim Societies
- Women's Human Rights Bibliographies
More Stories and Reports
Campaign Activist Khadijeh Moghaddam Released
April 16, 2008
| SUPPORT IRANIAN WOMEN |
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Sign the petition and help them reach their goal of one million signatures to end discriminatory laws against women.
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Change for Equality: Khadijeh Moghaddam member of the Mother’s Committee of the One Million Signatures Campaign, and a member of Mothers for Peace, was released on the afternoon of Wednesday April 16, after spending nine days in detention. She was greeted by her family and friends, as well as her colleagues in the One Million Signatures Campaign.
Support Iranian Women: Join the “One Million Signatures” Campaign
Iranian parliament submits new legislation attempting to push back current family laws; in response Iranian women's rights activists take action
September 20, 2007
| SUPPORT IRANIAN WOMEN |
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Sign the "One Million Signatures" campaign petition calling for an end to discriminatory laws against women such as men's uncontested right to divorce, polygamy, and child custody.
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The Iranian parliament has submitted legislation attempting to push back current family laws, reversing the few rights that exist for women. We are very concerned about this new development. Please see the article below for information on how Iranian women's activists are taking action to prevent this bill from becoming law.
In addition, the "One Million Signatures" campaign Persian website was filtered for the seventh time. The new address of the site is:
Persian: www.we4change.info
English: www.weforchange.info/english
Over 2000 Equal Rights Defenders Object to Proposed "Family Support" Legislation: In a statement issued today, 2000 equal rights defenders have objected to the Family Support Legislation submitted to parliament by the executive branch, earlier this month. The statement asserts that while lawmakers have claimed that the Family Support Legislation intends to address shortcomings in the law and bring it up to date in accordance with the needs and realities of today’s family, it has in fact pushed back family legislation and the status of women by 42 years.
Partnering for Change: Movement Building in the 21st Century
January 21, 2007: At the Seventh World Social Forum in Nairobi, Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP) presented an interactive panel and dialogue with women’s rights activists from Africa and the Middle East who discussed strategies to strengthen social movements, particularly the women’s movement, in an era of crisis for civic organizing. Efforts to achieve gender equality, human rights, and social justice are being increasingly challenged by rising extremism and fundamentalism, wars and conflict, poverty, and violence. Activists are overcoming these barriers by working together to devise innovative, context-relevant strategies that will transform power relations and dynamics with the family, community, and society.
Symposium Builds Momentum for International Efforts to Eliminate Violence Against Women
More than 250 activists, policy-makers, UN representatives, scholars, and heads of NGOs from 40 countries gathered at Women's Learning Partnership's (WLP) international symposium, "Leading to Change: Eliminating Violence against Women in Muslim Societies," on March 1 in New York. Held in conjunction with the United Nation's 49th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the Symposium was an energizing and movement-building event that brought together grassroots activists, including WLP partners, and international policy-makers to discuss the major challenges to eliminating gender violence as well as grassroots, national, and regional measures to promote women's human rights. Three panel discussions on "Culture, Conflict and Extremism," "International Perspectives on Eliminating Violence Against Women," and "Women, Empowerment, and Justice" were each followed by dynamic Q&A sessions between speakers and audience members.
Launch of Translation Series: New Advocacy Tool for the Reform of Family Law in Muslim-Majority Societies
Guide to Equality in the Family in the Maghreb is the first volume in a new Translation Series launched by WLP to increase the availability of feminist works produced in the Global South, especially those that lucidly define women’s issues, identify fields of opportunity, and map out strategies to empower women and to promote women’s human rights.
The Guide is a unique advocacy tool developed by Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité, a coalition of women’s organizations from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, to communicate a shared vision of legal reform supporting the development of more egalitarian families, communities, and societies. The Guide outlines a process that relates meaningful social change to women’s capability to make deliberate and thoughtful choices.
