New U.S. Policy in AfPak: Looking for Mr. Moderate Taliban by Shazia Z. Rafi
|
To those who advocate making peace with certain elements of the Taliban, the author, who has worked to secure human rights with Pakistani legislators across the ideological spectrum, argues against any prospective deal that sacrifices women’s empowerment. More »
Why We Must Still Remember
|
Beginning in 2006, the Women’s Media Center began a series of articles to alert the public about violence against women involving U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Helen Zia, a WMC board member, explains why we must continue to demand justice. More »
Turning Pain to Power
|
Women and girls in eastern Congo suffer sexual atrocities that are tactics of war in the region. Playwright Eve Ensler has joined with Dr. Denis Mukwege to ask us to imagine the unimaginable, to empathize and join together to end the terror. More »
A War on Pakistan’s Schoolgirls
|
In a remarkably beautiful area of Pakistan, the Taliban is making a nightmare of girls’ lives. The author, a Pakistani lawyer and staff member of Equality Now, tells us how the Obama Administration can avoid the mistakes of its predecessor. More »
Keeping Hold of Your Vision—the Making of Hounddog
|
One of the dirty secrets of the film business is that it takes women directors a long time to get their films made. The Women, which opened recently, took Diane English 14 years to bring to the screen; other examples include Tamara Jenkins award-winning The Savagesand Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss, which took 10 years each. Writer/director Deborah Kampmeier joins this illustrious club with her own decade long trek to see her filmHounddog starring Dakota Fanning finally released in theatres. More »
Finally! The UN Gets One Right
|
Last week, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously confirmed Secretary General BanKi-Moon’s appointment for\the post of UN high commissioner for human rights: the distinguished South African jurist Navanethem (“Navi”) Pillay. Women’s rights activists around the world can celebrate. More »
A Reflective NOW Looks to the Future
|
Jehmu Greene, a legendary grass roots organizer, plans next to “look laser-like at organizing young women. More »
Sexual Violence as Occupational Hazard—In Iraq and at Home in the U.S.A.
|
Jamie Leigh Jones was just 20 in 2005 when she took a leap of faith to work in Iraq for her employer, military contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root, then a subsidiary of Halliburton. She went on a mission she believed in. Shortly after her arrival in Iraq, however, Jones’ ambitions were dashed in an alleged gang rape by co-workers. More »
Uganda’s Warrior Girls
|
Yes, this slight, shy girl talking with me in the schoolyard killed four people. The rebel soldiers had given her the dictum so many warrior Ugandan children live under: “Kill, or we will kill you.” She tells her story in a rapid-fire, hushed monotone—as if rushing to deliver a memorized passage from a tale too awful to really think about. And that it is. She is only now 16 years old: as an 11-year-old soldier she killed grown men. I don’t give her name because life is still too dangerous for her. Abducted from her school by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) as a small child, she is now rebuilding her life in northern Uganda—a student at a boarding school for girls in Kitgum, near the Sudanese border. In the run of her life, she managed to escape from the brutality of the rebel army only to return to her village to find her parents dead. More »
Abeer’s Courage
|
During the long days of the rape and murder court-martial of Sgt. Jesse Spielman at Fort Campbell where I was reporting a story for the Women’s Media Center website—I was struck by the language I was hearing and the apparent meaning of the words. More »
