WUNRN
Women's Learning Partnership
Women's
Learning Partnership (WLP) is dedicated to women's leadership and empowerment.
At its essence, WLP is a builder of networks, working with 18 autonomous and
independent partner
organizations in the Global South, particularly in Muslim-majority
societies, to empower women to transform their families, communities, and
societies.
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"...challenges
ranging from political and economic instability, to increased restrictions on
civil society and freedom of assembly, to governmental failures to implement
and enforce international agreements and domestic legislation meant to protect
human rights. These challenges remind us how much further we have to go, but
also reveal the creativity and perseverance that defines the activism of our
partners in mobilizing women to claim their rights."
60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we at Women's Learning Partnership would like to take time to reflect upon the impact of universal human rights standards in the context of the women's movement and civil society. While we are inspired by the timelessness of these foundational tenets and celebrate the impact they have had on women around the world, we also look to the work that remains to be done in realizing these rights.
Sadly, in many settings, egregious human rights violations persist. As a part of the network of mutual support among WLP's twenty partner organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, as well as with the numerous groups of grassroots women with whom the Partnership works, we join together to mobilize and confront the continued challenges facing women's rights activists. During the past year alone, a number of our partner organizations have faced challenges ranging from political and economic instability, to increased restrictions on civil society and freedom of assembly, to governmental failures to implement and enforce international agreements and domestic legislation meant to protect human rights. These challenges remind us how much further we have to go, but also reveal the creativity and perseverance that defines the activism of our partners in mobilizing women to claim their rights.
It can be difficult to envision the effective implementation of international human rights doctrine in a world where local level advocacy continues to endure significant direct and indirect challenges. Personal security is a fundamental right, yet violence and political upheaval create a climate of instability in a number of WLP partner countries. During the past year, countries including Afghanistan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, and Zimbabwe have experienced violence and political crises that at times have disrupted the working and economic environments of our colleagues, threatened the personal safety of women and civil society activists, and reinforced local level conflicts and instability.
Another disturbing trend we are observing in all of the regions in which WLP partners work is the increasing clampdown on civil society and women's rights activism. In Central Asia, for example, WLP Kyrgyzstan, Human Rights Center/Citizens against Corruption (CAC) has been directly impacted by the deterioration of freedoms of assembly and association. CAC Director Tolekan Ismailova was among human rights activists who were arrested in December 2007 for protesting election irregularities. The country has since seen new legislation further limiting rights of assembly, and NGOs are increasingly becoming targets of government raids and prosecution.
In Jordan, a recently passed civil society law, which is set to go into effect this month, threatens to suppress and restrict the activities of non-governmental organizations, giving the government power over NGO funding and decision-making as well as day to day activities. Similar legislative obstacles have continued to cause delays in carrying out project activities in Egypt.
In some instances, these clampdowns are not formally sanctioned through specific legislation, but rather imposed through a systematic policy targeting women's rights activists and NGOs. Both the vulnerability of women in times of violent conflict and political disorder, and the work of activists who seek to empower women to overturn a patriarchal social order, can render women especially susceptible to attack. In Zimbabwe, women human rights defenders and relatives of politicians have been specifically targeted for violence and persecution in the wake of heightened political and economic instability. The Nicaraguan government has, as a part of its harassment of NGOs during recent months, specifically targeted feminists, who have been among the most outspoken critics of the Ortega government for the President's sexual misconduct and the 2007 comprehensive ban on abortion.
In Iran, women's rights activists, including members of the One Million Signatures campaign, continue their work in spite of having no protection of their rights of assembly, information, and association. Campaign members are increasingly subjected to harassment and prosecution that is disproportionate to their peaceful activities. Authorities have issued suspended sentences of increasing severity to campaign activists in an attempt to threaten campaign members and deter future activities. Other campaign activists have had their property unlawfully seized or been prevented from travel. Along with numerous other websites in the country, the campaign's "Change for Equality" website has been shut down eighteen times.
In spite of these obstacles, a number of our partners not only persevere in their work, but in some cases have multiplied their successes in movement building and advocacy. Clampdowns in Iran, for example, have served to raise further the profile of the One Million Signatures campaign and its work on an international level. While the increase in international awareness risks further jeopardizing the personal security of the campaigners, it also strengthens their sense of purpose and solidarity. And by its own accounts, the decentralized, grassroots structure of the campaign fortifies it against government attempts to target any single nexus of leadership. Instead, the combination of seasoned, high profile activists with technologically savvy campaigners and grassroots advocates who educate and advocate on a door-to-door basis has simultaneously internationalized and personalized the movement. Most notably, as a result of a successful coalition among members of the One Million Signatures campaign, the Feminist School, and Women's Field, among others, Iranian women's rights activists halted parliamentary consideration of a proposed "Family Protection Bill" earlier this year, based upon provisions that marked further regression for women's rights in marriage and divorce. Such victories do not, of course, mark the end of the process, but build strength in each new beginning.
Elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, WLP partners from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Palestine are employing multi-tiered advocacy strategies to advance international human rights principles in the area of citizenship rights. Women in some countries cannot pass their citizenship on to their children, and in countries such as Egypt and Morocco, where more gender-equitable nationality legislation has been passed recently, there remain gaps in the implementation of the law. Without this ability to confer their citizenship upon their families, women cannot feel secure that their families can be protected by basic rights in their countries of residence. WLP's partner in Morocco, Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc, which has been successful in its advocacy for legislative change for women's rights in domestic family law and nationality rights, demonstrates its solidarity with other women in the region by documenting the lessons of its national advocacy campaign and continuing to support the efforts of other nationality rights campaigns in the Maghreb and the Middle East, even as it continues to press for full protection of women's rights under the new Moroccan law. WLP Lebanon, Collective for Research and Training on Development-Action (CRTD-A), not only works on mobilizing activists on a grassroots level and advocating nationally for legislative reform, but also has raised international awareness for the cause through the creative use of the internet and communication technologies. In doing so, CRTD-A builds an advocacy network that directly connects the work of school-age children in Lebanon to global activists literally residing a world away. Partners continue to experiment with a range of online and traditional resource materials, from documentary film to theater to print and online media, to build not an audience, but an active community of global advocates.
Finally, the atmosphere of violence and instability in which some of our partners work, while representing a core obstacle to the realization of fundamental human rights, also highlights sources of tension that must be confronted head-on in order to employ a truly participatory approach towards the advancement of women's rights. To that end, through WLP's leadership programs, our partners work with women to bridge demographic barriers and engage in different spheres of human rights mobilization. Perhaps most significantly, it is the need for a truly democratic approach to human rights advocacy and conflict resolution that defines the potential for women to realize peace and human rights in the years to come. Much of the Partnership's work seeks to raise the participation of women in formal and informal leadership contexts, whether through family and community roles, in politics, or in taking part in healing the wounds of conflict. It is not simply conflict and violence that underscore the inequalities that women continue to face, but rather the aftermath of those experiences that offer opportunities for regeneration, and a renewed sense that through rebuilding, we can realize those rights which previously eluded us. Here, women can play a critical role by adding their experience and perspective to the realization of peace and security for all human beings.
To provide an exhaustive account of our partners' struggles and successes in the fight for women's human rights in a single document would be impossible, but on this important anniversary, we wanted to share this message of respect and solidarity with our colleagues and supporters in the women's human rights movement across the world. Although we remain mindful of the challenges that we -- from the most experienced human rights defenders to the youth who will carry our mission into the future -- continue to face, and of the rights that remain unrealized, we are also encouraged by a renewed sense of possibility at the grassroots and hope on the international level. Our partners' persistence and success in the wake of such impediments inspires us all, further building our solidarity and reminding us daily how important, yet fragile, those rights laid out 60 years ago remain. We look forward to sharing, in the coming months, even more about the future directions of the Partnership's struggle toward achieving these goals.
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