'Karama'
is the Arabic word for dignity, as well as the name of a movement to end
violence against women in the Middle East and North Africa. In the
Karama movement, the emphasis is on women from the ground up addressing
violence against women as they define it, with solutions of their own design.
Founded in 2005 to provide a framework for coordination, cooperation, and
linkage among people interested in stopping violence against women, Karama
has initiated an unprecedented range of multi-sectoral collaboration and
advocacy by women across the Middle East and North Africa at the national,
regional, and international levels.
Karama’s partners include organizations in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria,
Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Palestine with experience in political
advocacy, research, service provision, community outreach, and working with
targeted groups.
Utilizing all of the available information on the causes and consequences of
violence, Karama’s individual participants and organizational partners have
worked to expand the concept of violence against women and push aside old
boundaries separating them from each other. They use their own analysis, they
propose the strategies and solutions, and together the different
organizations build national action plans and a regional movement to end VAW.
Mission
Karama aims to strengthen efforts to end violence against women by
bringing together local women's organizations and other civil society groups
in collaboration, analysis, and advocacy at national, regional, and
international levels. We view our mission as one not only to widen the
national constituencies working to end violence against women in the Middle
East and North Africa, but also to widen our roles and contributions as Arab
women in key civil society sectors. Finally, we seek to raise the profile and
expand the influence of Arab women as leaders in regional and international
contexts.
Strategy
With headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, and an office in Amman, Jordan,
Karama began in July 2005 to reach across the Middle East and North Africa to
build a cascading national and regional movement to end violence against
women. The partners in Karama are diverse, specialized, and with
practical experience across many fields. This is because Karama convenes
activists and experts across eight realms to form national networks that
address violence as both a cause and a consequence of the challenges facing
each country's politics, economics, health, art/culture, education, media,
laws, and religion. The solutions to end violence come from across these
eight realms—and fortify them all in return.
What makes Karama different?
Our approach to ending violence against women is one of the things
that distinguishes Karama. Rather than looking at violence and its victims in
isolation, Karama takes a broader view in the belief that violence affects
women and men, girls and boys, at all levels of society and in all areas of
their lives. To bring an end to violence against women, it is therefore
necessary to identify the ways it affects and is affected by economics,
politics, law, health, media, education, religion and art/culture—the things
that matter most in people’s daily lives—and to design strategies to combat
it through each of these spheres.
International Recognition
- The UN University
Conference in Amman recognized Karama as a Model of Best Practices in
the Arab Region (August 2007)
- Human Rights Watch
invited Karama to present on women's rights in the Arab region at the
annual retreat of their MENA division, held in Jordan (2007)
- Karama participated in
the inaugural gathering of the Nobel Women's Initiative, "Women
Redefining Peace in the Middle East and Beyond", held in Ireland
(May 2007)
- Karama has been
elected the MENA Representative to the Advisory Group for the Global
Campaign for the Ratification and Optimal Use of the Optional Protocol
to CEDAW, coordinated by IWRAW (2008)
- Donors from the United
States, Norway, the Netherlands, and Sweden have sought Karama as a
regional advisor and conduit to local women's organizations in the Arab
region, North Africa, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia.
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