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FULL KARAMA POLICY PAPER IS ATTACHED.

 

http://www.el-karama.org/en/about-us

 

Karama

 

 

 

 

linesep

'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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