WUNRN
Global Fund for Women
EGYPT - WOMEN WANT DEMOCRACY,
LEADERSHIP INCLUSION, END TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN INTIMIDATION
Reporting
from Egypt: Hoda Elsadda, Global Fund for Women board member and Vice President
of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, emailed us to say that international
media is missing the point. Demanding the resignation of President Mohamed
Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t the end of democracy in
"[The international media’s] insistence on
repeating the Muslim Brotherhood mantra that the ouster of the first
democratically elected president is the end of democracy is a gross abuse of
the essential meaning of democracy and a reflection of the trivialization of
democratic processes by reducing them to electoral politics only.
If this is the situation of democracy in the
Mohamed Morsi has impeached himself by violating the
contract made between him and the people who elected him. And just as a
reminder, Hitler was also a democratically elected president whose election
cost millions of lives and a world war. Well, we Egyptians want to get rid of
Morsi and his clan right here and now and save the world and ourselves more
bloodshed and agony.
A final word to the American administration: please,
please, stop supporting dictators."
As
Unfortunately, sexual harassment and rape during times
of conflict is not news for Global Fund for Women and our grantee partners.
Fortunately, with social media, women’s organizations are documenting
harassment in real time. Nazra for Feminist
Studies has been instrumental in promoting anti-violence hotlines like Operation Anti Sexual
Harassment and
other support services for women being raped in the streets.
During the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the impact of 20+
years of vital core support from Global Fund for Women played out in a big way.
It helped build strong networks of women’s rights activists in the Middle East
and