Global Fund for Women - News Syndication http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:00:26 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/images/M_images/RSS.gif http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms Global Fund for Women - News Syndication http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1224&Itemid=165 In honor of many of our grantees around the world that celebrate Pride this weekend, we are excited to share an instance of how even in a country like Sri Lanka where many civilians are enduring enormous hardship amid ongoing crisis, we have groups working for gay rights and to decriminalize homosexuality - a reality in many countries including Sri Lanka. Equal Ground, a GFW grantee since 2005, is committed to fighting the widespread homophobia prevalent in Sri Lankan society. To date, the Global Fund has supported Equal Ground with grants totaling $55,000. The 5th annual Colombo Pride kicks off this weekend with much fanfare and festivities. Check out Equal Ground's blog (http://equalground.wordpress.com/) for more information about events planned this weekend! Cool Links: Equal Ground's web site (http://www.equal-ground.org/) and blog (http://equalground.wordpress.com/) Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:50:11 +0100 http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1220&Itemid=72 Global Fund is excited to announce that two of our grantee partners have won this year’s prestigious Gruber Women’s prize. The two recipients are Leymah Gbowee, from grantee partner Women in Peace and Security Network – Africa; and Women’s Legal Centre (WLC) – a nonprofit law center based in South Africa and a Global Fund grantee since 1999. Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:13:25 +0100 http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1218&Itemid=165 I watched Barack Obama’s speech (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/04/obama-speech-in-cairo-vid_n_211215.html) “to the Muslim world” with a lot of interest, and I must say that, as a person who comes from that “world”, I was very pleasantly surprised. I understand some of my fellow Muslims’ dissatisfaction, and tendency to remain skeptical, due in large to decades of bluntly biased, aggressive, and unjust U.S policy towards the Middle East, but I believe that Obama’s speech needs, first and foremost, to be seen as it was intended to be, and as it was: The first paragraph of a “potential” new chapter, and a first step to highlight the new U.S administration’s willingness to break away from its predecessors’ policy towards Muslim countries, in the Middle East particularly. Yes, the speech was broad. Yes, Obama talked about the Muslim world as if it was one single compact entity (which is a debatable concept even amongst Muslims themselves), but how much more could he possibly say in 55 minutes really? And most importantly: Can you name one single Western head of state, in the last 100 years, who did a better job publicly addressing a Muslim audience? Think about it. So why not, instead, focus on the positive sides of his speech? For example, the change of tone towards Israel, and the absence of the traditional U.S rhetoric of unconditional support to this latter. The use of the meaningful word “Palestine”, and the strong condemnation of Israeli occupation. The emphasis (although broad) on education and economic empowerment as means to effectively enhance women’s rights in the Muslim world. The sight of a U.S president who actually tries to relate to Muslims, one who did his research about their religion, read one thing or two about the history of the Middle East, and “gives a damn” to actually talk honestly to Muslims and take political risks by doing it. Those are all good points that should not be taken for granted or ignored, considering not only where we come from (yes, eight years of Bush), but also, the general atmosphere of Islamophobia that has been quite widespread around the world for many years now. So while waiting for more updates, and concrete plans from “Abu Hussein” and his administration: I choose to look at the bright side, and I choose to believe. I really do want our two “worlds” to get along… Assalamu Alaikum. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As-Salamu_Alaykum) Mehdi Boubiya is a Program Associate for the Global Fund for Women's Middle East North Africa program. Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:08:31 +0100 http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1214&Itemid=165 When I traveled to Burma in 2000, I met with Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi) and some of the leadership of the National League for Democracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_League_for_Democracy) (NLD). The message that Aung San Suu Kyi wanted me to carry back to the world outside: never forget the suffering of the Burmese people. In 1990, Suu Kyi and the NLD swept the polls, capturing a majority of parliamentary seats. But the military junta refused to recognize the results and since then, Suu Kyi and NLD leadership have been jailed for most of the past 19 years. Suu Kyi is currently on trial for violating the terms of her house arrest after allowing an American man stay at her home after swimming there uninvited in May. She faces five years in prison if convicted. Suu Kyi’s plea to never forget the suffering of the Burmese people is grounded in history and resonates today. Since achieving independence from the British in 1948, the people of Burma have suffered under the brutal rule of a military dictatorship (in 1990 the name was changed to “Myanmar” by the junta that rules Burma). For nearly five decades, the military junta of Burma has, with impunity, perpetrated large-scale violations of the rights of its people, particularly the ethnic groups such as the Chin. One thing about the junta, they are equal opportunity persecutors. Women, children and even the elderly are subjected to forced labor, mass displacement, and high taxation of agricultural goods, often leading to chronic hunger and poverty. The International Labor Organization (http://www.ilo.org/global/lang--en/index.htm), ILO, estimates that 800,000 Burmese are forced into labor each year. In addition, with the country run as a police state, there is absolutely no tolerance of political expression, so neighbors inform on each other. The plight of the Chin, that our grantee the Women’s Foundation of Chinland works to address, is illustrative of the violations suffered by nearly every ethnic group in Burma. Nearly a million Chin have fled the racial discrimination and religious persecution committed by the Burmese military regime. In refugee populations, domestic violence and vulnerability to all forms of abuse become magnified. This makes the work of the Women’s Foundation of Chinland and the Women’s League of Burma that much more critical, ensuring that women’s rights are not only protected, but that women develop the leadership skills to become effective advocates for change. Aung San Suu Kyi turns 64 today (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE55I0Y720090619) in a Myanmar prison. To leave a message of support for the imprisoned democracy leader, go to http://www.64forsuu.org/ (http://www.64forsuu.org/) Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:57:21 +0100 http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1204&Itemid=165 Lost in the flurry over North Korea’s detention of Laura Ling and Euna Lee (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/world/asia/09north.html?bl ex=1244692800 en=f858173156ce3aa7 ei=5087%0A) is the story they sought: the plight of North Korean women refugees in China. Approximately 80 percent of recent defectors in China are women who fled North Korea in search of a better life, only to discover that they had been sold as brides. According to The Washington Post, “North Korean defectors are mostly women from working-class and farm backgrounds who fled because of hunger and poverty, not political oppression.” In 2004, the South Korean Ministry of Unification conducted a survey of over 4,000 defectors in South Korea, and found that 75% left North Korea for economic reasons or to join their families in the south, and only 9% left because of political repression. What the media fails to explain are the root causes of North Korea’s famine and poverty. In the mid-1990s, over 600,000 North Koreans died from famine caused by the worst natural floods and droughts and the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the socialist trading-bloc. North Korea’s ability to rebuild its economy has suffered under the weight of U.S. sanctions, which have been in place since the Korean War. According to Zathi Zellweger of the Swiss Development Corporation, despite North Korea’s efforts to liberalize, “No investor is interested in North Korea as long as there are sanctions.” As tensions escalate between North Korea and the U.S., what is salient is that the Korean War is not over. Although fighting temporarily ceased with the 1953 armistice, the Cold War lives on, emboldening regimes in South and North Korea to repress dissent and militarize the peninsula. The way forward to end the war and to free the journalists would be as Laura Ling told her sister Lisa, “if our two countries communicate.” Christine Ahn is Communications Research Analyst at the Global Fund for Women and also Korea policy expert and peace activist. Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:46:08 +0100 http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1194&Itemid=165 Global Fund is proud to celebrate Leymah Gbowee, leader of Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET), a Liberian grantee, for winning the 2009 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Leymah was honored on May 18, for organizing a multi-faith group of women to help end Liberia's civil war. The award was presented by Caroline Kennedy at a ceremony at Boston's John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. If you're hungry, keep walking. If you're thirsty, keep walking. If you want a taste of freedom, keep walking. For us women of Liberia, this award is a call that we will keep walking until peace, justice and the rights of women is not a dream, but a thing of the present, said Leymah. Watch the inspiring video (http://www.necn.com/Boston/NECN-Extra/2009/05/18/Leymah-Gbowee-honored-with-JFK/1242662215.html#) of Leymah's speech at the award ceremony. Find out (community/e-bulletin-full-story/women-peace-and-security-africa-wipsen.html) more about Leymah and her work. Tue, 26 May 2009 16:07:00 +0100 http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1191&Itemid=70 Watch Global Fund CEO and President Kavita Ramdas delliver the commencement speech at Mills College on Saturday May 16th, where she was also awarded an honorary degree. Watch on YouTube: Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0tIC0eu8O8), Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZeVaZJ4xEA) , Part 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECCf363GXtw) Tue, 19 May 2009 17:28:48 +0100 http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1190&Itemid=165 YES! It is another sign. Just today we are putting the final touches on a discussion paper that I have been working on for a very long time with the National Council for Research on Women looking at reasons and solutions for why there are so few women managing money. We pull the lens back on the issue in to a more general context on the lack of women in positions of leadership and power at financial services firms more generally and issue a Call to Action. One of our calls if for responsible institutions to adopt a voluntary Critical Mass Principle , which sets as a goal 30% women on their boards and in senior leadership roles. The Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f678197a-43d9-11de-a9be-00144feabdc0.html)issued the same call in an OPED published today. We see the time as now to boldly move forward and are launching the paper on June 24 th at Bloomberg. As far as we know it is the most comprehensive work ever done on the topic and we hope it will get lots of media attention. According to the FT - If there is ever a time for women to make a decisive breakthrough in corporate boardrooms, it is surely now. Many boards, especially in financial services, are in flux after the testosterone-fueled excesses that led to financial disaster. There is a desperate need to rebuild trust, more easily achieved if boards better reflect customers and the public. Amen. Amen. Amen. We are still looking for partners to assist in the launch of this important discussion paper so if you are interested please contact me orTeresa Bagly at the National Council for Research on Women. (http://www.ncrw.org/contact/contact.htm) I already crafted a response to the editor and I hope you will too! To send a letter to the editor letters.editor@ft.com (mailto:letters.editor@ft.com). Jacki Zehner is a frequent media commentator on women’s leadership and success in the workplace, and their relationship to wealth, investing, and social change. She was the youngest woman, and first female trader, to be invited into the partnership of Goldman Sachs. After leaving the firm in 2002, she became a Founding Partner of Circle Financial Group, a private wealth management operation Tue, 19 May 2009 13:56:03 +0100 http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1184&Itemid=165 Transmissions via the Internet, coverage of events for peace and against violence against women in Guatemala, participation in panels and special forums about the theme, and the organization of a Virtual Observatory in internet all form part of the activities of FIRE in Guatemala during the week of May 10-15 in accompaniment of the actions by organizations of women that share the preoccupation about the escalating violence and impunity that reigns in this situation. Currently Guatemala shares with countries such as Colombia and Mexico one of the most alarming situations regarding the systematic and extensive violations of the human rights of women including femicide (murder of women for being women) and other types of violence. In 2001, more than 2,500 cases of murder of women were reported to the police in Guatemala, but as of 2006, just 14 had led to a conviction of the perpetrator. The statistics of violence against women show that also in 2006, there were 825 reports of women who were raped and more than 10,000 women who suffered physical aggression, according to the Red de No Violence Contra la Mujer *Network of No Violence against a Woman). The most recent case of blatant abuse of the rights of women took place in March, 2009 with the abduction and torture of the professor and champion of human rights, Gladys Monterroso. The global women’s community has organized a series of parallel actions to place this horrendous situation of women in Guatemala in the global agenda and to contribute to ensuring women and their social organizations, as well as human rights agencies working on this issue that they are not alone in their demand to put an end to the impunity of such violation. The global community also wants to provide solidarity for the right of women to a dignified life and an inclusive democracy. FIRE will participate in this series of initiatives that will take place May 10-15 in this Mesoamerican country. From May 10-12 in Antigua, FIRE will organize live transmissions and special coverage of the international conference, “Women Redefining Democracy for Peace, Justice and Equality,” which is being organized by the Nobel Women’s Initiative for Peace. More than 100 women will participate in the event, coming from public politics, along with activists, specialized agencies, journalists and communicators, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureates among others. They will share their visions, actions and challenges to support efforts to increase representation of women and their ability to exercise their rights and participate in a significant manner in the decisions that affect their lives, all as part of a reconceptualization of democracy for all in our societies. In this same event, FIRE will participate in the panel, “The media and communications as tools of democratization for women,” along with panelists from Guatemala, Zimbabwe and the United States. All the panelists agree that when women are absent in the media or they only appear as victims, and not as active change agents or actors for peace, all of society loses. The panelists will emphasize the role of the media in the hands of the women as an important strategy to recover that loss. During this time and also in Antigua, FIRE will cover the meeting of the Plataforma Artística (Artists’ Platform) against gender violence, a Spanish initiative that will hold its own conference as part of its tour in Guatemala that has included meetings with the national government, with city halls and organizations of human rights and of women. They are also producing public concerts with the intention to strengthen and provide solidarity for agencies and organizations that work against the violence that women suffer, especially femicides as an extreme form of violence. Also from May 13-15, FIRE will organize a Virtual Observatory of Feminist Transgressions as part of the Mission and Observation of International Denouncement against Violence toward Women in Guatemala, in Guatemala City. This event is organized by Petateras of Guatemala, in coordination with Synergia Noj, The Cord, UNAM-G, Associates by the Just thing (JASS) and our radio. Sinergia Noj, La Cuerda, UNAM-G, Just Associates (JASS) and FIRE radio. The Virtual Observatory is designed to document what has happened to women in Guatemala, and to express solidarity with their struggles to eliminate the structural scourge of violence against women within a framework of the escalation of all forms of violence in a country that recently signed Peace Accords. in 1994, The participants in the Virtual Observatory are going to coordinate initiatives at the local, regional, continental and global levels to denounce and develop actions to put pressure to end the impunity regarding actual cases that women have denounced. The actions of this Mission will be covered by FIRE collaboration with CIMAC, La Cuerda, and other local and international media, and will include launching an international pronouncement against violence toward women in Guatemala; a Forum Against Violence toward Women in Guatemala; a meeting to design alternatives to protect human rights activists; and the presentation of the play, “The Labyrinth Of the Butterflies” in the Theater of Fine Arts on May 12th for the general public. For more information regarding possible virtual or actual participation, access to the information and ways to multiply it in the media, visit Fire's web site in English (http://www.radiofeminista.net/indexeng.htm) or Spanish (http://radiofeminista.net/) or email us at: oficina@radiofeminista.net. News Coverage: The Guatemala Times (http://www.guatemala-times.com/news/guatemala/1104-women-nobel-peace-laureates-conference-in-antigua-guatemala.html) Nobel Women Meet In Guatemala (http://www.thenews.com.mx/home/tnArticulo.asp?cve_cont=324209) Mon, 11 May 2009 17:37:47 +0100 http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1178&Itemid=165 Between 1975-79, over 1.7 million Cambodian women, men and children were killed by the Khmer Rouge, among them my parents. The world community knew about it but watched from afar. Cambodia has come out of genocide and on the road to reconstruction but this stage of reconstruction is stuck and in many ways quickly falling back to point zero. 30 years after the genocide of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia has made some progress but too small. Over 2,000 innocent Cambodian women die every year of childbirth, at least one million Cambodian children go to bed hungry every night, hundreds of thousands Cambodian children and female youth are ruined in brothels, over 200,000 families have been brutally forced of their land and homes, and over 75% of Cambodia’s forests have now been destroyed. Innocent lives of my people could be saved if justice were served, if top leaders of my broken nation were less greedy, if development were meant for all. I left Cambodia as an innocent young adolescent because the Vietnam war was approaching and hundreds and thousands of sick, wounded and hungry families were already telling us that Cambodia was lost. I returned home 18 years later with two young children, to a nation in ruins. A new beginning gave us hope when the UN came to help Cambodia organize its first democratic election in 1993. It cost the world community 2 billion dollars. I became a leader in the women’s movement, moving communities and walking the peace walk in city streets and dirt roads to pray for non-violence. I joined politics and became the first woman to lead the women’s ministry that was lead by a man, campaigned nationwide to put an end to human trafficking, authored the draft law on domestic violence, signed treaties with neighboring countries to protect our women and children from being prosecuted as illegal migrants but to receive proper treatment as victims of sex slavery. I witness violence not as a victim but I listen to hundreds and thousands of women and children speak of the shame, the violation, the soul that is taken away when violence is afflicted on their bodies and on their minds. As a politician I always try to take action, to walk to the villages where life seems to have stopped for centuries, I challenge the top leadership of the government — I question international aid. Today, I am faced with the real possibility of going to jail because as self-defense I dare to sue the prime minister of Cambodia, a man who has ruled this nation for 30 years. Having been assaulted to the point where I stood half exposed in front of men, by a general I caught using a state car to campaign for the party of the prime minister, I found myself assaulted again, this time verbally by the prime minister who compares me to a woman hustler who grabbed men for attention. Within days my parliamentary immunity will be lifted so the court can “investigate” my case. This is normal procedure for politicians from the opposition party or human rights activists or the poor who cannot bribe court officials. I will be detained in the notorious prison of “Prey Sar” for as long as the courts wish to take. Many of my colleagues in the opposition, including my party leader have faced this fate for speaking out. Cambodia receives close to a billion dollars in 2009 from the international community, the USA contributing close to 60 million. Is the world still watching in silence while Cambodia is now ruled by one man? Is the world afraid to say that its aid is actually taking Cambodia backwards? Let no Cambodian children go to bed hungry anymore. Let no Cambodian woman be sold anymore. We must walk tall despite being people bent from the trauma of the Khmer Rouge, which is still a part of us. Let us not let our leaders and the world-community use this trauma to give us justice by the teaspoon. Let there be real justice. Mu Sochua Elected Member of Parliament Sam Rainsy Party For more Information, visit our media center (media-center/current-grantee-news/). Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:56:41 +0100