Women

Women in Prison 

Kobra Rahmani's husband demanded her execution

(Persian)

Unknown destiny of 32000  Iranian women married to refugees from Afghanistan

(Persian) 

Amina lawal’s stoning sentence is overruled

The fight to abolish stoning law is continuing

Human rights and women rights defenders, freedom loving people

Our international campaign to save Amina Lawal has finally paid off and her stoning sentence was overruled. This was a tremendous victory for all those involved specially thousands of freedom loving people around the world whom lent their support to this worthy humanitarian cause. 

Amnesty - alarming scale of violence against women

  A new Amnesty International study has concluded that one in three women or up to one billion of the world's women faced serious violence in their lifetime. This abuse is at the core of every society, in every country, in the bedroom and on battlefields, Amnesty says. Its report highlights female genital mutilation, so-called "honour" killings and sexual exploitation. Each year two million girls aged between five and 15 are forced into the commercial sex market. In some societies, up to 70 percent of murder victims are women who are killed by their male partners.

Afghan province bans women performers on TV, radio

Reuters,, April 17, 2004

JALALABAD, Afghanistan, April 17 (Reuters) - An Afghan province has banned women from performing on television and radio, declaring female entertainers un-Islamic, a provincial official said on Saturday.

The ban in Nangahar, a southeastern province heavily patrolled by U.S.-led troops hunting for Islamic militants, took effect from Friday and also covers women presenters of news and other information, the official said.

The decision echoes the strict imposition of sharia Islamic law imposed during the Taliban's repressive five-year rule of Afghanistan when television was banned, women were forbidden from working and girls were kept out of schools.

It also follows a heavily debated decision by Kabul Television in January to show an old tape of Parasto, a popular woman singer who now lives in the West, in a move that brought a controversial end to a long-running ban on women singers.

Moderates have said showing women singers on television was in line with the new Afghan constitution as it gave equal rights to women.

But some provinces remain deeply conservative and provincial governors command broad authority over their regions, often in defiance of the central government.

Nangahar, which borders Pakistan, is one of several regions where the United States has stepped up a hunt for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and remnants of the Taliban militia that U.S.-led forces drove from power in late 2001.

Diplomats said Nangahar's ban would be seen as a setback for moderates in President Hamid Karzai's government in their battle with conservatives opposed to liberalisation since the Taliban's overthrow.

Woman's day in Iran

sent by : Sadaf Kiani

March 8th, International Woman's Day

Author fights for women's rights in her native Iran

Azar Nafisi is uncomfortable with conformity.

She was expelled from her teaching job at the University of Tehran in 1981 for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil. In 1995, she resigned from a teaching job at Allameh Tabatabaii in Tehran, where she had been wearing the veil incorrectly, rather than bow to pressure to change.

(Click to Read)

Arab Women Rise

Regarding Rainia

Stepping out of her gunmetal-gray SUV and striding into the compound of Amman's Kamalia School for Girls, Rania al Abdullah doesn't fit the prim, circumspect image of an Arab Queen. For one thing, she's wearing a snug-fitting metallic gold top, matching pants and two-inch heels, and her mane of glossy brown hair brushes across her shoulders as she walks.

(Click to Read)

Afghan ruling council gets earful from one of its few female delegates

While an online news story said she caused a controversy that "threatened to overshadow the work of the council," reporters Bashir Gawkh and Danish Karokhel, writing for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) project, filed an Internet report observing that Malalai had "broken through the wall of silence for ordinary people" and captivated regular Afghans who had not cared much about the business of this loya jirga.

(Click to Read)