From rape to slavery to honor killings, extreme oppression can be the norm for Pakistani women. But Mukhtar Mai, a courageous peasant woman, has built an oasis of hope in her village.

In 2002, Mukhtar Mai was ordered to be gang-raped by a Pakistani tribal council in southern Punjab. By custom, rural women are expected to commit suicide after such an event. Instead, Mukhtar brought her attackers to court, and had them convicted.

“In 2002, when it happened, the government wanted to pay me 500,000 Rupees,” Mukhtar relates. “But I said, ‘You should open a school.’” In the years since Mukhtar has founded the school, she has managed to build a small empire dedicated to defending women in rural Pakistan, the “Mukhtar Mai Women’s Welfare Organization.”

Mukhtar now runs four schools with 900 students. She also operates an ambulance service, a school bus, a women’s shelter, a legal clinic, and a telephone hot line and women’s crisis center - all in this remote village of Meerwala in the southern Punjab. It is a very rare place in Pakistan.

The human rights organization Reach All Women in War presented the second annual Anna Politkovskaya Award - given to courageous women who have defended human rights - to Afghan politician and social activist Malalai Joya.

She has been called ‘the bravest woman in Afghanistan,’ defying the Taliban and the warlords in a tireless campaign for women’s rights and the victims of rape.

A committed leader, and the youngest elected member of Afghanistan’s national parliament, Joya was suspended from her position in Afghanistan’s national parliament in 2007 for speaking out against her country’s former leaders.

The suspension, currently under appeal, sparked international protest.

“My own life and hardships speak for themselves about the obstacles Afghan women face today. I’ve been threatened with death; I’ve survived a number of assassination attempts; and every effort is made by the fundamentalists to silence me. But I am happy to enjoy support of the peace-loving people of the world.”

SOURCE:
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS124602+09-Jul-2008+PRN20080709

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates - A decade ago, unmarried Arab women working outside their home countries, were rare. But now flight attendants have become the public face of the new mobility for some young Arab women. They have become a subject of social anxiety and fascination in much the same way.

“I never in my life thought I’d work abroad,” said Ms. Fathi, who was a university student in Cairo when she began noticing newspaper advertisements recruiting young Egyptians to work at airlines based in the Persian Gulf. “My family thought I was crazy. But then some families don’t let you leave at all.”

Lebanese visual arts activist and entrepreneur, Shereen Diab, is the winner of the 2008 inaugural International Young Visual Arts Entrepreneur (IYVAE) award.

At an emotionally charged ceremony at the INIVA gallery in London’s Shoreditch, Andrea Rose - Director of the British Council’s Visual Arts department - announced Shereen’s win to a packed house.

Visibly shocked, Shereen immediately thanked the British Council for a wonderful initiative and a brilliant program.

In their citation the judges said Shereen Diab’s “work at a grass roots level is linked to a real entrepreneurial ability to affect wider social change in Lebanon through art.”

A Saudi charity which helps divorced and underprivileged women has won a European Union prize for human-rights groups in the Gulf, the Riyadh office of the European Commission said Wednesday.

The Al-Nahda Philanthropic Society for Women - one of Saudi Arabia’s oldest and most prominent non-governmental organizations - won the first $7,760 Chaillot Prize over several other rights groups for its range of activities, including preparing underprivileged and under-educated women for jobs, setting up a school for children with Down Syndrome, and assisting needy families, according to the European Commission.

Aside from helping thousands of poor women learn crafts and trades to help support themselves or augment family income, the group helps to provide housing to poor families and operates health awareness programs for poor women.

SOURCE:
http://www.france24.com/en/20081210-saudi-womens-group-wins-eu-rights-prize

Pakistan - Private donations from America are quietly finding a very different approach to fighting ignorance and extremism - with books not bombs.

“The main reason that we are into education is to help girls get good quality education, so it makes a difference in their lives,” says Tauseef Hyat, Executive director of the non-profit “Developments in Literacy.”

DIL was started in California by Pakistani Expatriates eleven years ago. It has been so successful that DIL now runs 150 schools throughout rural Pakistan.

In these areas conservative traditions are powerful and modern education can be seen as a threat, especially for girls. Mothers who want to educate their daughters sometimes have to do it in secret.

There has been resistance to DIL’s work. “There have been threats to our schools - one of our schools has been burnt down, and we wanted to go back and rebuild it, but the parents were too scared to send their girls,” reports Hyat.

Nonetheless, DIL has made tremendous strides in rural education, attracting some 13,000 students who might otherwise remain illiterate and cut off from the larger world

SOURCES:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/11/22/opinion/1194833601777/books-not-bombs.html  
http://www.dil.org/

When 19-year-old Lama Alghaleb wanted to study in the US like her older brothers, her father demurred, opting instead to enrol her in Dar Al-Hekma, a private all-girls college in Jeddah which offers a western-style education.

Dar Al-Hekma, which means “Abode of Wisdom,” was established in 1999 as a college focusing on creativity for women without the need to travel abroad.

Ms Qurashi, dean of the college, says that the college encourages the kind of free thinking that is consistent with King Abdullah’s efforts to create a diversified economy and improve educational outcomes.

Education for women remains controversial in Saudi Arabia, and many students sought to study abroad.

SOURCE:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/85c0b180-e266-11dd-b1dd-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

GENERAL LINKS:
Empower Peace: http://www.empowerpeace.org/
Global Fund for Women: http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/
Women for Women International: http://www.womenforwomen.org/
Women for Afghan Women: http://www.womenforafghanwomen.org/
Vital Voices: http://www.vitalvoices.org
Omid E Mehr: http://www.omid-e-mehr.org