Gaza: Brilliant wonderful news - BBC reporter Alan Johnston has been finally released, after much worry and an agonising, 114 days in captivity.
and the Guardian
What will be interesting to see as we get more information - is what role Hamas have played in this release, and how the world reacts to this, how this affects the dynamics of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and certainly Hamas-Fatah dynamics.
I”ve been meaning to write about this wonderful network - the Women”s Learning Partnership (WLP) - before but have been procrastinating.
No time like the present:
In a nutshell, they”re about female empowerment as part of human equality, and positive thinking : they”re a network of networks - they work with 18 autonomous and independent partner organizations in the Global South, particularly in Muslim-majority societies, to “empower women to transform their families, communities, and societies.”
One of their particular campaigns that I wanted to highlight is “Claiming Equal Citizenship“: the Campaign for Arab Women”s Right to Nationality.
Women’s right to equal citizenship is guaranteed by the majority of Arab constitutions, as well as by international law. Yet across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the Gulf, women are denied their right to nationality – a crucial component of citizenship.
In almost every country in the MENA and Gulf regions, women who marry men of other nationalities cannot confer their original nationality to their husbands or children. Only fathers, not mothers, can confer their nationality to their children.
Discriminatory laws denying women equal nationality rights undermine women’s status as equal citizens in their home countries. Such laws send the message that women do not enjoy a direct relationship with the state, but must access their citizenship rights through mediation of a male family member, such as a father or a husband. Until women in the MENA and Gulf regions are recognized as full nationals and citizens, they cannot participate fully in public life, nor claim the other rights to which they are entitled as equal members of their societies.
The denial of women’s nationality rights also created real suffering for dual nationality families living in the woman’s home country. Children and spouses are treated as foreigners and must obtain costly residence permits. Children are often excluded from social services such as social security, healthcare and subsidized or free access to education. In many countries, spouses and children have limited employment opportunities and are unable to own property. In terms of psychological impact, many women feel isolated and guilty because they feel responsible for the difficulties faced by their families, while children suffer from low self-esteem because of their second-class status.
I have written about this problem as affecting Bangladeshi women in the past - not being able to confer nationality upon their children - as it is passed through the father. Essentially this is how I found out about this campaign, one of the WLP activists commented upon my post and pointed me to their work.
The goals of the campaign are to call for
Please sign the petitions to support equal rights to citizenship for men and women.
Your signature sends a message of support to partners, who can use the international visibility to strengthen their advocacy efforts for amending nationality laws.
August 2nd 1990 - 16 years ago. Iraqi troops invade Kuwait - eventually leading to the Gulf War.
I remember that day far too clearly - I was 12 years old then. About 6 a.m. my dream was getting a bit loud and i woke up and found the noise was was real. a funny noise and the floor was somewhat shuddery.. I had these great big windows and i leaned out and what did i see..( well i don”t have my own pictures anymore so this will have to do to give you an idea)
We were supposed to be going on holiday at 10. a.m. Seeing as the airport was the first thing that was bombed - that obviously wasn”t going to happen. What was going on ? i remember the unreality feeling being the strongest during those early moments. is this really happening? this can”t be happening! we had to listen to the BBC and Voice of America broadcasts on the radio announcing that Iraq had invaded Kuwait before it started to sink in. Well it didn”t really sink in for a bit - not till later on in the day when we stepped outside to see lots of soldiers with rifles milling about, and later later on all the casualties of the morning”s shelling strewn about the highways and roads. of course there was no one left to clear up the wreckages. one of the things that most stuck in my mind was the image of a car wrapped around and melted into a traffic lampost, and you could see the hole where the bomb had landed. Years later obviously no car anymore but the warped lampost remained..
anyways. i hope never to wake up to something like that again - but you never know. taking safety for granted is something i try not to do anymore.
–There”s not much interest on the net about this day and memorials etc. - i did a google search to see if anyone else had noted that some of us might be marking this date - ha not much - everything is either about the Gulf War - or as is to be expected - stick in invasion and iraq and kuwait and the 2003 events come up) But hey. I know there are a lot of people out there - spread across the world ( Kuwait was and still is mostly full of “expatriates”) who went through this ( who”re still alive that is..) and whether or not they are sitting there consciously remembering this day 16 years ago - here”s to life.
I haven”t ever really written anything much about my experiences and I may do some day. There”s too much to go into here and now anyways. Later on in life when i read the Diary of Anne Frank a couple of things really resonated with me. The waiting the not knowing and Anne was writing about her 14th birthday in hiding, and that made me think about my 13th birthday. i”m a virgo so i turned 13 that September, still under “Occupation”. Some fun that was! Being a year younger than the others in my class had always made me eager to be a bit older. and as a 12 year old i couldn”t wait to become a teenager. all my mates” had had their 13th birthday parties and i had been so looking forward to mine. Alas..
–Still i”ve lived to tell my tale if i so choose but unfortunately Anne - and a million other people across the world in different conflicts - didn”t. So i”m pretty thankful and lucky.
On a lighter note : - in 1967 on this day the second Blackwall Tunnel opened in Greenwich.
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