03/10/2012

Women's right: HRW's book


More on Women's right...

The Unfinished Revolution: Voices from the Global Fight for Women's Rights

Minky Worden (Editor), Christiane Amanpour (Introduction)- Human Rights Watch
 


The NGO Human Rights Watch is on tour for its book The Unfinished Revolution: Voices from the Global Fight for Women’s Rights (Seven Stories Press).

Nobel Peace Prize laureates, feminists, human rights victims, and their researchers contributed to the book’s essays.

In May, the NOG's members spoke in London, Paris, and Munich, they tell on their website.

Last weekend, they held book events in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, California, where they discussed the struggle to secure rights for women and girls around the globe.

But we can still hear more.

In October, they will be taking the book to Canada – Toronto and Ottawa, specifically.

To learn more about issues affecting equal rights, and about how to help create opportunities for women around the globe, see here:

http://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Revolution-Voices-Global-Womens/dp/1609803876


March 6, 2012
 
“It’s a time of change in the world, with dictators toppling and new opportunities rising, but any revolution that doesn’t create equality for women will be incomplete. The time has come to realize the full potential of half the world’s population.” —Christiane Amanpour, from the foreword

The Unfinished Revolution tells the story of the global struggle to secure basic rights for women and girls, including in the Middle East where the Arab Spring raised high hopes, but the political revolutions are so far insufficient to guarantee progress. Around the world, women and girls are trafficked into forced labor and sex slavery, trapped in conflict zones where rape is a weapon of war, prevented from attending school, and kept from making deeply personal choices in their private lives, such as whom and when to marry. In many countries, women are second-class citizens by law. In others, religion and traditions block freedoms such as the right to work, study or access health care. Even in the United States, women who are victims of sexual violence often do not see their attackers brought to justice.

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HRW's latest report on the issue:

http://www.hrw.org/node/110474

Trapped in an Abusive Marriage
When Namrata, a Bangladeshi Hindu, asked for a glass of water, her husband instead gave her a glass of acid. Today, with her mouth and throat destroyed, she eats through a feeding tube. Having already spent her life savings, her husband disappeared after the attack.
Yet Namrata cannot legally divorce her husband due to Bangladesh’s archaic Hindu family laws.

Bangladesh’s family laws, which govern marriage, separation, and divorce, were created decades ago – in some cases, more than a century ago. There are separate laws for Muslims, Hindus, and Christians, but all discriminate against women – often leaving them with virtually no income or assets and nowhere to live when marriages end.

These laws trap women like Namrata in abusive marriages. And if their marriages fall apart, women often fall into poverty, sometimes going homeless and hungry.

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