The following is a post written by Vital Voices’ Asia Program Intern, Shonali Banerjee.

On June 24, a two-day international conference on the rights of widows was held in Katmandu, Nepal. Representatives from around Asia, Europe and the United States attended the conference, which organizers hoped would spur a worldwide effort to help widows fight the numerous injustices they face daily.

Widows in the Asia face discrimination and economic hardship, and are often ostracized from society, viewed as taboo or cursed individuals. In Nepal, where tens of thousands of women lost their husbands during the country’s 10-year civil conflict, widows are banished from society, forced to wear white, and even blamed for the death of their husband. Nepalese widows are also prohibited from participating in religious ceremonies or rituals due to their banishment.

The Nepalese Minister for Women, Children and Social Welfare stated that the national government would gather accurate figures on the number of widows in Nepal’s next national census in 2011. He also made a pledge to abolish all national laws that discriminate against single women, saying that this action would help to raise their status within Nepalese society.

Read more: Nepal hosts international conference on widows - BBC

Sadiqa Basiri Saleem, 2009 Vital Voices Rising Voices Award honoree, has been awarded the 2010 Patricia Blunt Koldyke Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.

The fellowship was created in 2006 by Patricia Blunt and Martin J. Koldyke to recognize emerging leaders who focus on alleviating the social perils that ail children and youth. As a fellow, Sadiqa has been awarded $12,500 as well as a week’s stay in Chicago.

While in Chicago, she will meet with local organizations, businesses and government institutions, and will be given the opportunity to learn from these programs as well as provide insight from her own projects. The fellowship enables the flow of best practices and innovative ideas. Sadiqa will be honored by The Chicago Council’s Board and other leading figures from Chicago and will deliver the annual Patricia Blunt Koldyke Lecture.

Sadiqa is Co-Founder of the Oruj Learning Center. Established in 2002 by three women refugees living in Pakistan, the Oruj Learning Center is the solitary local organization operating in the Wardak province of eastern Afghanistan, located just three hours from Kabul.

The Center seeks to provide education and combat violence against women. In her current position as Co-Founder of the Oruj Learning Center, Sadiqa hopes to establish two new schools for returning Afghan citizens and Internally Displaced Persons. She also looks to establish an Afghan Women’s Leadership Institute to train high school graduates on business management and leadership skills. Sadiqa holds an undergraduate degree from Mount Holyoke College, where she enrolled as a prestigious Francis Perkins Scholar. She is an active member of the Vital Voices Global Leadership Network and was a supporter of the Vital Voices 2002 program, ‘Back to Work, Back to School Afghan Uniform Project to Support Women and Girls’.

The followig is a blog post written by Vital Voices Asia Program Intern, Shonali Banerjee.

A new sex education initiative is sparking controversy throughout the Philippines. The new plan aims to cut down the rapid population growth rate that is arguably responsible for the country’s skyrocketing poverty rates. Speaking openly about sex is taboo within the nation, and the influential Roman Catholic Church has demanded that the new plan be scrapped. However, the federal government is struggling to find any other potential solutions to the 2 percent annual population growth.

According to Mona Valisno, the Education Secretary, the plan is to introduce the Adolescent Reproductive Health Program to students from fifth grade onward. The initiative will at first be launched in 80 public elementary schools and 79 high schools, but will soon be expanded nationwide. Numerous topics will be discussed within the program, including the different aspects of personal hygiene, reproductive health, pre-marital sex, teenage pregnancy, and HIV/AIDS awareness.

Secretary Valisno has said that numerous psychologists were consulted during the planning process of the program, ensuring that the material discussed would be age appropriate.

“Our role here is to educate the young people on issues that directly affect them and empower them to make informed choices and decisions.”

Continue Reading »

The following is a post writen by Vital Voices Human Rights Intern, Kristian Hinson.

June 14 marked the release of the Department of State’s 10^th annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The TIP report was established by the Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA). The report ranks 177 countries on their compliance with the TVPA’s minimum standards to combat human trafficking within their borders using a three-tiered scale. A tier one ranking indicates that the government is fully complying with the minimum standards whereas a tier three ranking indicates that the government is not actively trying to meet these standards. Although tier placement rates compliance, it does not necessarily reflect the size of a country’s trafficking problem.

The 2010 TIP report includes several hallmarks. First, the report ranks the United States for the first time. The United States received a tier one ranking for governmental efforts to combat trafficking such as increasing enforcement of anti-trafficking laws. But, the report does recognize that the U.S. has a serious problem with trafficking within its borders. Second, the report notes the growing number of females among trafficking victims.

Women and girls make up approximately 56 percent of all trafficking victims.

During her remarks at the report’s release, the Undersecretary for Democracy and Global Affairs, Maria Otero, labeled this growing trend the “feminization” of human trafficking. Women and girls are more likely to be targeted for sexual exploitation than men and boys. In addition, they are increasingly found in situations of forced labor that were previously thought to predominately affect male victims.

The Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons which was created by the TVPA uses the “3P” approach to address trafficking: Prosecution, Protection, and Prevention. At the June 14 release, Secretary Clinton introduced a fourth P to this paradigm; Partnership. Clinton states, “human trafficking is not someone else’s problem” and that government, law enforcement, NGOs, and faith-based organizations need to ban together to fight this global epidemic and lend support to those who are not meeting the standardsp>

The first teenage chapter of Vital Voices has been established in Westport, Connecticut by Staples High School freshman Alexis Teixeira. Alexis and her friends were inspired after meeting Vital Voices 2010 Global Leadership Award honoree Rebecca Lolosoli, who told the students about the lack of education for girls in her region of Kenya.

Since the fall, Teen Vital Voices has hosted guest speakers and raised funds to send four Kenyan girls to school for a year at Kakenya’s Center for Excellence, the school founded by Vital Voices 2008 Global Leadership Award honoree Kakenya Ntaiya.

Read more in Alexis’ post about Teen Vital Voices.

A new study conducted by the Gulf-based research group YouGovSirak disproves the widely held belief that Arab women throughout the Middle East do not have access to, or interest in, the Internet outside of work.  Instead, the study shows that the vast majority of Arab women access the web from home (85%), belongs to a social networking site (71%), and uses the Internet to connect with friends on a daily basis (66%). 

The study reflects the evolving attitude towards being online for all sorts of personal reasons. Not only are women online to chat with friends, 45% of Arab women online read articles from newspapers and magazines on the Internet.  The study captured the activities of over 1,250 women from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.  Lebanon held the highest online usage for women with 68% of those surveyed spending more than seven hours a week online outside of work, followed by the UAE at 55%, Kuwait 53%, Egypt 50%, Qatar 47%, Saudi Arabia and Jordan 44%, Bahrain 42%, Syria 34% and Oman 30%. 

The study found Facebook to be the leading social networking platform among Arab women, with an estimated 91% of online Lebanese women having a Facebook account, followed by 80% of online women in Egypt, 78% in the UAE, 70% in Jordan, 68% in Kuwait and Qatar, 66% in Bahrain, 64% in Saudi Arabia, 55% in Oman and 45% in Syria.  “This was a huge study,” said Lara Al Barazi, Research Manager.  Continue Reading »

Kamla Persad-Bissessar has been elected the first female prime minister in Trinidad and Tobago. The 58-year-old “shattered the glass ceiling” in a “landslide win,” reports the Miami Herald. Read the full story.

May 30 - Our film, Kakenya, is being featured on the homepage of YouTbe as our month-long media campaign with Board Member Diane von Furstenberg and YouTube Video Volunteers comes to an end. Throughout May, we partnered with Video Volunteers to spotlight women’s empowerment organizations working to make a difference in the lives of women and girls around the world.

We called out to organizations and their supporters, inviting video submissions about nonprofit organizations advancing the status of women. The three winning videos chosen were: The Power of One, Where we are from & where we are going, and Women’s Media Center - watch all three alongside our film on the homepage of YouTube today and then visit our site to learn three ways to Raise Your Voice.

Vital Voices alumna, Zimbabwean Vongai Chikwanda, writes about a recent dialogue held in her home country on women’s political and economic empowerment. Former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, was among the high-level participants, who gathered to discuss the implementation of the Zimbabwean Global Political Agreement (GPA), which posits a new political and economic order following years of political turbulence in the nation.

From April 26-20, Zimbabwean Women hosted former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and six prominent women leaders in Africa, including: Brigalia Bam (South Africa), Chairperson of the South African Independent Electoral Commission, Dr Achola Pala (Kenya), former Chief Advisor Africa Desk UNIFEM, Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda (Zimbabwe), General Secretary YWCA and Regional Director of East and Horn Of Africa UNIFEM, Lois Bruthus (Liberia), Liberian Ambassador to South Africa and Zimbabwe, Elizabeth Lulle (Uganda), World Bank Africa, Dr Thelma Awori, former UN Resident Representative to Zimbabwe.

Former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson:

“The coming together of Zimbabwean women across their diversities provides a new impetus and bridge for implementation of the Global Political Agreement.”

The aim of the dialogue was to raise the momentum on the equal participation of women in the constitutional, transitional justice, national healing, reconciliation and peacebuilding processes. The women leaders had a dialogue with more than 500 women, including politicians, policy makers, rural women, Christian women, businesswomen, and human rights defenders. They also met with advocacy groups, civil society organizations, the UN and the diplomatic community. They shared experiences on women’s participation in national processes, and the Zimbabwean women drew lessons from the delegation members’ experiences of leadership and effective participation. Mary Robinson also emphasized the need to bring young women’s voices in the public arena to ensure that they are heard.

The delegation of women leaders identified two critical issues:

1. The constitutional reform process is pivotal to the success of the Global Political Agreement. The delegation highlighted how important it is, therefore, that women fully participate in this process so that their rights are enshrined in the new constitution.
2. Given the present economic constraints, resources are required to stimulate women’s economic activities so as to better position their participation in the economy and development.

On the evening of April 30, women’s organizations and High Level Delegation witnessed the leaders of the women’s wings of the three main political parties sign a resolution to work across their political divides to accelerate implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) and build a common agenda for women’s empowerment.

The signing of this historic resolution was witnessed by Olivia Muchena, Minister of Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development; Sekai Holland, Minister in the Organ on National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration; Mary Robinson and Lois Bruthus. Lastly, as a way forward, Mary Robison proposed an International Symposium/ Colloquium in Zimbabwe based on the UNSCR 1325. She also urged the regional and international communities to support the efforts of Zimbabwean women.

Melinda French Gates, 2010 Vital Voices Global Trailblazer, posted a new blog on her recent trips to India and Malawi. While traveling, she met with women who felt the impact of advances in maternal health. Melinda shares her experience in the post, read it here.