Participation

The draft proposal of a new constitution for Egypt, has caused fiery protests from civil society and women's organizations in the country. Last week several hundred people demonstrated in Cairo against the absence of women in the process and against the new Article 36, stating that women's equal rights should be ensured ”without violation of the rules of Islamic jurisprudence”.

Nearly two years after the start of Arab Spring uprisings, Arab women are facing the reality that toppling dictators was only the beginning of their fight for freedom and equality. Barbara Slavin reports from a recent conference, during which a group of young Arab women activists discussed and debated these challenges.

As the last of this year's Nobel Prize winners are announced and media focus shifts away from Sweden, two things are clear about the winners.

One: They have all done laudatory work in their respective fields.

Two: Aside from the European Union, which was awarded the Peace Prize, all of this year's Nobel laureates are men.

On Monday, October 15, the government and FARC negotiators will sit down in Oslo to begin the next phase of the Colombian peace talks. Next Wednesday, they are expected to hold a joint press conference, after which the talks will move to Havana, Cuba, where negotiators will resume discussions the following week.

The aid plans were launched earlier this year by Norway, the World Bank, European Union, United Kingdom, United Nations and Australia.

Norway's ambassador refutes that notion and says the funds goal is a lasting peace, according to an article on the Voice of America website on Thursday.

The lack of women's economic and political participation, and lack of women's education, kept Arab countries from developing properly, said US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer on the sidelines of the Women's Forum in Deauville, France. Then came the Arab Spring and “women were shoulder-to-shoulder with men in the revolutions.”

It was stressed that representation of women in Parliament and the Senate must be between 33 and 50 per cent.

This was stated by speakers at a two-day long annual conference on the International Day of Rural Women, organised by Potohar Organisation for Development Advocacy (Poda).

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma waved an African Union flag, tapped a wooden gavel and became the first woman to take office as the Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC) at the A.U. headquarters in Addis Ababa on Monday.

The Equal power – Lasting Peace conference gathered more than 100 participants, EU and NATO officials and politicians, as well as civil society representatives – in the audience and among the panelists.

The opinions and discussions at the conference were many, all of them though sharing a common stand: something has to be done to increase women's participation in peace negotiations. The question is how and by whom.

“This is what I live for…,” Koofi writes. “…And what I know I will die for.”