NEWS & ARTICLES
WOMEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVISM
Gender-parity 'revolution' in Tunisia hailed
Women march to demand release of men held in security swoop in Syria
Seminar on status of Egyptian women after the revolution
The Revolution in Egypt is Not Complete Without Women's Participation
The road from Sidi Bouzid to Algiers

CALLS & STATEMENTS
UN Rapporteur Frank La Rue urges Algerian Government to probe killing of political activist
Regressive calls for repealing personal status code & children’s code in Egypt
Situation of and assistance to Palestinian women
International civil society organizations call for immediate implementation of reforms in Syria
Release Women Human Rights Defender and victim of rape, Iman al-Obeidi

GENDER & HUMAN RIGHTS
Women's Nationality Laws Sweep the Middle East

GENDER BASED VIOLENCE
In Palestine
Peace activist murdered by jihadi-Salafi group in Palestine
Israel Arrests Scores of Women in the West Bank
In Algeria
Art about rape of women by fundamentalist armed groups censored in Algeria
In Syria
Government compromises women's rights to appease conservatives in Syria
In Egypt
"The Law of the Salafi's challenges the Law of the State and terrifies women in Egypt"
In Saudi-Arabia
Further Appeal to Save Rizana Nafeek
In Armenia
Domestic Violence and Poverty of Armenian’s Women 

BOOKS & REPORTS
GENDER RIGHTS
Yemen - Discrimination & Violence Against Women & Girls - Report
Global Civil Society Survey on What Women Want

NEWS & ARTICLES
WOMEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVISM
Gender-parity 'revolution' in Tunisia hailed
Tunisia's ruling that men and women must feature in equal numbers as candidates in July polls is an Arab world first that builds on this year's revolt and allays fears of conservative influence, observers say. The decision by authorities preparing the July 24 constituent assembly poll after the uprising that toppled Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the North African nation's long-serving president, has been hailed as a regional breakthrough. For more information please follow the link: http://www.wluml.org/node/7099

Women march to demand release of men held in security swoop in Syria
Hundreds of Syrian women have marched along the country's main coastal highway to demand the release men seized from their hometown, human rights activists said. Security forces, including secret police, stormed the town of Baida, going into houses and arresting hundreds of men after locals joined anti-government protests, according to the activists. Video showed a large crowd, most of them women, marching along the road leading to Turkey as they chanted: "We want the men of Baida." For more information please follow the link
http://www.wluml.org/node/7084

Seminar on status of Egyptian women after the revolution
The Egyptian Center for Women's Rights held a seminar entitled "Towards a fair representation in the Parliament" on April 4, 2011. 70 male and female participants including heads of parties, political experts, legal experts, activists, heads of NGOs and male and female parliamentary representatives as well as male and female media workers attended the seminar. The seminar started with a speech by Mrs. Nehad Abul Komsan, head of ECWR, who tackled political problems and challenges that Egyptian women face after the 25th of January Revolution. She outlined the outputs of a report on the status of Egyptian women after the revolution and praised the stance of the Tagammu' party that submitted a draft law stating the necessity of women's representation in nomination with a minimum percentage of 30%. For more information about the seminar please follow the link: http://www.wluml.org/node/7069

The Revolution in Egypt is Not Complete Without Women's Participation
The Egyptian Center for Women's Rights held a roundtable entitled "feminizing the Egyptian Revolution… the political future in Egypt" on Thursday, April 7, 2011. Male and female media workers and decision makers of the Egyptian media attended the roundtable.
The roundtable started with a speech of Mrs. Nehad Abul Komsan, head of ECWR, on the appearance of some powers that try to exploit women in order to control everything, to bring the society backward and to keep woman away from the democratic transition process. Moreover, the decision makers, be it the military council or the cabinet, do not care about involving women in this stage and they exclude women from the political future. For more information about the roundtable please follow the link
http://www.wunrn.com/news/2011/04_11/04_11/041111_egypt.htm

The road from Sidi Bouzid to Algiers
A hundred stalwart demonstrators stand on the Place de 1er Mai (First of May Square) in Algiers, at what has become their weekly Saturday gathering. They include activists from opposition political parties, women's rights advocates, and people who are just plain fed up. This small but resolute troop is surrounded (and vastly outnumbered) by police who push them around and try to make them go away. For more information please follow the link
 http://www.wluml.org/node/7057

CALLS & STATEMENTS
UN Rapporteur Frank La Rue urges Algerian Government to probe killing of political activist
The independent United Nations expert on the right to freedom of opinion and expression called on the Algerian Government to investigate the killing of a political activist he had met on a recent official visit to the North African nation and to bring those responsible to justice. Ahmed Kerroumi reportedly disappeared on 19 April and his body was found in his office four days later. He was a professor at the University of Oran, and member of the opposition party Democratic and Social Movement and the Oran section of the National Coordination for Change and Democracy.  For more information please follow the link
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38199&Cr=Algeria&Cr1=

Regressive calls for repealing personal status code & children’s code in Egypt
The Egyptian Center for Women's Rights and the Egyptian Coalition for Civil Education and Women's Participation follow up the regressive calls for repealing the social laws in Egypt such as the personal status code and the children’s code in a great worry. These codes were previously amended in order to guarantee the rights of human-beings, including women and children. Those amendments did not reach the extent of an approval of the rights of women and children as fully eligible citizens. For more information please follow the link
 http://www.wluml.org/node/7077

Situation of and assistance to Palestinian women
Recalling the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, in particular paragraph 260 concerning Palestinian women and children, the Beijing Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women and the outcomes of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”, Recalling also its resolution 2010/6 of 20 July 2010 and other relevant United Nations resolutions, for the full call and to see the full draft resolution http://www.wluml.org/node/7065

International civil society organizations call for immediate implementation of reforms in Syria
Over the past 12 days, peaceful protests in Syria have been faced with violence. The blood of too many people was spilled and others were arrested and beaten by security forces. As long as this violence goes on, the Syrian government’s legitimacy will diminish by the day both in the eyes of the Syrian people as in the eyes of the international community. For more information please follow the link http://www.wluml.org/node/7054

Release Women Human Rights Defender and victim of rape, Iman al-Obeidi
The Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) international solidarity network joins other human rights organizations and civil society groups calling for the Libyan authorities to immediately release 29 year-old lawyer and defender of women’s human rights, Iman Al-Obeidi. We also demand that those who have allegedly subjected her to a violent sexual assault, and false imprisonment, be brought to trial following a thorough and independent investigation. To read the full call and story updates please follow the link http://www.wluml.org/node/7062 

GENDER & HUMAN RIGHTS
Women's Nationality Laws Sweep the Middle East
Women’s quest for equality took a giant leap forward with the passage of nationality laws in Libya, Palestine, Tunisia and Yemen and with initial steps taken in Lebanon. Nationality laws grant women equal treatment under the law and ensure that even if they marry a man of a different nationality, their children will not be denied citizenship in their own country. This legal guarantee is also critical to ensuring women and children’s access to basic resources, like education, health care and employment.  Since 2001, GFW grantees have engaged in research, advocacy, media reform, and protests to support women’s full citizenship across nine countries - Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. These victories were the outcome of the “Arab Women’s Right to Nationality” regional campaign led by our grantee partners with regional coordination by the Collective for Research and Training on Development in Action (CRTD-A) in Lebanon. With democratic uprisings sweeping the Middle East, the struggle towards equal citizenship continues and grows. For more information please follow the link http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/impact/success-stories/top-10-wins-for...

GENDER BASED VIOLENCE
In Palestine
Peace activist murdered by jihadi-Salafi group in Palestine
Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni has been killed in the Gaza Strip by individuals identifying themselves as belonging to a small jihadi-Salafi group. The discovery of Vittorio’s body came after the Italian’s abductors had released a video announcing their demands and a deadline. In fact, it now seems they murdered Vittorio not long after his abduction. Vittorio was part of the International Solidarity Movement, whose members and supporters in Palestine/Israel and internationally are shocked and saddened. For more information please follow the link http://www.wluml.org/node/7091

Israel Arrests Scores of Women in the West Bank
Israeli troops have stormed Awarta village in the northern West Bank, arresting more than 100 women as they hunted the killers of an Israeli family from the illegal settlement of Itamar, officials said. The military also used bulldozers to destroy Palestinian houses in a northern farming village east of Tubas, in an area under Israeli control, according to Palestinian security officials. In Awarta, hundreds of troops entered the village shortly after midnight on Thursday and imposed a curfew after which they began rounding up women, many of whom were elderly, local council head Tayis Awwad told the AFP news agency. For more information please follow the link http://www.wluml.org/node/7074
In Algeria
Art about rape of women by fundamentalist armed groups censored in Algeria
Even as the Arab spring unfolds across the region, I learned with profound astonishment that Mr. Jack Persekian, director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, has been dismissed as “punishment” for allowing an artist invited to the Sharjah Biennial total freedom of expression. I am the artist in question. My installation “Maportaliche/Ecritures sauvages” [It has no importance/Wild Writings] has been censored and removed from the Biennial. For more information please follow the link http://www.wluml.org/node/7089

In Syria
Government compromises women's rights to appease conservatives in Syria
It is not a new thing that the Syrian government traffics women like some religious figures who have sold their consciousness, values and humanity to enable their masculinity to enslave women. The government seems ready to do this again. What is really scary this time round is that the government started to pay “the cost” of the attitudes taken by few of those religious figures, and it seems that women would be again the victims of this compromise in many ways. For more information please follow the link  http://www.wluml.org/node/7081

In Egypt
"The Law of the Salafi's challenges the Law of the State and terrifies women in Egypt"
The Egyptian Center for Women's Rights received the news on incidents in Minufiya governorate, for it witnessed a dangerous incident for the first time: 350 Salafis confronted the state law and surrounded a house of a woman in Sadat city, forced her out of her house, threw her house's furniture on the street, burned the house and threatened to kill her if she returned to her home. They did so claiming that her conduct was immoral and dishonorable. When they broke into the house, she was alone; they terrified her and took her out of the house by force. This is considered a dangerous incident, especially as it is not the first time something like this happened. For more information please follow the link http://www.wluml.org/node/7068

In Saudi-Arabia
Further Appeal to Save Rizana Nafeek
"Rizana Nafeek of Sri Lanka,went to Saudi Arabia as a maid when she was 17 years old. She was later sentenced to death by a Saudi court on the allegation that she had killed an infant of her employer. However, she completely denied the charges and explained that the death occurred as an accident by suffocation while she was bottle feeding the child."We have not received any communication from our daughter," said Muhammad Nafeek, the father of Rizana, the Sri Lankan domestic worker who has been sentenced to death by a Saudi Arabian court. Rizana went to Saudi Arabia as house maid via a foreign employment agency in Colombo six years before on the strength of a fake birth certificate while she was 17 years old. Rizana contacted her parents when her death penalty was postponed in November last year… to read the full story please follow the link http://www.wunrn.com/news/2011/04_11/04_04/040411_saudi.htm

In Armenia
Domestic Violence and Poverty of Armenian’s Women 
There is an old folk saying in Armenia, “A woman is like wool, and the more you beat her, the softer she will be.” Whether it is the result of a traditional mindset, rampant poverty, or simply a lack of knowledge, domestic violence has been a historically widespread and unacknowledged social issue in the Republic of Armenia. For more information please follow the link
http://www.wunrn.com/news/2011/04_11/04_04/040411_armenia.htm

BOOKS & REPORTS
GENDER RIGHTS
Yemen - Discrimination & Violence Against Women & Girls - Report
Report presented at UN Human Rights Committee 101st Session - Review of YEMEN, by Amnesty International.
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/hrcs101.htm -
The UN Human Rights Committee is the body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by its State parties. Please follow the direct link for the 8-page report: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/docs/ngos/Yemen's%20darkside-discrimination_Yemen_HRC101.pdf

Global Civil Society Survey on What Women Want
At CSW 55, Oxfam and VSO UK launched the outcomes of our global civil society survey on women’s needs, priorities and expectations on UN Women at country level. The views of 100 civil society organizations, including grassroots and women’s rights organizations, from 75 countries on the priorities for UNW and its approach to working at country level are now made available in a report. The report, called A Blueprint for UN Women, can be downloaded via:
http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/blueprint-un-women_final-...