Women rights

End of al-Assad's 54-year rule: Syrian feminist views on the transitional phase

End of al-Assad's 54-year rule: Syrian feminist views on the transitional phase

On December 8, 2024, Syria entered a new political era after 54 years of the al-Assad family rule. The liberation battle that started from the North ended with power placed in the hands of Hay’at Tahrir al Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda-linked militant group. While the end of the al-Assad era sparked widespread optimism, early formal statements from the new rulers raised concerns, particularly regarding women’s rights.  
Iraq

Iraq’s Environmental Struggle against Foreign Rapacity and Local Greed

Ahwaris in Iraq have been through a series of tragedies over the decades. “We have lived a long history of displacement, oppression and racism. We have always opposed authoritarian governments and any form of authoritarianism. My family was active in opposition to Saddam Hussain. My uncle was killed resisting him in Hor Al-Huwaiza,” explains Ahwari activist and environmental and human rights defender Mustafa Hashim who is part of the “Ahwari Voice-The Ahwari Human Rights network”, one of several self-organized groups in the Marsh lands, the Ahwar (singular Hor), that spread through Southern Iraq and Iran. “But the current Iraqi government refuses to recognize this and give us our rights as a family of a martyr. I have two aunts that were killed due to mine explosions in Hor al-Huwaiza from the remnants of the Iran-Iraq war. Many others here have sustained severe injuries in the aftermath of the war. It is great suffering and sorrow that does not end.”1 
By Ansar Jasim
2023-07-intersectional-feminist-approach-to-soulali-lands-morocco-jihad-yagoubi.jpg

Why We Need Intersectional Feminist Perspectives on Land Justice in Morocco?

In Morocco, collective land is an umbrella term to designate different types of lands throughout the Kingdom that are collectively owned by ethnic and tribal communities across the country. One type of such lands, and the most common, are soulali lands. These lands are managed by the historical communities who are entitled to use them, and they have never been privately owned until the last few decades, when the state started institutionalizing privatization processes, which had already started during the French colonization1 through the Dahir (decree) of April 27, 1919. It is this legal text that began the weakening of the prerogatives of these communities over their land.
By Jihad Yagoubi
Benita's Paper cover

“People like me, they have to bypass”

Research Paper
My nationality is my right has a long history in Lebanon. In a country, that does not treat its citizens equally; women cannot pass their nationality to their husbands and children if they have a binational marriage. To this day, this law is still on papers. In this paper, Benita argue that the performative citizenship of the children in these families is not only expressed through their political and social activism for a more inclusive citizenship law. Rather, by finding coping strategies to exercise basic human rights and by having an affective citizenship meaning they feel Lebanese and therefore state their right to be Lebanese on paper, they are performing Lebanese citizenship.

A White Dress Does(n’t) Cover the Rape. Factors effecting the abolishment of Article 522

Article
In Lebanon, a rapist could avoid criminal prosecution by marrying their victim. That was until August 16th 2017 when the Lebanese Parliament voted on the abolishment of Article 522. Thereby, Lebanon joins a number of other Arab states. Given that marital rape and underage marriage remain legal, it is a benign step towards the protection of women’s rights only, but a primer.
Protest for Virginity Tests 27 Dec Solidarity stand in Egypt

Beyond the Logic of State Protection: Feminist Self-Defense in Cairo after the January 25 Revolution

In the aftermath of the January 25 Revolution, self-defense tactics became popular against the fear of disorder and the increase of public sexual violence in Cairo. In this article, I examine a number of examples of self-defense invoked by public and private actors after the 2011 Revolution, and differentiate between two types of practices. The first, articulated around the right of legitimate self-defense recognized in the Egyptian penal code, aim to maintain or to restore the established order through the identification of an Other that embodies a threat to the self, property or community. In contrast to this, radical modes of self-defense endeavor to subvert the given order by disrupting the gendered logic of masculinist and state protection and promoting horizontal relations of care and solidarity. Drawing on data generated through interviews with members of the initiative OpAntiSH and the collective WenDo, this article explores the importance of strategies and communities of autonomous self-defense in Egypt in relation to legal and policy measures adopted against sexual harassment by El-Sisi’s regime since 2014.
By Susana Galán

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