Women’s Learning Partnership’s Project on Family Law Reform to Challenge Gender-Based Violence

Author : Ann Elizabeth Mayer and Mahnaz Afkhami, Faculty Scholarship at University of Pennsylvania Law

An international network of 20 autonomous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) based primarily in transitioning and fragile states, Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace (WLP) is dedicated to enhancing universal human rights and gender equality, strengthening civil society, and empowering women to be active citizens and actors of change in their societies. Our mission is…

Trespassing With Fatema

Author : Mahnaz Afkhami, Association for Middle East Women's Studies

Fatema and I began our work together in 1984 as contributors to Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women’s Movement Anthology. She wrote the Morocco chapter and I, Iran’s. We stayed in touch through the Sisterhood Is Global Institute that Robin founded with the seventy writers of the book, but we did not meet…

Will Washington Push for Women’s Rights?

Author : Caryle Murphy, The Majalla

Despite hope and change in the Middle East following the Arab Spring, many remain cautious regarding progress on women’s rights in the region. In an article with political news journal, Al Majalla, Mahnaz Afkhami stresses the importance of movement building and collaboration between women’s rights activists at the grassroots level. 

VOA Extended Profile: Historical Context for The Women's Movement in Iran, and the life and work of Mahnaz Afkhami

Author : Voice of America

The half hour video produced by VOA provides the historical context for the women’s movement in Iran, focusing on the life and work of Mahnaz Afkhami. The biopic covers her ten-year tenure as the Secretary General of the Women’s Organization of Iran and her three years in the Iranian cabinet as the first Minister of…

At the UN, Twenty Years of Backlash to ‘Women’s Rights Are Human Rights’

Author : Barbara Crossette, The Nation

Since the seminal Cairo Conference in 1994, anti-feminist actors have pushed back against progress made in women’s rights on the global stage. In The Nation, Mahnaz Afkhami provides insights into the rise of fundamentalist, conservative, and populist movements that are fueling this backlash, and illuminates the role of American wars in the Middle East in…