The Word on Women-Cultural Barriers to Women as Peace Builders

Author : Amy S. Choi, TrustLaw

At a conference entitled “Breaking Barriers: What will it take to achieve security, justice, and peace,” Manhaz Afkhami highlighted the threat of fundamentalism to human rights, peace, and women’s rights.  “The characteristics of fundamentalism – fear of rapid change, modernity, an individual’s place in society, science, evolution, and all of the ramifications of those new…

Mahnaz Afkhami Testifies at U.S. Senate Hearing "Women and the Arab Spring"

Author : U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

Mahnaz Afkhami testified at a US Senate Hearing on November 2, 2011, on the subject of women and the Arab Spring. “It is therefore of utmost importance for women’s equality in these countries undergoing radical transformation that the United States give its explicit support for women’s full and  equal participation in national reform processes,” Afkhami…

Challenging the Architecture of Human Relations

Author : Open Democracy

In an interview with openDemocracy, Mahnaz Afkhami discusses the role of transnational women’s networks in promoting women’s rights around the globe.  “We decided to establish a transnational women’s organization that focused on finding ways to dent if not immediately change this “architecture of human relations,” the way people relate to each other, make choices, and…

A Beaten Path

A Beaten Path

Author : Mahnaz Afkhami, The Berlin Journal (Number 18 Fall 2009)

At the time of the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, Iran was a society organized on precepts that for centuries has defined the subordinate position of women as the natural order of things. The nascent civil society faced the issue of women mostly as a problem between traditionalism and modernism. But as the moderns grew in…