Mahnaz Afkhami was honored alongside Shirin Ebadi at the Royal United Services Institute in London for her lifelong work to promote women’s human rights. The event was hosted by Ambassador Melanne Verveer, Executive Director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security and featured a panel discussion on human rights in Iran. “Mahnaz Afkhami…
Tag: Women’s Movement
Women’s Learning Partnership’s Project on Family Law Reform to Challenge Gender-Based Violence
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…
Iran's New Crackdown on Women
In July, 2017, the Daily Beast covered the uptick in violence against prominent women’s rights activists in Iran. “Mahnaz Afkhami, who served as minister of state for women’s affairs under the pre-revolutionary government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and now runs the Women’s Learning Project in Bethesda, Maryland, says that in recent months, the Iranian…
Trespassing With Fatema
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…
1818 Society Bulletin-- Gender and Development
The 1818 Society – an organization of former World Bank Group employees – hosted Mahnaz Afkhami as a guest speaker to discuss the progress of international conventions on the status of women. “Looking ahead, the overall challenge is to reconstruct our 21st century society. Dr. Afkhami’s vision is that this can be achieved with both…
A Personal Remembrance of Fatema Mernissi
Fatema Mernissi, the Moroccan sociologist widely known as a pioneer in Middle Eastern Women’s studies, passed away this week. It is difficult for me to speak of her – a friend, ally, and colleague of over two decades – in the past tense. I first met Fatema at the Middle East Studies Association Conference in…
