MANAMA, 6 January 2005 — Amnesty International (AI) and its Bahrain partners have taken a decisive step in their fight to stop violence against women by announcing a seminar on the subject next week. The event will be attended by over 120 women representatives from non-governmental organizations, human rights groups and women’s development bodies all over the GCC and Yemen. It will be held on Jan. 8 and 9 at the Bahrain Sheraton Hotel.
The seminar marks the second phase in a comprehensive regional campaign that echoes AI’s effort to get countries to acknowledge the widespread problem of violence against women and motivate activists, religious scholars and the legislature to work in a campaign to stop it.
The seminar is being coordinated by AI’s Manama Group which earlier conducted an awareness program throughout Bahrain for women’s groups and NGOs. “The seminar is a prelude to the release of the first detailed study on the problem of violence against women that we have carried out across the region. During the course of the study, we interviewed hundreds of women — victims and activists — as well as decision makers such as judges, lawyers, religious scholars and academics,” said Dina El-Mamoun, AI’s Middle East Program Gulf Team head.
“This conference will give us inputs from people in the field who will help us to draft workable recommendations that we hope GCC governments will implement.” The completed report with findings and recommendations is expected to be released in April 2005.
In Phase One of the campaign, AI worked in GCC countries including Bahrain to build a partnership between the international face of its campaign to prevent violence against women (called VAW) and Bahraini women’s groups and NGOs seeking to work on similar lines to push the Bahrain government to take a stronger position against the problem.
AI Middle East and North Africa (Mena) development team representative Ismail Taj Al Zien said: “We are seeking to complement the role of Bahraini NGOs and support the activism of women’s groups in Bahraini political and social circles through intensive training and well-defined campaign strategies. AI wants to play a partnership role and not a competitive one in this crucial fight to draw attention to the VAW campaign.”
Keynote speakers on the first day of the seminar will be General Secretary to the Supreme Council for Women Lulwa Al-Awadhi, AI’s Program Director Abdel Salam Ahmed and Bahraini rights activist and Chairperson of SVAW (stop violence against women) Ghada Jamsheer. In an effort to take VAW out of the motif of local culture and tradition that is often used by decision makers such as tribal leaders, religious figures and even the legal infrastructure of a country to gloss over the issue, AI and its partners have made it a human rights concern.
“Violence against women is not different in the Arab world or the MENA region than it is in other countries. But by putting it in the human rights context, we make it easier to understand the problem on a global context and also pressure governments to take action and hold them accountable for inaction against VAW,” said Nasser Bardestani of the AI- Manama Group.
Activists present at yesterday’s meeting included Ghada Jamsheer, Shahzlan Khamis, Dina El-Mamoun, Nasser Bardestani and Ismail Zein.
