Last week, forces loyal to incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo opened fire on women who were demonstrating peacefully in support of his rival, Alassane Ouattara. At least six were killed.
Three days ago, on International Women’s Day, they marched again.
An Ivoirian woman holds up a sign reading, "No to violence, yes to peace!"
There is in every true woman’s heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
~Washington Irving (1783 – 1859)
SFCG President John Marks recently visited our DRC country program. DRC is our largest country program, with seven field offices throughout the country and a collective staff of over 60.
Lena Slachmuijlder, our DRC Country Director took John on a whirlwind tour of the work she and the rest of the staff have been doing.
SFCG DRC has grown significantly since we began working in the country __ years ago, and its programming, both in size and innovation. We produce the country’s first and only reality television show and our Congolese version of The Team features an all-female soccer team.
Our Congolese program has also pioneered the use of mobile cinema within our organization and has utilized participatory theater to great effect.
John was able to visit Uvira for a performance by one of the theater troupes that SFCG has trained and who work with us to communicate an array of messages.
Lena and John (center) with staff from the Uvira and Baraka Offices and actors from the theater troupe.
The theater troupe identifies specific conflict within each village where they perform and tailors their performance to address these.
The actors illustrate issues of land conflict.
In Uvira the drama centered around sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) and land conflict. Land conflict in Uvira is largely related to disputes between farmers and cattle owners. The livestock often eat or destroy crops and limited water must be divided between them.
An Uvira theater troupe actor keeps the audience engaged.
John and Lena enjoying the performance which uses humor to great advantage.
Learn more about our work in the DRC, here.
SFCG Ukraine to Train Human Rights Defenders in the Region
The Human Rights Trainers. (SFCG Ukraine Country Director, Roman Koval, is in center with blue tie)
SFCG Ukraine is working with Equitas on a two week-long training in Kyiv for human rights professionals from the Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine.
From the Kyiv Post:
The regional human rights training session, delivered in Russian, will expand the reach of human rights education, thereby ensuring that local nongovernmental organizations, community-based organizations, women’s organizations and their beneficiaries are better able to promote and protect human rights and contribute to the democratic process. The human rights training session will thus serve the double purpose of further building the skills of Equitas’ partners in the region, while also providing effective human rights education capacity building for local organizations within and across countries. To this end, the 14 designated partner organizations have worked together to develop, implement and evaluate the training session. This in turn will allow for the 31 local organizations to strengthen their capacity to promote and protect human rights and to undertake more effective human rights work, with a view to fostering civic engagement and the participation of communities in decision-making processes, as well as building support networks among civil society and key actors at the local, national and regional levels.
Equitas is implementing the program in Kyiv with the support of the Ukrainian Center for Common Ground.
King Mohammed VI, Announces Reforms for Morocco
King Mohammed VI (from cnn.com)
In contrast to neighboring countries which have seen violent response to protest, the Moroccan king has responded to the demonstrations of February 20 with an announcement of further democratic and constitutional reforms.
In a rare television appearance on Wednesday, King Mohamed VI said the reforms would include a prime minister elected from the party that wins the most seats in parliament.
The prime minister will “be the head of an effective executive branch, who is fully responsible for government, civil service and the implementation of the government’s agenda,” the king said.
Reforms will also promote human rights and gender equality, and improve the economic, social and cultural aspects, according to the king.
The Pakistan Observer recently spoke with the Morocco Ambassador about other reforms the King has planned which will affect youth, who have been the main catalysts for protest across the region:
Peaceful processions have always taken place in Morocco. This is an integral part of the democratic system. Morocco pursues political pluralism. The system fully guarantees freedom of expression. King Mohammed VI is a reforming statesman who focuses his attention on social stability and democratic reform. He has been keen to introduce reform in every walk of life since he ascended the throne. Only recently, he introduced Economic and Social Council…the Council’s terms of reference is to propose efficient solutions to the main problems relating to vocational and technical training, the skills needed on the job market and the requirements of sector-specific strategies and major projects. The ultimate objective is to ensure a dignified life for all Moroccans particularly the underprivileged and to foster the kind of comprehensive development that creates jobs especially for young people who are the main focus of development policies.
The King’s announcement has drawn praise from abroad and within the country, but Moroccans are waiting to see what these reforms might mean, AFP writes:
Political parties said his address late Wednesday pledging reform was historic and opened the way for a modern Morocco that could be an example to the Arab world, being shaken up by a pro-democracy revolt.
Moroccan Association of Human Rights president Khadija Ryadi said: “We prefer to wait for the proposals of the commission, even though we think that certain points of the royal speech are important and new.”
“One must not forget we want a new constitution and not a revised text,” she said.
A commission will be tasked with working on constitutional revisions and we will have to wait until June to see what proposals are made and voted on.
Alpha Conde after being inaugurated as Guinea's first freely elected president. (from allvoices.com)
Guinea’s road to democracy has been a long one. 52 years after gaining independence from France, Guinea has held its first fair and open democratic elections in the fall of 2010. On December 21, Alpha Conde was sworn in as president. USAID details how the process came about and remained fair and transparent. We worked with USAID to ensure that the population
With USAID support, Search for Common Ground trained journalists and coordinated media promotion, which included a radio special—FM Guinea 2010— broadcast simultaneously on Guinea’s 16 private radio stations. In coordination with other donors through the United Nations Development Program, USAID also helped reprint and display voter lists at polling stations before election day and procure additional electoral material for new voting stations created following protests by the two candidates after the first round.
Read the full story here.
This is a sharp contrast with neighboring Côte d’Ivoire, where violence around the contested election of last fall is rising. Thousands have fled into Liberia and the phrase civil war comes quickly to conversations about the nation’s future. Can the success of Guinea’s election shed any light on the failure of Côte d’Ivoire’s?
Make Sure Women can Lead in the Middle East
A young Egyptian woman adds her voice to the protests. (Photo credit: The Society Pages)
by Carla Koppell and Haleh Esfandiari
Washington, DC – In Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Tunisia and elsewhere, women have stood with men pushing for change. In Libya, Iman and Salwa Bagaighif are helping lead, shape and support protesters. And in Egypt, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, one of the oldest and most well-known non-governmental organisations in Egypt, estimated that at least 20 per cent of the protesters were women.
For example, the 26-year-old co-founder of Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement, Asmaa Mahfouz, mobilised thousands of youth in support of the protest through her impassioned YouTube video. In Yemen, a 32-year-old mother of three, Tawakkul Karman, helped organise protests against the current government.
Yet women’s leadership in 2011 is not a new phenomenon. read more…
