by Sionne Neely “We’ve said it before: We don’t like prisons, but we are not afraid of them. There are thousands of innocent people who belong under the sun, not in prison cells, but we will continue with our attempts under any and all circumstances.” ~ Mahienour Elmasry To women rights defenders Yara Sallam, Sanaa […]
More than a year ago I heard one of India’s most powerful activist poets, K Satchidanandan, recite a poem he had written for Indian activist Irom Sharmila. Sharmila has been on hunger strike for the last fourteen years in protest against the brutal Armed Forces Special Powers Laws. Similar to you -and others like you, in Palestine, […]
by Fatma Emam In my country, we are witnessing the backlash of an incomplete revolution. We are suffering at the hands of a military junta and the Islamists who stole our dreams. In spite of this, we go on in the heat of solidarity and the power of our passion. I want to confess […]
Sometimes, the women who fight for us, need other women to fight for them. I wondered what it must be like to be buying water to quench your thirst and your entire world changed. The news articles stated that you were buying water when you were arrested. I wondered what made you step out […]
by Olutimehin Adegbeye “There’s really no such thing as ‘the voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.” - Arundhati Roy In three years’ time, my daughter will be five years old. She will have started school, learnt to read and ride a bicycle, decided that boys are nasty and mastered the […]
Ways to Start Time: Counting Down with Women Human Rights Defenders in Africa by Alexis Teyie I once thought longing loose: Longing for peace, it’s not criminal. It is not imprecise. It can only be crisp. More brittle than the yellowing pages of an old book, A book we have read and re-read, Whose faded […]
As the African Feminist Forum Working Group we are distressed to hear that nine women human rights defenders were arrested on 21 June 2014 in Cairo after participating in a peaceful protest against the Protest and Public Assembly Law[1]. The nine women are: Yara Sallam, Sanaa Seif, Hanan Mustafa Mohamed, Salwa Mihriz, Samar Ibrahim, Rania […]
As the African Feminist Forum Working Group we are distressed to hear that nine women human rights defenders were arrested on 21 June 2014 in Cairo after participating in a peaceful protest against the Protest and Public Assembly Law[1]. The nine women are: Yara Sallam, Sanaa Seif, Hanan Mustafa Mohamed, Salwa Mihriz, Samar Ibrahim, Rania […]