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Combating Gender Based Violence
Six initiatives deal with the right of a woman to own and use her body. The aim is to address the discriminatory practices anchored in Arab traditions, which consider that family honour is entirely based on the woman’s body and any nonobservance is faced with violence and even killing for honour. This is one of the worst forms of violence against women, addressed by the Jordanian initiative on ‘Stripping honour off honour crimes.’ The initiative seeks to change the Jordanian mindset by separating the concept of honour and women’s bodies and behaviour, and linking honour crimes to poverty and the family’s economic condition.
The two initiatives from Egypt and Sudan deal with two additional types of violence against women. The first one deals with female genital mutilation to kill women’s sexual desires for fear of seeing them lapse in illegitimate relations. This is the position that the FGM initiative has sought to change in Al Minya in Egypt. It has succeeded in making different parties adhere to the campaign and take the view that the practice is harmful. The second type of violence is rape, used as a weapon during wars to tarnish the enemy’s honour. The Darfur gender violence initiative has succeeded in breaking the wall of silence on the issue and establishing a social and psychological counselling centre, especially dedicated to violence victims.
The Arab Street Children Initiative deals with a number of basic human rights for children, as stipulated in the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, such as the right to dignity, security, health, physical integrity and education. The initiative covering Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Yemen and Lebanon considers that street children, i.e. those who are without a family or those who leave their family to seek refuge in the street, are victims of exclusion, marginalization, exploitation and early school dropout…
Confronting the problem of FGM in Al Minya region in Egypt
Combating gender-based violence in Darfur
Taking out honour from “crimes of honour”: A project for changing the Jordanian mentality