Arab women unbowed take hold of historic moment, stand up, defend their rights

Arab women's cyber uprising

Women at the forefront of ‘Arab Spring,’ their hopes sidelined, continue to rise

Edited by Carolyn Bennett

Dictators fell and reforms took hold, Natalia Sinitsa writes today at Pravda.Ru, but women were refused “the rights they hoped for.” Even the slight successes women had achieved at the time of ‘Arab Spring’ have dissolved.”

Then in the belief that only they can declare their mission a failure, the women brought their fight for rights to the Internet.

Human Rights
Women of Color

Unbowed

In October of 2011, the 28-year-old Lebanese activist, Haidar Diyala, along with four like-minded women launched a Facebook campaign, 'The Uprising of Women in the Arab World,' “to tell the world about the injustices against women in the region,” Natalia Sinitsa reports.

At every stage of history, Haidar Diyala declared, there have been excuses such as “war is not the time to discuss [women’s rights]”; but it is now the time to say, “We want our rights” …

Activist Tawakkol Karman
Yemeni women uprising

 The Arab Spring was held “under the banner of freedom, dignity and equality ─ but these cannot be established if the women are left out of the equation. …”

So “… it is too early to say that the Arab Spring has failed for women. This can only be stated when women themselves declare failure of their mission.

One cannot betray women standing up to defend their rights and deciding to take advantage of an historic moment.

Source

“The female face of Arab Spring” (Natalia Sinitsa, Pravda.Ru), January 9, 2013, http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/09-01-2013/123409-arab_spring_female_face-0/

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