2011’s Big Wins - Brought to You by Women

By Yifat Susskind
CommonDreams.org
December 27, 2011

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/27-9

2011 was a year of transformations.

In this Friday, April 1, 2011 photo, Egyptian women chant
slogans as they attend a demonstration in Tahrir Square in
Cairo, Egypt. As demonstrations first swelled in Yemen, the
regime distributed a photo of female activist Tawakkul Kamran
in a protest with a male colleague -- cutting out others
around them -- to taint her for sinfully sitting alone with a
man. Kamran's Nobel peace win draws attention to the role of
women in the Arab Spring uprisings. It began with thousands
of people in the Middle East rising up to demand an end to
repressive government and a say in their futures.

That spirit of transformation continued throughout the year.
The world welcomed the new country of South Sudan, the
culmination of a years-long peace process. A global network
of activists sprang into action to thwart a policy that
threatened Afghan women. The United Nations launched a new
agency dedicated to guaranteeing women’s human rights
worldwide.

What do all these things have in common? These successes, and
others, were made possible by women- in their local
communities and in global centers of power - who came together
to demand change.

Women Grow the Seeds of the Arab Spring

The protests of the Arab Spring took the world by storm. They
upended regimes that had reigned for decades, and women were
at the center of it all.

Western stereotypes of Arab women portray them as one
dimensional victims of oppression. But it was women, often
young women, who sounded the call that brought people to the
streets. In Egypt, Asmaa Mahfouz posted a video calling on
people to demonstrate on January 25 - and it went viral. It
started a wave that could not be stopped. And that wave
continued, day after day, spreading through the region,
because women kept its momentum going.

Women know that their work is not over when an old regime
crumbles. In Egypt, women have again taken to the streets to
demand an end to the ongoing military rule. They have been
beaten and assaulted, stripped and harassed. But they’re not
stepping down. Our work ahead is to stand by the brave women
who helped topple dictatorships and help them protect the
gains they’ve made.

Working for the Peaceful Creation of South Sudan

A generation of Sudanese people grew up in war. Women bore
the brunt, struggling to sustain their families through
violence. But through it all, they organized to demand peace.

The years-long peace process peaked with the creation of the
world’s newest nation in July - South Sudan. With communities
still recovering from decades of conflict, many worried that
the split would trigger a slide back into war.

But women’s organizations refused to let that happen. Leaders
like Fatima Ahmed, founder of the human rights organization
Zenab for Women in Development, educated voters, trained
women as election monitors and spoke out for peace.

People are still at risk, and continued violent attacks have
wracked communities. But peace is more than just a one-time
win - it must be nurtured and lived. So the Sudanese women’s
movement continues to work for peace and for protection of
women’s human rights -on both sides of the new border. Now,
Fatima is hard at work advocating for women’s human rights in
the review of the Sudanese constitution.

Protecting Women’s Shelters in Afghanistan

Naseema knew that her abusive husband was going to kill her
if she didn’t escape. Thanks to an activist-run network of
women’s shelters, she and her children were able to flee the
country - and save their lives.

But under a law proposed by the Afghan government earlier
this year, Naseema could have been forced to return to her
husband from the shelter.

The new law would have shifted control of women’s shelters
from the courageous women’s organizations that now run them
to government officials who could determine entry based on
virginity tests and choose to send women back to abusive
husbands.

Women’s rights activists, in Afghanistan and beyond,
mobilized to prevent this terrible move. And we won: the bill
was scrapped. Now, Afghan women still have the freedom to
turn - no questions asked - to shelters where they can escape
life-threatening violence and abuse.

Launch of UN Women

For decades, advocates fought for the full recognition of
women’s human rights. The United Nations was a key site of
this struggle. Yet women’s human rights endeavors at the UN
were chronically underfunded. UN bodies set up to address
women’s issues were small, disjointed and lacked authority.

All of that began to change in 2011 with the launch of UN
Women, an agency dedicated to guaranteeing women’s human
rights. For years, leaders like Charlotte Bunch, the founder
of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, organized a
concerted campaign, strategized with activists worldwide and
lobbied with UN representatives - all to make UN Women a
reality.

Despite this milestone, many challenges lie ahead. Countries
have been slow to direct funding to the fledgling agency.
This is a serious blow to an agency mandated to improve
conditions for half of the world’s people. But just as we
fought to create UN Women, we must stand by the agency to
keep it strong - for the sake of women worldwide counting on
it.

Women Stand Up for Peace

Time and again, we see that peace cannot be won without the
voices and leadership of women. In war, women are often
specifically targeted with violence, including rape and
sexual assault. What’s more, women often sustain the most
vulnerable in their communities, including children and the
elderly. Yet, too often, women are denied a seat at the peace
negotiating table.

But in 2011, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to three
women. It was a rare recognition of the integral role women
play in demanding peace and rebuilding their communities.

In Liberia, Leymah Gbowee led a protest movement of women who
held years of vigils for peace. They refused to be silent and
demanded that militants lay down their arms. Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf became Liberia’s first female president, paving the
way to recovery. Another winner, Tawakul Karman, is a Yemeni
peace activist. Her demands for greater press freedoms, the
release of political prisoners and the removal of Yemeni
President Ali Abdullah Saleh finally led to his resignation.

A Global Call for Justice

2011 began with popular uprising in the Arab world. And as
2011 comes to a close, the uprisings have circled the globe.
The Occupy Wall Street movement, in New York City and around
the world, reveals a growing refusal to go along with
business as usual. The 99%, suffering for years under
neoliberal policies that benefit the rich and impoverish the
poor, are taking a stand.

And the movement isn’t going away anytime soon. Its demands
resonate in communities worldwide that are all too familiar
with the destructiveness of economic policies that treat
basic necessities as tradable commodities instead of as human
rights.

There are viable alternatives to neoliberal policies. They
have already been articulated by women who confront daily the
heaviest burdens of economic injustice. These women are
Guatemalan women factory workers who organize for fair labor
practices and Iraqi women who take a stand against the
takeover of their government by oil companies. They offer the
solutions that we all need and that resonate with the calls
of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

We enter 2012 into a changed world, one that has been remade
by the committed work of women activists. With each win, the
forward momentum continues. We’ll remember 2011 for its
uprisings and revolutions. Let it be also a forerunner to new
possibilities in 2012.

[Yifat Susskind is the Executive Director of MADRE, an
international women's human rights organization. She has
worked with women’s human rights activists from Latin
America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa to create programs
in their communities to address women's health, violence
against women, economic and environmental justice and peace
building. She has also written extensively on US foreign
policy and women’s human rights and her critical analysis has
appeared in online and print publications such as The New
York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy in Focus and
The W Effect: Bush’s War on Women, published by the Feminist
Press in 2004. Ms. Susskind has been featured as a
commentator on CNN, National Public Radio, and BBC Radio.]

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