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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997, PAGE 65 Human Rights
Sisterhood is Global Institute Presents Human Rights Manual at MEIThe Middle East Institute hosted Mahnaz Afkhami, executive director of the Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI), and Haleh Vaziri, currently a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for Middle East Studies, co-authors of Claiming Our Rights: A Women's Human Rights Education Manual, for a July 14 discussion of the SIGI publication. To date, the manual has been field-tested in five countries—Bangladesh, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia and Uzbekistan—and the results of that research will be incorporated into a new edition. Afkhami began by noting that there are 500,000,000 women in the Muslim world and that their situations, like their societies, are very diverse. There are, however, very few traditional societies left in the world, let alone in the Middle East, Afkhami observed, and as a result, "women today live in modern society." In Muslim countries, moreover, there are now substantial groups of educated women who "no longer want to be reactive" in addressing issues that affect their lives. Nor do they want to choose between their religion and egalitarianism. "The spirit of Islam is egalitarian," Afkhami maintained, characterized by "adjustment to the times, and to the will of the community." SIGI's research and work have led her to conclude that "rights per se are something which are sought by everyone." Differences reflect the different priorities and approaches unique to each society. Vaziri, describing Claiming Our Rights as "a work in progress," described the educational methods on which the manual and 10-12 week workshops are based. These include focus dialog, in which participants respond and react to pointed questions, and "empathy through fiction," where participants read a series of narratives—humorously termed by Afkhami a "human rights soap opera"—and come up with solutions to the characters' dilemmas. As a way to introduce different methods of political organization, participants respond individually, as spokeswomen for a small group, and through reaching consensus as a large group. What is impressive about Claiming Our Rights is its effective blending of academic social theory and the openìended nature of the workshop process itself, which results in the participants determining the issues to be addressed and answering them in terms of their own social realities. Following the updating of the manual and a September conference (see "Bulletin Board," p. 120), SIGI plans to expand the workshops to Syria, Morocco, Egypt and Azerbaijan. Nor is the issue of women's human rights exclusively an Islamic one: a parallel manual and field research project is in the works for Latin America. —Janet McMahon |