🌍This Week In The War On Women: Women as targets, peace-makers and VOICE OF THE VOTE

Amnesty International Iranian women and girls face further violations of their rights under compulsory veiling bill

Armita Garawand, a 16-year-old schoolgirl, remains in a coma [following 1 October 2023 reports at a Tehran metro of] a confrontation with [an enforcer of] veiling laws ... [Iranian authorities have] intensified oppression against women and girls in recent months.

... leaving the house every day [comes] come with a choice: ... bodily autonomy and ... freedom [at the price] of harassment, violence, fines … [loss of car, loss of job] imprisonment [death]

[We watch with awe as women and girls] continue to defy Iran’s veiling laws on daily basis … in the face of the Iranian authorities’ intensified assault on women’s rights, which includes introducing harsher draconian penalties to further punish unveiling and silence dissent.

Just over one year ago, 22-year-old Mahsa/Zhina Amini died in custody ... amid credible reports of torture. She was arrested for not complying with Iran’s discriminatory compulsory veiling laws. Her death sparked an unprecedented popular uprising across Iran, in which demonstrators chanted “Woman Life Freedom”. Tens of thousands of people also marched across the world including in Europe in solidarity with women and girls in Iran…

Iran’s govt is also, of course, a major funder of terrorism beyond it’s borders, a theocracy, and an oil tyrant.

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This Week In The War On Women meets Saturday evenings & reblogs across the week. Everyone interested is welcome to comment, bring news links & stories, and consider joining to reblog here or write for the group. For automatic delivery to yr Activity Stream of our posts & reblogs, click the FOLLOW button HERE. h/t pixxer ♀️ 50+ women’s-news sources HERE including 17 related DK groups besides ours, from DK 230+ Health/Med, Cause, Comm’ty, Heritage/Identity & Friendly Open Thread Grps&Series, 2011 -2023, ♀️ Our Saturday posting history the past few years is HERE. ♀️ Trailblazing & Activist Women in History/wow2 is HERE. ♀️ Everything blogged&reblogged to our group is here. ThisWeekInTheWarOnWomen is a team effort. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE ON THE TEAM THIS WEEK for news items and discussion —especially Tara the Antisocial SocialWorker, elenacarlena. ramara, and libera nos.

<big>UnitedNations Sudan: Women and girls abducted, held ‘in slave-like conditions’ in Darfur</big>

The UN human rights office (OHCHR) expressed alarm on Friday over reports that in Sudan, women and girls are being abducted, chained and held in “inhuman, degrading slave-like conditions” in areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Darfur.

The stark report comes against the backdrop of a sharp uptick in fighting between the Government’s Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and RSF and heightened intercommunal tensions in the restive region.

The rival militaries plunged the country into a brutal civil war more than six months ago. Thousands have died and more than 5.7 million are displaced, inside and outside the African nation. Around 25 million are now relying on some form of humanitarian aid.

Representatives from the warring parties are now meeting in Saudi Arabia for renewed peace talks, steered by Saudi and the United States, and joined by the East African regional bloc, IGAD, according to news reports….

JustSecurity The Fall and Rise of Indifference to Mass Atrocities in Africa

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<big>Relief Web 161 Civilians, Including 34 Children, 44 Women, and Two Torture Victims Documented Killed in Syria in October 2023</big>

The Hague - The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) released its monthly report [stressing] that approximately 49 percent of October’s victims are children and women [documenting killings] by the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria …

… The report also sheds light on SNHR’s work concerning the issue of extrajudicial killing….

[the Syrian regime allows no records in the civil registry for the missing, forcibly disappeared, or killed at its own hands or by other affiliated parties, adding up to hundreds of thousands since March 2011. The vast majority of victims’ families cannot query except at risk] of linking their names with those of individuals detained by the regime and killed under torture, since this would mean that these family members were dissidents who opposed the regime, or that their loved ones would be registered as ‘terrorists’ if they are wanted by the regime’s security services; additionally, many victims’ families have been forcibly displaced outside the areas controlled by the regime….

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Diplomat  A New Generation of Women and Girls Defying Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan

While international leaders neglect to take meaningful, coordinated action, women and girls in Afghanistan and in exile remain on the frontlines of resistance.

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■ MSNBC video: Women journalists awarded for their work in Ukraine and Iran

■ SkynewsAfghanistan earthquake: 'Women were prisoners in their homes and now they're dead' — The Taliban regime forced women to choose between abiding by the law or surviving… MORE THAN 90% of people killed by western Afghanistan quake were women and children, UN says

■Yahoo/NewVoiceOfUkraine Over 350 Ukrainians, mostly women and children, awaiting evacuation from Gaza to Egypt

■ UNWomen New podcast explores gender issues during the war in Ukraine

■ Nat'l Indigenous Times/Canada First Nations-led collective Ember Connect empowering Indigenous women through digital mentoring program

■ APNews Latin America women’s rights groups say their abortion win in Mexico may hold the key to US struggle

■ NPR How Black socialite Mollie Moon raised millions to fund the civil rights movement

■ GulfNews.com/Op-Analysis India’s gendered politics and double standards faced by women leaders

■ DW.com/en/ Rohingya women are increasingly being targeted by human traffickers with promises of a better life in Kashmir.

■ TheConversation Young, female voters were the key to defeating populists in Poland’s election – providing a blueprint to reverse democracy’s decline

■ WomenForPeace CODEPINK Statement Regarding UN Vote to End Cuba Blockade

■ AlJazeera World has abandoned Afghanistan, saysHasina Safi the country’s last women’s minister, from exile in Ireland.

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Via Jessica Valenti: Idaho has its first arrest in an "abortion trafficking" case:

An 18-year-old and his mother are charged with taking his 15-year-old girlfriend out of state for an abortion.

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The19thNews Rep. Gwen Moore is a domestic violence survivor — and she wants to start a national conversation

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in United States v. Rahimi, the Wisconsin congresswoman introduced a resolution calling attention to the 'relationship between firearm violence, misogyny, and violence against women.'

The 19th Explains: How guns , domestic violence, and the judicial philosophy of originalism. intersect in Supreme Court case United States v. Rahimi

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ACTION ITEM: the war at home

^{from MomsRising.org} Halloween should not have been this frightening - ban assault weapons now!

In the weeks before Halloween, mass shootings across the US left dozens of casualties, among them 18 dead and 13 injuied in Lewiston, Maine, in a military-style assault weapon shooting spree. What role is played by the rising tides of war noise is impossible to gauge, but the only winner is the international war materiel industry selling across the Americas and the world.

Sign on to *MomsRising’s message to Congress demanding comprehensive gun policy reform, starting with a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines!

...The number of mass shootings terrorizing communities every year has been rising rapidly, from 273 in 2014 to 647 in 2020, more than doubling in less than a decade,[3] and military-style assault weapons with high capacity magazines are the firearms of choice for mass shooters.[4] It is notable that when we had an assault ban law in place there were markedly fewer gun violence fatalities.[5] In the face of such horrific gun violence that can devastate families and communities for generations, no one should be glorifying guns. Could there be any more obvious evidence of gun glorification than assault weapons allowed for civilian use, with Republican lawmakers even wearing AR pins on their lapels?[6] The ARs need to come off the lapels and out of our communities.

America’s moms do not want to raise our kids and live our lives with this kind of violence always looming. There are mass shootings every day in this country.[7] Carnage is everywhere. Guns are now the leading cause of death of children and youth.[8] This is unacceptable. We should not have to live with this terror. The “freedom” to carry a military-style assault weapon into a bowling alley, restaurant, school, movie theater – or Halloween party – does not count more than the freedom to live in our communities without fear of losing our children and our lives...

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■ from 2018, and the world still hasn’t caught up: DK post<big> Foreignpolicy.com: "Women are the Key to Peace"</big>

Melanne Verveer —executive director of the Institute for Women, Peace, and Security at Georgetown University — and Anjali Dayal —an assistant professor of international politics at Fordham University, and research fellow at she Georgetowns IWPS

“Cease-fire negotiations that exclude women are more likely to fall apart. Talks are more effective with women involved.

....To date, women are vastly underrepresented in formal peace negotiations...

That’s a major problem. Beyond the fact that women deserve an equal hand in shaping their societies... their participation leads to better outcomes.

Studies find that when civil society groups and women’s groups are included ... resulting peace agreements are 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years. That is huge, considering that settlements break down more often than not. A more gender-balanced process enhances local trust and buy-in, injects legitimacy into the process, and increases the chances that problematic social norms and power imbalances that contributed to the conflict will be rectified.

[But although women are largely excluded from formal negotiations, they are not] passive observers of men’s efforts to resolve conflict. Rather, they’ve actively engaged in what negotiators call Track II processes …

In Liberia in the early 2000s, for example, formal [Track I] negotiations were bolstered by Track II efforts by women, who launched mass campaigns and sit-ins to demand peace; organized consultations among warring parties, negotiators, and regional actors; and legitimized formal negotiations by calling for rebels and the government to sit down together….

[This is] not unique. In the first systematic study of women’s involvement in informal peace processes, the [GIWPS] found that, of 63 such negotiations in the post-Cold War era, 38 involved informal initiatives. In a majority of those, women’s groups were actively involved….

Read the full original article HERE.

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^TheGuardian Violence rages in Gaza, but a meeting of Jewish and Muslim women has given me hope

Remona Aly writes of despair for the relationships between Muslim and Jewish communities in the UK and across the globe in the face of the unfolding horror, citing globally

an already sharp surge in antisemitism and Islamophobia. The rejection of this hard-fought equilibrium can leave a vacuum for extremists to clamber into, and for hate to breed. ...  In London,antisemitic attacks went up by 1,350% and Islamophobic offences by 140% in the first half of October….

But [women of our communities are trying to salvage hard-won relationships]... Last week, I was invited to a safe space: a private gathering co-hosted by a Jewish woman and a Muslim woman… [for others equally determined to resist fatalism. Julie Siddiqi, a faith-relations consultant and Muslim co-organiser with Jewish academic Dr Lindsay Simmonds, who researches women of faith and peacebuilding, explained the necessity of third space outside religious and political institutions, to escape] barriers to communication such as increased sense of danger, people fearing that officially speaking out or showing sympathy will draw backlash from their own communities. “But it is precisely now we need to show friendship, solidarity and trust.”...

The empathy I saw is a precondition of the kind of wise, pragmatic leadership we are all desperate for – yet women’s voices are woefully nearly always absent from the decision-making. One participant, Elizabeth, a veteran peace activist and faith relations expert, tells me that between 1992 and 2019, women constituted only 13% of negotiators, 6% of mediators and 6% of signatories in peace processes around the world. Despite this, Elizabeth sees the power women have as “agents for social change and conflict resolution the world over”.

[There are multiple] examples of women “coming from a place of genuine empathy and demonstrating authentic leadership,” she said. “Think of the Good Friday agreement, or Women Wage Peace, a grassroots initiative in Israel and Palestine comprising thousands of Palestinian and Israeli women, who even now continue to work for peace on the ground. In the UK, there is also Nisa-Nashim, a Muslim/Jewish women’s network, who have worked to build enduring friendships.”...

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<big>Enheduanna-A blog of the Women’s Middle East Initiative:<big> Palestinian and Israeli Women Speak: Regaining Humanity at a Time of Violence</big></big>

...UN Women reports approximately 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza are without access to essential health services and 5,522 women are expected to give birth this month, all in the absence of adequate medical facilities.

The war has left thousands of Palestinian children fatherless, propelling many women into the role of breadwinner—a position that comes with its own set of challenges in a society with a 19% female labor force participation rate, among the world’s lowest. The loss of a father can be especially detrimental for young girls, as financial strain may push them into early marriages. According to the Global Partnership for Education, girls in conflict zones are 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than boys and are less likely to return after a ceasefire.

The physical and psychological toll of war is immense, and for women and girls, the impact is compounded by the gender inequalities that already exist in society. Here are the voices of young Palestinian and Israeli women on the ground about what life is like today, trying to retain their humanity against the backdrop of ceaseless violence….

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Global and national violence are driving deep wedges into Democratic communities everywhere.

Agree to hatred/rage, and the real enemies will win the US 2024 election.

<big><big>For sustainable peace...</big></big>