What is WSIS again?

This is the question that may most likely crop up from a local development worker. But for feminists who are keen on responding to the impact of the information and communications technologies in our very exercise and advocacy of human rights, WSIS is more than a name recall.

By Amanj Khalil in Sulaimaniyah

[Editor’s Note: First published on the website of the Institute of War and Peace Reporting as “Iraq-Kurdistan: Women claim new law erodes their rights” on 10 June 2008. Located in northern Iraq, the federal region of Kurdistan is currently drafting a new personal status law that is patterned after the Islamic law. Muslim women oppose such measure which is bound to deny them their human rights. Instead, they demand a prohibition of polygamy and a guarantee for equal inheritance. See http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state =hen&s=o&o=l=EN&p=icr&s=f&o=345113

They’re angry at plans to base legislation governing marriage and inheritance on Islam.

by Women Living Under Muslim Laws

[Editor’s Note: First published on the website of WLUML on 10 June 2008. For more information in calling for the release of Bahá’í detainees, please visit http://wluml.org/english/actionsfulltxt.shtml? cmd[156]=i-156-562078

Six leaders of a group managing the Baha'i community's religious and administrative affairs in Iran were arrested at their homes by officers from the Ministry of Intelligence on 14 May 2008, and are now detained in Evin Prison in Tehran. A seventh person, acting secretary for the group, Mahvash Sabet, has been in detention since 5 March. The Baha'i community has long been persecuted by the Iranian government, especially since the Iranian Revolution.

(Declaration of Civil Society Participants in the International Solidarity Days of the G8 Action Network, 8 July 2008)

The G8 Summit opened in Hokkaido yesterday with the usual rhetoric of concern about conditions in Africa. These are statements that few people in Africa and the rest of the world take seriously, given how far the G8 governments are from raising the US$20 billion they pledged for Africa at the Gleneagles Summit in 2005.