Check it out! Just yesterday, Leymah Gbowee, one of the leaders of the women's movement profiled in the film, Pray the Deil Back to Hell was profiled on Bill Moyers!
The Bill Moyers website also has some useful background information, including a global map of Women in Politics in 2008. They also mention UNIFEM's 2009 report on "Progress of the World's Women", which looks at women's participation in decision making- and this interest in women's accountability is directly connected to the momentum created by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (lots of information here).
Human Rights Watch has been active in this process, and has helped to bring the issue of women's participation in decision making and women's leadership to the undenyable attention of the United Nations, helping to shape the discussion and laying the foundation for more attention being paid to this issue in future peace keeping and peace making efforts, and Human Rights Watch continues to work on pushing this issue at the UN.
We are thinking of mixing it up a little this summer and watching a movie instead of reading a book...
If we do not manage to get a copy of the film, we are planning on reading the book: When the Elephants Dance, by Tess Uriza Holthe. It is a historical novel, set in the Philippines during WWII, when the USA and Japan were fighting in the Philippines, and uses myths and stories to tell the story of civilians surviving the war.
Discussion Highlights A timely HRW photo exhibit in New York: Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold (based on the work of a photographer who lived with the LURD) there is a short trailer video that is very interesting
We had a good discussion, with some interesting questions that came up from reading Ellen Johonson Sirleaf's book. One question was about the tone of the book, specifically the lack of any discussion of Sirleaf's emotional and personal life- a few readers found it remarkable that the author could write so matter-of-factly about her decision to leave her children behind in Liberia when she and her husband went to the USA to pursue higher education. The reserved tone and muted emotion continues throughout the book- so that we feel that we learned a lot about the contemporary political history of Liberiafrom Sirleaf- but very little about Sirleaf as a person. However, this stoic, fearless character is also a highly cultivated and personally valued aspect of the President's image and personality. And certainly it can be understood as a useful quality for a female politician to have.
Another very interesting set of questions was about policies dealing with child soldiers' rehabilitation in Libera, the demographics of Liberia and the effects of war on the makeup of the population, and policies dealing with women's rights and domestic violence under Sirleaf's administration. According to the CIA Factbook, the demographics of Libera for 2009 do show more women than men in the voting age groups:
0-14 years: 44.1% (male 760,989/female 758,554)
15-64 years: 53% (male 904,770/female 920,704)
65 years and over: 2.8% (male 47,013/female 49,760) (2009 est.)
Please check out this Council of Foreign Relations backgrounder for an introduction to the issue of child soldiers. In fact, many of the groups of women we learned about in the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell appear to still be active- a group of women's NGOs in Liberia (WONGOSOL) participated in a Truth and Reconciliation Commission's dialogue- they recommended amnesty for all child soldiers. There are also United Nations and foreign NGO programs for rehabilitation.
UPDATE: Check out this speech by President Sirleaf on Gender and Poverty. Also, courtesy of Ellen check out this book for your reading list (if you are interested in the subject) Russell Banks’ TheDarling which is also women in the Liberian civil war, from the viewpoint of a US woman activist.
Please join us, as we discuss the recent memoir, "This Child Will Be Great", by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Liberia.
We were inspired to read this book because of the movie, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which was screened in Los Angeles for the spring fundraiser of the Womens Rights Committee of Human Rights Watch. It is a wonderful amazing film, and everyone should see it!
President Sirleaf is the first woman to be elected president of an African country. She has had an unusual path to power for a leading politician: she was married at the age of 17 and followed her husband to the United States when he got a scholarship to study. She took the chance to pursue her own education, however, and her biography includes jobs in international finance, and a UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund For Women) investigator.
She has appeared on The Daily Show, where she talks about her political experiences during the upheavals in Liberia. Her book has been very well reviewed by the Washington Post, as well as the Economist, and she has been interviewed by Time Magazine and NPR amond many others.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff argues, she is a sign of Africa as a "Bright Continent", full of hope.
For more information about Sierra Leone, please check out HRW reports where you can read the latest about Charles Taylor's trial in The Hague, and more.
For a quick introduction to Liberia, check out this wonderful PDF of a short lecture, created by Ghislaine Lydon, Associate Professor at UCLA's Department of History. Thanks, Ghislaine, for sharing this!GLydon on Liberia
Update: We had a wonderful, wide-ranging discussion about this book. Mende's description of her childhood in the first half of the book held the interest of a number of readers. We wondered how much of what we were reading was accurate, since the book was written under such difficult circumstances, and with such limited translation. The broad strokes of the story, however, were still illuminating, and inspired discussion about how social and cultural difference is perceived, how intervention in cultures can (and should) happen, the value of self-critique, and the shocking pervasiveness of the practice of slavery- something popularly considered obsolete.
In 2008, Slave was make into a stage play. According to an online article, she is now married, living in London, and planning on becoming a hairdresser. She also managed to visit her family in Sudan.
Please join us for a very interesting discussion on May 11th.
Mende Nazer is an escaped modern-day slave. Slavery is often considered a thing of the past, but human trafficking and slavery is still a part of the global economy.
Human Rights Watch has documented harsh treatment of domestic workers in Saudi Arabia, Children working in Indonesia, Child soldiers in the Congo, Farm workers in Brazil, and the list goes on.
Mende Nazer managed to escape after she was sent to London to work (without pay and without any say in the matter) for a diplomat who was stationed there. To read a synopsis of her story, read this 2003 article.
There is also this very interesting mp3 video of a 2007 panel symposium called "Stand Up, Speak Up: an Agenda for 21st Century Women" at Agnes Scott College, on which Mende Nazer participates in a dialogue with other impressive women leaders.
UPDATE: a recent BBC article describes the contents of a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was leaked- the report describes the torture of 14 'high value' detainees, based on interviews the ICRC conducted after the detainees arrived at Guantanamo.
Our March author, Mahvish Rukhsana Khan, was a law student when she heard about the Guantanamo detainees. She is also a Pashto speaker, and she ended up working with some of the lawyers representing the detainees as a translator. The book is her account of her experience.
Human Rights Watch has done a lot of work on Guantanamo- please take a look at their Guantanamo Webpage.
Please read the NYT book review to read a complete introduction. The book also has a facebook group, which you can join if you are interested.
Please also watch this video from Current if you would like to see some footage of Guantanamo, and listen to a discussion of the closing of the camp.
This is a collection of four booklets, one each on Ingushetia, the Burma-Thai border, Ciudad Juarez, and Malawi. Each booklet is a collection of journal entries, Photographs, Drawings, short stories written by local people, and graphic novels.
The result is an intense, personal, and jarring journey through these very different places in the world. We follow Mia Kirshner, as she confronts bravery and misery in these places, as she questions herself and her reason for being in these places, and we get to know a great deal about what it is like to survive in a place where human rights are challenged at a very basic level.
This is Kirshner's first book, but she plans to do more. She has also started a foundation, which plans to teach creative writing workshops in some of the places where she traveled. Check out her interactive website for more, and look for the project on facebook. They also have a blog.
Ingushetia Update: In summer of 2008, HRW researchers in Ingushetia have documented the same "dirty war" tactics practiced in Chechnya are now spreading to Ingushetia. To read the entire report, click here. Russian authorities are still cracking down: recently, a human rights journalist died in police custody after being shot as he arrived in the region, according to the BBC.
Burma The most recent HRW report on Burma was on a constitutional referendum held by the military junta. The presentation of HRW Defender Bo Kyi mentioned the sanctions on Burmese gems, which is supported by HRW, because the trade in these 'blood gems' is a primary source of funding for the oppressive regime. Directly related to the reading we are doing on the refugee camps and minority groups in Burma, HRW has recently called on the Thai government to stop forced returns of civilian Burmese minorities to Burma, where violence continues. According to the HRW report, because of a slow-down in the registration process in Thailand, there are at least 20,000 people in Thai refugee camps who were not yet registered as refugees and therefore do not qualify for food or shelter, and are not protected by the United Nations under international law.
Ciudad Juarez The failure to protect women from violence is only one part of the complicity of the Mexican government in the human rights problem in the border areas of Mexico. For updated information, check out this interactive map. HRW has been documenting problems for maquiladora workers (primarily women work in these factories) for years. The most recent report by HRW found some hope in the decriminalization of abortion in Mexico City, but poor women who cannot afford to travel to Mexico City need the same protection, as well as better civil protection and fair employment protection. If you would like to read more, I recommend the Daughters of Juarez by Teresa Rodriguez.
Dirty Diplomacy: The Rough-and-Tumble Adventures of a Scotch-Drinking, Skirt-Chasing, Dictator-Busting and Thoroughly Unrepentant Ambassador Stuck on the Frontline of the War Against Terror
Since one of the HRW 2008 Defenders, Umida Niazova, is an Uzbek journalist, we decided to read something on Uzbekistan. The HRW website has a great deal of information on their country page. For some basic information and history, try this wiki entry. For more news and a detailed introduction, go to the BBC Country Profile.
The New York Times review is here. The New York Post review is also here. The Washington Post also ran a story on the author.
The author is not without serious faults, and according to some reviews, his book follows suit. It should, however, make for an interesting read and hopefully a great discussion as well. If you have the time, complement your reading with the HRW documents, particularly the multimedia presentation of the Andijan Massacre, where you can watch or listen to eyewitnesses.
If you are interested in the history of this country, particularly women's history, a place to start may be Douglas Northrop's book Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia, published in 2004. It is scholarly but I have found the writing to be pretty accessible.
To read about the current news, go to this site for News on Uzbekistan. A recent Media Freedom conference in Uzbekistan seems to be another example of the double-speak of the Karimov regime.
