June 2021 Updates
June has been a busy month especially for our executive director. Here’s a glimpse to our accomplishments!
In honor of International Domestic Workers’ Day and on the 10th anniversary of ILO Convention 189, we released a collaborative report with UN Women, the IOM, and the Beirut office of the ILO on the status of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon through the lens of gender. We will hope that through this report we will help in abolishing the Kafala system that is considered a way of modern slavery, which is depriving these women of their basic rights and needs especially during the economic crisis that Lebanon is going through.
Our executive director was hosted as a guest speaker on one of the monthly webisodes (5) on: “Hate: What are you Going to Do?” She was also part of the post live discussion show organized by Team Harmony Foundation. She was also hosted by Radicals & Revolutionaries Lab on a podcast episode where she spoke about the complexity of activism in Arab regions, what it would take to rebuild Beirut as a feminist city, the burden of our own security as women, and more.
She was invited to be part of the session on: “Uniting to Counter Backlash: A Forward-Looking Roundtable Discussion” at the Men Engage Ubuntu Symposium. She was also one of the panelists in the live discussion on: “The Politics of Looking Arab” organized by Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.
Moreover, she had an interesting interview with Becky Anderson on CNN Connect the World where she discussed women’s rights in Afghanistan, building from her CNN article and her long extensive experience working in Afghanistan, which she has documented in her book Gender and International Aid in Afghanistan: The Politics and Effects of Intervention.
Our director participated in the Call to Action Field Implementation Project Country Launching Workshop organized by Arab Women Organization of Jordan in partnership with Care International that took place in Amman, Jordan. The aim of the workshop was to launch the project activities on the country level, in addition to introducing the Call to Action and CAFI project to the future MENA CtA members.
One of our staff members participated as a speaker in the webinar “Gender and COVID-19: Research Priorities in the Middle East and North Africa Region” where she presented the findings of the online survey we conducted on working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another staff member participated in the International Staff Week organized by Freie University of Berlin.
Activities at our hub included several webinars, one of which was held with the National Commission for Lebanese Women (NCLW) on: “Parental Leave in Focus”. The purpose of the webinar was to launch the produced policy paper in addition to the draft law submitted as part of the project “Equality for Everyone: Gender Reform from Grassroots to Government”.
Another was held with ABAAD Resources Center, and UNU-IIGH, on gender and COVID-19 to strengthen regional discussion and networking among those interested and involved in the topic in the MENA region. The webinar’s purpose was to share experiences and research conducted on the topic of COVID-19 and gender.
Finally, to commemorate the conclusion of the inaugural Tomorrow’s Leaders Gender Scholars Program (TLS) for the 2020-2021 academic year, we collaborated with the Office of International Services at LAU along with MEPI, and UN Women to organize a conference: “Tomorrow’s Leaders Gender Scholars: A Tailored Path to Success”. The conference showcased, acknowledged, and celebrated students that have completed the TLS Gender program.
Stay tuned for July!
The AiW Team
