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SDG 5: Gender equality in the the Middle East and North Africa

Publicado el 19 de mayo 2021

As part of the series of conferences on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) organized by Casa Árabe, on the upcoming date of May 19 we will be analyzing Goal 5, which seeks gender equality and the empowerment of women. The debate will be broadcast live for all audiences on our YouTubeand Facebook Live channels. Written in terms of “Achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls,” SDG5 is one of the most important for the Middle East and North Africa. The reason is that, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report (2021), the region has the largest gender gap in the world (at around 40%), and ten of its countries rank among the bottom 15 on the list. Despite undeniable advancements attained in recent decades, it is impossible to speak of a homogeneous situation either between or within countries. Furthermore, the coexistence of certain factors at the present time cast doubt on these outcomes and highlights their fragility. In particular, the region is suffering from widespread public discontent, the rise of ultra-conservative movements, the spread of armed conflicts and, for more than a year now, COVID-19. All of these circumstances have raised the risks for women, who are more exposed than ever to violence, disease, premature wedlock and, on the whole, to their definitive relegation to the status of second-class citizens. What other challenges will be faced by those who strive for the effective, robust implementation of SDG5? At this event, we will be joined by three speakers who discuss gender issues in the Middle East and North Africa region: Lina Abirafeh, an expert on the prevention of and responses to gender violence in humanitarian and emergency contexts, Sama’a Al-Hamdani founder and executive director of the Yemen Cultural Institute for Heritage & Arts, and Asma Khalifa, an activist and researcher in the field of human rights, women and youth empowerment. The session will be moderated by Olivia Orozco, Casa Árabe’s Economics and Training Coordinator. Lina Abirafeh is the Executive Director of the Arab Institute for Women (AiW) at the Lebanese American University (LAU). Lina completed her PhD at the London School of Economics (LSE) and, on the basis of her research, published “Gender and International Aid in Afghanistan: The Politics and Effects of Intervention.” Abirafeh is a board member at several organizations (SheDecides, Forced Migration Review, Society of Gender Professionals and Greenpeace MENA, as well as others). In 2018, she was one of two Arab women included on the list “Gender Equality Top 100: The Most Influential People in Global Policy,” on which she was named again in 2019. She has recently focused her work on the need for a feminist response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on Arab women and girls. Asma Khalifa is a Libyan activist and researcher devoted to creating a structure for civil society and peace building in her country. As a non-Arab, Amazigh Libyan who grew up under Colonel Gaddafi’s rule, she witnessed the negative impact of discrimination and violence against women. In 2016, she was awarded with the Luxembourg Peace Prize and a year later was named one of the “100 Most Influential Young Africans” at the Africa Youth Awards. Khalifa is also a co-founder of the Tamazight Women’s Movement, a group for thought and action which works on gender equality and research about indigenous women in Libya and North Africa. Sama’a Al-Hamdani is the founder and executive director of the Yemen Cultural Institute for Heritage & Arts. As an art curator, she has been concerned with recovering the unique art forms and heritage of Yemen. In August 2019, she took part in a pilot program involving women in conflict (Women in Conflict 1325 Fellowship), which focused on “The Arts as a Tool for Peacebuilding.” At present, she is a non-resident analyst at the Middle East Institute (MEI), whose main work deals with Yemen’s political dynamics. Prior to joining MEI, she was a visiting researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), specializing in Transitional Justice, and a researcher at the Yemen-headquartered Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies (SCSS). She has had articles published by Arab world and Western media and groups of experts, including Al-Monitor, the Lawfare blog, Brookings Institution, The National (UAE), MENAsource (Atlantic Council Blog), Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, Fikra Forum, The Middle East Institute Journal, Yemen Observer and the Yemen Times, as well as others. More info: https://en.casaarabe.es/event/sdg-5-gender-equality-in-the-arab-world

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Women in the visual arts in the Arab world

On Thursday, March 11, we will be holding this round table discussion with artists Zoulikha Bouabdellah and Amina Benbouchta. It will be conducted by gallery owner Sabrina Amrani and Casa Árabe’s Culture Coordinator, Nuria Medina. The event is part of our institution’s activities to mark the occasion os Women’s Month. First of all, this round table will allow us to approach the work by both artists, whose careers have always held gender issues very present, although from very diverse perspectives and techniques. The initial introductions will be followed by a dialogue on issues closely related with the situation of both of these women artists, who live between Europe and the Arab world and have lengthy international careers behind them. They will analyze issues such as the status of female Arab artists in the contemporary art circuit, including the challenges and opportunities that they face, and the relationship between tradition and today’s art in the Arab world. The participants will share their experiences as visual arts professionals on an international scene in which gender issues seem to have been widely placed at the center of public policies and institutional agendas. Zoulikha Bouabdellah is a French-Algerian artist who lives in Morocco. She creates her work using the media of installations, drawings, video and photography. She deals with the effects of globalization, especially on women, and questions its representations with humor in a subversive way. She advocates the artist’s freedom by questioning the labels that are often imposed upon her as a result of a certain context and her personal history. www.zoulikhabouabdellah.com Amina Benbouchta is a Moroccan artist who lives between Casablanca, Morocco and Paris, France. Her work forms a dialogue between everyday life, her surrounding environment and human existence, above all in relation with women in the public and private spheres. This artist has developed a corpus of work rooted in the exploration of painting’s limits, transforming concepts and observations into images, sculpture and installations. Moreover, Benbouchta has started up several projects, including the journal Les Alignés and Collective 212, in order to give a voice to emerging artists. http://aminabenbouchta.com Sabrina Amrani is a French-Algerian gallery owner who resides in Madrid, where she runs two galleries. She is committed to emerging voices which veer away from mainstream discourse and experiment with different media and formats to produce art with major social, cultural and political undertones. Her concept of the gallery is that of an open, constantly changing space designed to become a cross-cultural and artistic meeting point. Both Zoulikha Bouabdellah and Amina Benbouchta are artists appearing at her gallery. https://www.sabrinaamrani.com More information: https://en.casaarabe.es/event/women-in-the-visual-arts-in-the-arab-world

Publicado el 11 de marzo 2021
Gender Politics in Tunisia and Libya (Arabic)

To mark the occasion os Women’s Month, we will be holding this round table discussion on Tuesday, March 9, with the participation of Begoña Lasagabaster, the representative of UN-Women for Tunisia and Libya; Yosra Fraoues, the president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, and Libyan activist Wafia Saifalnasr, who has been very involved in her country’s political life in recent times. As in the rest of the world, gender equality in the Arab world is far from being achieved both for legal reasons and because of the important role played by customs and traditions which relegate women in many respects compared with men. However, the situation is not exactly the same in all Arab countries. Whilst in some countries little or very little progress has been made on the path towards achieving equality, in others quite a bit of encouraging progress has been made. In order to discuss this important issue, as part of Women’s Month, Casa Árabe is organizing a round table discussion specifically to analyze the situation in Tunisia, one of the most advanced countries in terms of gender equality, and in Libya, a country mired in a lengthy armed conflict which has had an especially strong impact on the situation of women. Participating in the round table will be Begoña Lasagabaster, the representative of UN-Women for Tunisia and Libya; Yosra Fraoues, the president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, and Libyan activist Wafia Saifalnasr, who has been very involved in her country’s political life in recent times. Yosra Fraoues is a lawyer and human rights activist. She is the president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women and delegate of the International Federation for Human Rights in Tunisia. She has taken part as a legal expert in the drafting of texts on the democratic transition, as well as in the drafting of the Law against violence against women approved in 2017. She is also a trainer specialized in the field of human rights in general, and of women's rights in particular. She is the author and co-author of books on the subject equality. Begoña Lassgabaster is Country Representative UN Women Libya and Tunisia. With over 20 years of professional experience, she was a member of the Spanish parliament for 12 years, followed by a stint at the European Parliament. Lasagabaster has helped establish more than 150 laws in areas of women's rights, gender equality law, elimination of violence against women, international development and cooperation, justice, and economic and social rights. Wafia A. Saifalnasr is a Libyan political activist. She was a founding member of the Libyan platform Women for peace. She holds a Master's Degree in Public Administration and a Master in Software Engineering. She was an advisor to former Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zidan. Photo: Tunisia_Cospe More info: https://en.casaarabe.es/event/gender-politics-in-tunisia-and-libya

Publicado el 09 de marzo 2021
Le hirak algérien: une étude de cas sur la mobilisation de la contestation au Maghreb

Le mardi 2 mars, nous proposerons sur notre chaîne YouTube la neuvième conférence du programme Aula Árabe Universitaria 2, par la directrice de recherche CNRS, Karima Dirèche-Slimani. Le concept de hirak regroupe diverses manifestations de la région arabe qui sont différentes les unes des autres. La genèse de ce terme remonte à 2007, au Yémen, où est né le Hirak al-Janoubi (Mouvement du Sud), qui fait référence à un groupe politique séparatiste. En 2016, le terme hirak est réapparu, mais cette fois dans le Rif marocain, où la contestation était caractérisée par son fort régionalisme et sa base sociale. De son côté, la mobilisation citoyenne qui a débuté en Algérie le 22 février 2019 développe également ses propres caractéristiques, puisque le hirak algérien se définit comme un mouvement national, pacifique et populaire aux revendications politiques fortes. Il faut garder à l'esprit que le mot vient de la racine arabe du verbe triliteral H-R-K (حرك) et signifie «mouvement». Une innovation linguistique qui montre comment la langue et le monde arabes vivent, changent et se manifestent. Dans cette conférence, l'historienne Karima Dirèche-Slimani abordera le cas du hirak algérien démantelant les représentations d'une nation dépolitisée piégée dans le traumatisme des années 90 et ainsi pouvoir mieux appréhender la dynamique des changements qu'ils ont construit, d'en bas et en silence., les multiples composantes de la société algérienne. Casa Árabe organise cette conférence en collaboration avec le Master en politique internationale: études sectorielles et régionales de l'Université Complutense de Madrid (UCM). Il s'agit de la neuvième session du programme Aula Árabe Universitaria 2 (AAU2). La session sera présentée par Rafael Bustos, professeur de relations internationales à l'Université Complutense de Madrid (UCM) et coordinateur dudit master, et le modérateur sera Karim Hauser, coordinateur des relations internationales à Casa Árabe. Karima Dirèche-Slimani est historienne, directrice de recherche au CNRS et spécialiste de l'histoire contemporaine du Maghreb. Elle est l'auteur de trois livres et de plus de quarante articles scientifiques. Il a également édité quatre livres collectifs. Spécialiste du Maghreb contemporain, ses travaux couvrent les questions socio-historiques et l'analyse critique des historiographies maghrébines dans une perspective coloniale et postcoloniale. Ses axes de travail couvrent la question des minorités religieuses au Maghreb et leurs controverses politiques et religieuses; la question de l'identité berbère dans son rapport à la politique depuis l'indépendance; la question des récits historiques nationaux et leur défi à la lumière des mouvements islamistes et berbères. Ses approches méthodologiques combinent des pratiques d'histoire orale avec des investigations anthropologiques dans une analyse sociopolitique. Le dernier livre qu'il a édité s'intitule L'Algérie au présent. Entre Résistance et changements aux Editions IRMC / Karthala, Paris, mai 2019. Plus d'info: https://www.casaarabe.es/eventos-arabes/show/el-hirak-argelino-un-estudio-de-caso-sobre-la-movilizacion-de-la-protesta-en-el-magreb

Publicado el 25 de febrero 2021
Vaccine Diplomacy in the Mediterranean: The Contest for Influence

We will be showing this debate on Thursday, March 4, on our Youtube channel. It was organized with the cooperation of the Regional Program for Political Dialogue in the Southern Mediterranean of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation (KAS PolDiMed). The global Covid-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted countries in the Mediterranean region. As in other parts of the world, health systems have seen an increasing number of infections during the various pandemic waves. In 2020, international actors attempted to support the southern shore countries by providing medical teams and general technical assistance, an effort marked by competition and rivalry. In 2021, this situation has grown even more acute as several vaccines have gone onto global markets. The competition for increased influence in the Mediterranean is occurring mainly between China, Russia, the United States and Europe, role-players which have lobbied for their vaccine variants to enter the global market. The Chinese and Russian vaccine variants were initially met with skepticism, but recent preliminary studies have shown that they may be just as effective as the vaccines produced by the US and European companies. Furthermore, both China and Russia have very quickly managed to supply large quantities to those countries interested, gaining territory in the struggle to lead the global vaccination program. In addition to the public health implications of providing vaccines to the at-risk population, the issue of who can deliver the vaccine most effectively, quickly and economically and thus be a reliable partner and increase their sphere of influence has once again become significant at the geopolitical level. Within this context, Casa Árabe and the Regional Program for Political Dialogue in the Southern Mediterranean of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation (KAS PolDiMed) have organized a debate that will explore the status of vaccination programs in the Mediterranean region, as well as their geopolitical implications. Participants include Rym Ayadi, president of the Euro-Mediterranean Economists’ Association; Samer al-Atrush, an independent journalist and author of therecent report published by the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation and Sami Nader, director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs. Presented by Thomas Volk, director of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation’s Regional Program for South Mediterranean Political Dialogue. The event will be moderated by Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s International Relations Coordinator. You can watch the debate at 6:00 p.m. live on Casa Árabe’s YouTube channel and on Casa Árabe and KAS PoldiMed’s Facebook Live channel. In English with simultaneous translation. Photo: Jernej Furman

Publicado el 25 de febrero 2021
Tunisie: le long chemin de la transition

Le lundi 22 février, nous vous proposons sur notre chaîne YouTube une nouvelle session du cycle de conférences "Le peuple veut ..." dédié à la Tunisie. La Tunisie est un exemple clair de transition démocratique réussie dans le monde arabe. Bien qu'il soit confronté à plusieurs défis politiques et socio-économiques, la vérité est que ce pays d'Afrique du Nord a réussi à sortir de l'autoritarisme. Preuve en est que les élections ont lieu régulièrement, le parlement est actif, il est composé de formations idéologiquement différentes et la population jouit des libertés fondamentales de toute démocratie. Le revers de la médaille est une situation de profonde instabilité gouvernementale: l'existence de désaccords entre le président et le Premier ministre, ainsi qu'entre l'exécutif et le chef du pouvoir législatif. Pendant ce temps, dans les rues, les manifestations populaires se poursuivent, se manifestant au niveau national contre la classe politique et la situation socio-économique défavorable. Dans le cadre de la série de conférences «Le peuple veut ...» autour du dixième anniversaire des soi-disant «Printemps arabes», Casa Árabe en collaboration avec Stractegia aborde le cas de la Tunisie avec trois spécialistes du pays: Farah Hached, juriste, fondateur du "Laboratoire Démocratique", Huda Mzioudet, journaliste indépendante et chercheuse, et Tarek Kahlaoui, politologue, professeur à la Mediterranean School of Business et chercheur à Stractegia. Présenté par Karim Hauser, coordinateur des Relations Internationales à Casa Árabe. Modérateur: Barah Mikaïl, directeur de Stractegia. Farah Hached est avocate, vice-présidente de l'Université Mahmoud el-Materi, présidente du think-tank tunisien "Labo 'Démocratique" et auteur du livre "Révolution tunisienne et défis sécuritaires". Tarek Kahlaoui a terminé son doctorat à l'Université de Pennsylvanie, est un activiste politique et analyste. De 2012 à 2014, il a dirigé le groupe de réflexion «Institut tunisien d'études stratégiques» lié à la présidence du pays, et il écrit fréquemment sur la politique tunisienne et les questions de sécurité. Huda Mzioudet est chercheuse universitaire et étudiante en Sciences Politiques et Relations Internationales à l'Université de Toronto au Canada.

Publicado el 18 de febrero 2021