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Girls Fight Back
Youmna Chlala, Program Director, Girlsource and Co-chair of AIUSA's Women's Human Rights Steering CommitteePanel Summary:
Since the UN World Conference on Women at Beijing in 1995,the international human rights community has begun to respond to the violations and activism of one of the most ignored segments of the world's population: girls and young women. Girls are often missing from the women's human rights equation, despite the reality that cycles of violence begin at birth when female infanticide, and discrimination in terms of access to food and health care, FGM, child marriage and forced pregnancy. Equally important is how girls and young women are taking justice into their own hands and forming organizations to combat violence, educate around human rights and mobilize young women into activist leadership positions.
Speakers (biography and summary of what they said):
Shivani Sutaria, Western Region Bunch Fellow to the Gender and Refugee Center at UC Hastings College of the Law, described cases of girls and their parents struggling to obtain political asylum in the USA while fleeing gender-based forms of violence. Among these was the cases of Fauziya Kasindja who fled forced FGM in Togo as well as mothers trying to save their daughters from undergoing FGM.
Julia Chill, Chair of AIUSA's Children's rights network, discussed the advances for the protection of children of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Nadjet Bouda, is, at age 20, president and co-founder of Rassemblement Action Jeunesse (RAJ) in Algeria. She described her own and her organization's struggle to introduce human rights education to young people in her country and to establish a forum for discuss of issues facing girls in particular, as well as to set up an opportunity for dialogue between youth and all the warring parties in Algeria.
Alice Miller, currently at Columbia University with appointments as an Associate Professor of Clinical Public Health at the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health and as an adjunct Faculty at the School of International and Public Affairs, sits on the AIUSA Board of Directors as well as the Women's Program Steering Committee. She discussed the importance of pro-activism for women and young girls in terms of issues other than gender, such as race, sexuality, class, ethnicity and religion.
