Nobel Women's Initiative

The United Nations General Assembly is about to adopt a crucial resolution on the creation of a new UN gender equality entity. We must act now to ensure that the resolution will be adopted before the end of the current General Assembly by 14 September 2009, and that the new entity can really make  a difference to women’s lives around the world.

Join the global GEAR Campaign and send the following letter to the Foreign Minister and the UN mission of your country, urging your government to support the creation of the strong new UN gender equality entity.

To learn more about GEAR, click here.

A feminist approach to peace-making and maintenance recognizes that war not only disproportionately affects the lives of women, but that women are too often inadequately represented in the bodies, processes, and even language in which decisions about war (and peace) are made. The Nobel Women's Initiative works to shape and influence the ways that notions of security and human rights are conceived, to position gender justice and equality as central, if not crucial, to any discussion on how peace can be realized and human rights protected.

In 2008, The United Nations passed Security Council Resolution 1820, which condemns the use of rape and other forms of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations.

The issues of gender equity and justice for women and girls is a priority within the Nobel Women's Initiative's broad mandate to advance human rights since, after all, women's rights are human rights.

As part of this, we support and stand in solidarity with women around the world who are demanding their human rights:

• Iranian women who fight for their equal political rights against a repressive regime. Sister Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi  (2004) has been courageously fighting for the human rights of Iranian women for over fifteen years. Her activism and publications  bring the world's attention to the work being done by Iranian women, who have been pressuring the government since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 to recognize their rights to civil action and freedom of expression. One of the many campaigns Ebadi supports, the One Million Signatures Campaign, is a landmark grassroots effort created in response to the Iranian government's violent repression of women's rights activists. The campaign aims to gather a million signatures from supporters around the world to demand an end to discriminatory laws against women. Since 2006, many women campaigners have been arrested and imprisoned for their participation in the campaign. Read why Shirin Ebadi believes thecollection of signatures should continue  with even greater determination, despite these setbacks. Take Action for women's rights defenders in Iran. Also visit the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
  

• Burmese women who declare rape a weapon of war and call for its end. In 1991, Daw Aang San Suu Kyi was recognized for her long and vocal defense of human rights in Burma with the Nobel Peace Prize. For her struggle for democracy, she has spent most of the last 19 years under strict house arrest by the military government there. We support Suu Kyi and the many other Burmese women who call for democracy and an end to human rights violations.  Learn more about the current situation in Burma and Take Action.

• Girls and women in Darfur who are displaced because of warfare and the world's unwillingness to act; who have been targets of sexual violence as the crisis in Darfur escalates. Learn how you can Take Action against the atrocities in Darfur.

• Girls and women in the DRC who have been targets of sexual violence. Since 1996, sexual violence against women and children in the eastern part of the DRC has been used to torture and humiliate women and girls and destroy families. Learn what V-Day is doing to end sexual violence in the eastern DRC.
  

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