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For most of you this sort of wishes could be enough, however; millions and millions women from different parts of the world, this day could mean something more than this due to various functions and commitments for them from different leaders and activists. They work more than men, but they are exploited, abused and violated by men. Somewhere they cannot eat whenever they want – they need to wait until their husband and other male members in the family come and eat first. Even they have to suppress their feelings. They are like toys and machines for men. This is the real situation of millions and millions of women in different parts of the world.
History:
For more than a century, March 8th has been the day to commemorate and celebrate the fight of working class and revolutionary women for a better deal and a socialist society. Its origins are in the struggles for equal pay and decent conditions amongst women in the USA in the 19th century.
On March 8, 1857, garment workers in New York City marched and picketed, demanding improved working conditions, a ten hour day, and equal rights for women. Their ranks were broken up by the police. Fifty-one years later, March 8, 1908, their sisters in the needle trades in New York marched again, honouring the 1857 march, demanding the vote, and an end to sweatshops and child labour. The police were present on this occasion too.
A conference in 1910 of socialist women involved in the Second International, adopted a proposal of the German revolutionary fighter, Klara Zetkin, to establish an International Women’s Day. Russian women began to observe this on the last Sunday in February, according to the pre-revolutionary Julien calendar.
In 1917 this was the day the working women of Petrograd literally started a revolution. In protest at rising prices and food shortages, they filed into the centre of the city, calling on all fellow workers to join them. This was actually March 8th according to the (Gregorian) calendar used elsewhere in the world.’Down with hunger!’ ‘Down with the war!’ Hunger was claiming the lives of thousands of children, along with those of older men and women, and the very sick and very poor. The First World War was claiming the lives of millions of farm labourers and workers at the front. The ‘February Revolution’ of 1917, which threw off the yoke of Csarism across the Russian Empire, was the precursor of the victorious socialist revolution of October in the same year.
Scenario in the 21st Century:
For most of you this sort of wishes could be enough, however; millions and millions women from different parts of the world, this day could mean something more than this due to various functions and commitments for them from different leaders and activists. They work more than men, but they are exploited, abused and violated by men. Somewhere they cannot eat whenever they want – they need to wait until their husband and other male members in the family come and eat first. Even they have to suppress their feelings. They are like toys and machines for men. This is the real situation of millions and millions of women in different parts of the world. Read the rest of this entry »
Soon she’ll take to the UN floor with more than 3,500,000 of our voices behind her and tell the world about her fight for education for every girl and boy in the world. The support for her campaign has been overwhelming, and we’ve got much more to do, but now is our time to celebrate.
It’s been a long road, but today the bravest girl we know will spend her birthday fighting for others. So let’s show her how important her strength and courage are to all of us. Read the rest of this entry »
By Queen Rania of Jordon, Queen of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
This post is part of the Global Mom Relay. Every time you share this blog, $5 will go to women and girls around the world. Scroll to the bottom to find out more.
Today is Mother’s Day across the Arab world, so this baton goes out to every Arab mom, grandmother, and guardian.
They are the selfless women who love their children in ways they never knew possible and sacrifice so much for their happiness. They are the tireless women who work so hard to give their children opportunities they never had and instill in them the confidence to try new pursuits. They are the compassionate women who teach their children values so that they grow up as kind and engaged citizens.
With this baton comes a message of gratitude and respect for all that they do, every day, to nurture a healthy, happy and creative generation of children. Especially now.
Her Majesty Queen Rania visits school girls in Amman, Jordan
In the last few years, we’ve witnessed seismic shifts in the political, economic and social landscape of the Middle East and North Africa.
Through it all, Arab women did what women everywhere do best: they multi-tasked. They raised their voices and joined the call for reform; they cared for their families in testing circumstances and they opened their doors to those in need. Women helped men. Women helped women. And, as the dust settles in many countries, women are critical to the urgent process of rebuilding. Read the rest of this entry »
For most of you this sort of wishes could be enough, however; millions and millions women from different parts of the world, this day could mean something more than this due to various functions and commitments for them from different leaders and activists. They work more than men, but they are exploited, abused and violated by men. Somewhere they cannot eat whenever they want – they need to wait until their husband and other male members in the family come and eat first. Even they have to suppress their feelings. They are like toys and machines for men. This is the real situation of millions and millions of women in different parts of the world.
History:
For more than a century, March 8th has been the day to commemorate and celebrate the fight of working class and revolutionary women for a better deal and a socialist society. Its origins are in the struggles for equal pay and decent conditions amongst women in the USA in the 19th century.
On March 8, 1857, garment workers in New York City marched and picketed, demanding improved working conditions, a ten hour day, and equal rights for women. Their ranks were broken up by the police. Fifty-one years later, March 8, 1908, their sisters in the needle trades in New York marched again, honouring the 1857 march, demanding the vote, and an end to sweatshops and child labour. The police were present on this occasion too.
A conference in 1910 of socialist women involved in the Second International, adopted a proposal of the German revolutionary fighter, Klara Zetkin, to establish an International Women’s Day. Russian women began to observe this on the last Sunday in February, according to the pre-revolutionary Julien calendar.
In 1917 this was the day the working women of Petrograd literally started a revolution. In protest at rising prices and food shortages, they filed into the centre of the city, calling on all fellow workers to join them. This was actually March 8th according to the (Gregorian) calendar used elsewhere in the world. Read the rest of this entry »
Richard Branson, ever the pacesetter, is piloting something new — but it has nothing to do with travel.
The founder of Virgin Group and his wife, Joan, are part of the first cohort of non-U.S. billionaires who have signed up to give away half their wealth to charity through the Giving Pledge.
Twelve signatories from countries including Russia, South Africa, Australia, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, Ukraine and Malaysia have signed on to the non-binding moral contract started by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates in 2010. The pledge aims to give wealthy people more authority over where their fortunes are donated during their lifetime.
The Giving Pledge initially included only U.S. billionaires because, as Buffett told Forbes, “I felt we had our hands full in the U.S.”
But going international was no easy task, Forbes reported. Gates and Buffett held dinners with deep-pocketed leaders in places such as China and Saudi Arabia, encountering cultural barriers such as a desire to preserve family wealth.
Differences aside, many of the benevolent billionaires decided to give for the same reasons U.S. pledgers donate: Newly enlisted international signatories said they see giving back as integral to their business ventures. Read the rest of this entry »
Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai has been nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot for promoting girls’ education, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year.
The 15-year-old was shot by a Taliban gunman at point blank range as she travelled on a bus to school on October 9, targeted for promoting girls’ education.
She has since become an internationally recognised symbol of opposition to the Taliban’s drive to deny women education, and against religious extremism in a country where women’s rights are often flouted.
“A prize to Malala would not only be timely and fitting with a line of awards to champions of human rights and democracy, but also … would set both children and education on the peace and conflict agenda,” said Kristian Berg Harpviken, head of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo.
Others known to have been nominated are human rights activists whose names have been mentioned in previous years, including Belarussian human rights activist Ales Belyatski – currently behind bars – and Russia’s Lyudmila Alexeyeva.
Belarus, which former US President George W. Bush’s administration had branded as the “the last dictatorship in Europe”, is governed by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has cracked down even further on opponents of late, rights groups charge. Read the rest of this entry »
Ayesha Mir didn’t go to school on Tuesday, Nov. 27, the day after a security guard found a shrapnel-packed bomb under her family’s car. The 17-year-old Pakistani girl assumed, as did most people who learned about the bomb, that it was intended for her father, the television news presenter Hamid Mir, who often takes on the Taliban in his nightly news broadcasts. Traumatized by the near miss, Ayesha spent most of the day curled up in a corner of her couch, unsure whom to be angrier with: the would-be assassins or her father for putting himself in danger. She desperately wanted someone to help her make sense of things.
At around 10:30 p.m., she got her wish. Ayesha’s father had just come home from work, and he handed her his BlackBerry. “She wants to speak to you,” he said. The voice on the phone was weak and cracked, but it still carried the confidence that Ayesha and millions of other Pakistanis had come to know through several high-profile speeches and TV appearances. Read the rest of this entry »
Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education
Pressure is mounting on the Indian Parliament to end child labour after 150,000 Indians signed an abolition petition demanding an immediate change in the child labour laws.
The petition follows the recent revelation of slave labour conditions under which young children of eight and nine were making Christmas decorations. Currently dangerous work is outlawed in India — but there is no blanket ban yet on child labour under the age of fourteen. As a result India accounts for some of the worst excesses in global child labour; overall fifteen million children worldwide work full time when they should be at school.
This week the children who escaped slave conditions have spoken of their fate and about their ambitions for the future. During their horrific ordeal they were trafficked, exploited, imprisoned and denied food and their stories underline the urgent action needed to end child labour. They would still be making tree decorations and other trinkets but for the courageous rescue carried out by Kailash Satyarthi and his co-leaders of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) and Global March Against Child Labour (GMACL).
Their captors were slave masters who had them trafficked from Indian provinces. Often their parents were tricked into believing they were leaving to be given free education.
Their stories, recounted in a new film published on our website EducationEnvoy.org, reveal a pattern of child abuse. The first child featured on the film is eleven year old Rahim from Malman Nagariain. From the moment he boarded a train to India’s capital he became a prisoner and was eventually confined to a dark and dingy sweatshop in LNJP colony. He was forced to work 18 hours a day with only two recesses of ten minutes each for eating. He was never allowed to leave the premises and had to cook food for himself and his employer inside the sweatshop. He was often scolded and hit for being slow at work. His employer did not pay him a single rupee for his work despite being promised INR1500 per month. Now free he wants to study hard and become a soldier. Read the rest of this entry »
By Susan Heavey and Lisa Lambert and Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (Reuters) – Across the United States, the number of hungry and homeless people is growing, and budget fights at the federal level are threatening the aid many need to survive, the U.S. Conference of Mayors said on Thursday.
Amidst the holiday season of family feasts and corporate dinners, the mayors released a report that found requests for emergency food assistance rose in 21 out of the 25 cities it surveyed in 2012 and remained at the same level in three. More than half the cities said homelessness increased.
“This report is a stark reminder of the long-lasting impact the recession has had on many of our citizens,” Greg Fischer, mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, said in a statement. “Families, who once lived in middle class homes, now find themselves without a roof over their heads, needing multiple social services for the first time in their lives.” Read the rest of this entry »
Gordon Brown, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education
After the tragic news this week of 16-year-old Shiwa Hasmi of Bardiya district in Nepal, I am asking governments and the UN to enforce laws against child marriage and in favour of universal education for girls. Shiwa died in hospital after being set on fire following her refusal to be forced into a child marriage against her will. Read the rest of this entry »
By Gordon Brown, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education
When Malala Yousafzai was targeted and shot by the Taliban in Pakistan on October 9th, simply for wanting to go to school, the whole world of education was changed forever.
Globally, 32 million girls do not yet go to primary school and since October 9th, thousands of children have demonstrated, signed petitions and registered their demand that Malala and girls like her should be able to go to school free of fear and intimidation.
Elsewhere in South Asia, children have started to assert their rights to schooling. In Bangladesh, a new movement led by girls and boys is demanding an end to child marriage. In district after district ‘child marriage free zones’ are being declared as children themselves assert their right not to be sold into loveless marriages they did not choose.
In India this weekend a 300 kilometer march of children started from Assam province, calling for a ban on child labor. Led by 100 child laborers rescued from trafficking, they will demand their right to be at school.
So long as there are children denied the chance of school, Malala will be the standard bearer for their rights. Now and for every day until all young children have the chance to go to school, ‘I am Malala’ will be the banner under which millions of girls throughout the world will demand their right to education. Read the rest of this entry »
By Gordon Brown, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education
Just 72 hours ago in the Indian capital of Delhi 14 children were freed from slave labour. They were being held in dark, insanitary conditions and forced to work for up to 15 hours a day making Christmas decorations. Two were just eight years old.
The suffering of these young children, cruelly trafficked into slave labour, is the real Christmas story of 2012. Their plight must become a wake-up call for all concerned about the treatment of vulnerable children around the world. It demands we move immediately to ban all child labor.
The children rescued in Delhi had been beaten and intimidated. Imprisoned in dingy, locked rooms where they were forced to make Christmas goods with no access to light or fresh air. Malnourished and underfed, many had injuries as a result of using glass to make trinkets and because of violent assaults by their gangmasters. All had been sold into slavery and trafficked by middlemen.
The Christmas decorations and seasonal gifts they were making were for export from India to the West. There are near identical items on sale in shops in America and Europe right now.
The courageous morning break-in that freed the children from this slave labor was organized and carried out by Kailash Satyarthi and his co-leaders of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) and Global March Against Child Labour (GMACL). They faced violent resistance by the gangmasters and thugs.
Because the gangmasters had received a tip off that a raid would take place, most of the children had been whisked away from the workshop and 12 were incarcerated in a pitch-black cell no bigger than 6ft by 6ft Read the rest of this entry »
(CNN) — Pushpa Basnet, a Nepalese woman who supports children so they don’t have to live behind bars with their incarcerated parents, was named the 2012 CNN Hero of the Year on Sunday night.
Nepal is one of the poorest countries, and space is very limited in the few group homes affiliated with the government. So when a parent is incarcerated and no other guardian can be found, children have little choice but to live in prison as well.
Basnet, 29, is determined to give these children another option.
She started a home in Kathmandu where children can receive education, food, medical care and a chance to live a more normal life. She also runs a day care program for children who are too young to be separated from their parent.
“These children have done nothing wrong. They are simply caught in something they do not understand,” Basnet said during “CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute,” which took place at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and honored her and the other top 10 CNN Heroes of 2012. “We want to work with the government to bring them all out from of prison. And they deserve a better future.” Read the rest of this entry »
More than 90,000 people have already signed an online petition calling for Malala Yousafzai to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
At Change.org, Canadian journalist Tarek Fatah said no person deserves the award more than the 15-year-old Pakistani girl who survived an assassination attempt. Read the rest of this entry »
By Gordon Brown, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education
On November 10th we will celebrate ‘Malala Day,’ the moment the whole world honors the sacrifice of Malala Yousafzai, the young girl shot by the Taliban simply for trying to go to school.
Fortunately, Malala is starting on the road to recovery and Malala Day, one month after Malala was left for dead by Taliban assassins, is an opportunity for people everywhere to come together to support the cause that Malala so valiantly represents: a girl’s right to education.
The right to education is denied to 61 million children of primary school age around the world. Girls, boys, the marginalized, rural children, child laborers — the hopes of these 61 million are represented by the struggle and voice of Malala. November 10th is our opportunity to continue to speak out in support of Malala’s vision of every child in school, learning and reaching their full potential.
This Saturday, on Malala Day, new initiatives will be announced in support of Malala and in support of the cause she has risked her life for.
The Malala Yousafzai Children’s Education Institute, named in honor of Malala, will be announced to help educate the world on the need for universal education. The Malala Institute, supported by the Good Planet Foundation, will publish research reports leading the fight for education for every child still denied the right to school.
NGOs such as Plan International are already stepping up their efforts to educate girls. I have also been approached by dedicated teachers and philanthropists wishing to start Malala schools.
While the final figures will not be announced until Saturday, already some one million people have signed petitions urging Pakistan to ensure every girl has a place at school and calling for the United Nations to continue the advance of universal education. Read the rest of this entry »
n a century, March 8th has been the day to commemorate and celebrate the fight of working class and revolutionary women for a better deal and a socialist society. Its origins are in the struggles for equal pay and decent conditions amongst women in the USA in the 19th century.
(CNN) — Pushpa Basnet, a Nepalese woman who supports children so they don’t have to live behind bars with their incarcerated parents, was named the 2012 CNN Hero of the Year on Sunday night.
Nepal - the country of the Buddha and the Mt. Everest 