. WOMEN’S EQUALITY . .

An article by Behrooz Ghamari Tabrizi in Counterpunch

Let me start with a straightforward proposition that is everywhere on social and mass media these days: The Islamic Republic’s patriarchal repression of women reached a tipping point after the murder in custody of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini by the Guidance Patrol on September 16, 2022. A revolt, led by young women, engulfed the entire country under the banner of women, life, freedom. At the root of this movement is the anti-women core of the Islamic regime and the struggle of Iranian women against it since its very beginning in 1979.

The whole nation — inside and outside the country, the global community, the progressive Left as well as the hawkish Right, stand in solidarity with this movement. The protests that began against the compulsory hijab and the demand for abolishment of the Guidance Patrol, has now become a full-fledged intersectional revolt for regime change in Iran, led by women.

This indeed is true that the Islamic Republic instituted draconian patriarchal policies after the revolution on 1979 that stripped the very basic formal rights that women had been granted under the ancien régime. These measures formally reduced women to second-class citizens in matters of marriage, custody, inheritance, crime and judiciary, dress code, segregation, and many other spheres of social life.  Yet, despite all this, women’s social mobility and presence in public sphere grew exponentially in the past four decades.  Ironically, this is in part an effect of the unintended consequences of these policies. Women learned very quickly how to navigate the new terrain, push the boundaries of the new institutions, and in practice gain access to rights and privileges from which the Islamic Republic deprived them. The recent revolt could not materialize without the remarkable agentive presence and mobility of women who carved out a space for ceaseless social and political engagement during the past four decades. Women are revolting because they refuse to continue the struggle in a field the boundaries of which are drawn in the dilapidated spirits of patriarchy.  Their gains have reached a hard as well as a glass ceiling that needs to be overcome.

The Iranian revolution succeeded in ending the monarchy on February 11, 1979. On February 26, only two weeks after the victory of the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini annulled the Family Protection Law of 1967 and its 1975 amended version, which had given women more rights in divorce and matters of custody under the Shah. Since its inception, the clergy by and large had opposed the law’s basic premises, which they believed violated the Islamic views on women’s role in family.  Khomeini knew that the unity and uniformity that his leadership afforded the revolutionary movement would not remain uncontested for long after the triumph of the revolution. He knew that the spirit of Islam and the symbolic revolutionary language with which it inspired millions of Iranians of many creeds and classes needed to be translated into a body of institutional projects of postrevolutionary state-building.  So, he seized the opportunity to put women under the control of their menfolk.

Despite such overt assaults on women’s rights, most political parties continue to address women’s issues in the frame of revolutionary politics, nationalism, class struggle, and anti-imperialism.  For the first few months after the revolution, except for the National Front, the oldest liberal organization in Iran, and small Trotskyist group, Left and liberal parties remained ambivalent about women’s issues. They failed to recognize the remarkable contribution of women to the revolutionary struggle and the need to check the assault on their rights.  At the time, most of the women’s organization operated as an appendix to different political parties to further the anti-imperialist struggle and tied women’s issues to greater demands for social justice.

The establishment of the Islamic Republic proved inconsistent with fundamental women’s formal and legal rights.  Despite earlier assurances, on the eve of March 8, 1979, less than a month after the triumph of the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini called upon the Provisional Government to uphold Islamic dress codes in its offices.  His pronouncement scandalized many who played a significant role in the revolutionary movement, including several members of his own Revolutionary Council.  This was the second time, after the abrogation of the Family Protection Law, in three weeks that issues of women’s right had become a point of contention in the postrevolutionary power struggle. That was why the festive preparations for the first postrevolutionary International Women’s Day turned into a rally with specific women’s rights demands such as the recognition of women judges and, most importantly, a call against compulsory hejāb.  Thousands of women gathered in Tehran University and the next day in front of and inside the hallways of the Ministry of Justice chanting: In the Spring of freedom, absent is the rights of women.

Instituting compulsory hejāb even in the tightly controlled parliament and implementing it throughout the country was not an easy proposition. It took another four years for the mandate to become an enforceable law. Different factions inside the government as well as influential clerics in seminaries raised questions about the wisdom of such a law, its religious justification, as well as its feasibility. Nevertheless, the new law went into effect on August 9, 1983.

The institution of compulsory hejāb and other patriarchal measures in cases of travel, marriage, custody, inheritance, criminal laws, etc. all of which formally reduced women to second-class citizens, gave yet more credibility to feminist concerns that the Islamic republic would entirely force women out of the public sphere. Comparisons were made with Reza Shah.  Some argued that whereas he liberated Muslim women by the “unveiling law” that banned the hejāb in public spaces in 1936, the Islamic Republic was now forcing women back into the private sphere where they would be subjected to the repressive domestic patriarchy.  Yet curiously – these contrasting policies produced paradoxical results on the ground. Reza Shah’s “unveiling” did not liberate women, and the Islamic Republic’s repressive measures did not imprison women at home. Ironically, it was under Reza Shah’s “unveiling law” that a great majority of women in urban areas were forced to stay at home, either because they chose not to appear in public without a veil or were not allowed to leave their homes by their fathers or husbands. Under the Islamic Republic, despite the institution of repressive anti-women laws, rather than being imprisoned in their homes, women gained unprecedented mobility in the country and year after year increased their presence in the public sphere.

These were unintended consequences, but they were quite substantial. As a consequence of the restrictions imposed on women in public places, a new system emerged of what I call patriarchy by proxy. The new laws created the possibility for a great majority of socially conservative Iranian families who were previously reluctant to see women’s participation in social affairs, to trust the new “Islamized” public sphere as an extended domain of patriarchal/religious order. The state became the ultimate guardian of patriarchy and by becoming so, paradoxically, sanctioned an unprecedented mobility among rural and urban women. Despite barring women from entering key political and judicial positions of decision-making, women entered and shaped the conditions of those spheres in significant numbers.

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In practice, gender politics and policy under the Islamic Republic have been far from the mere enactment of literal readings of the Qur’anic verses or a replication of women’s repression in Saudi Arabia. There is no doubt that the postrevolutionary regime instituted formal and legal apparatuses in order to constitute a homo Islamicus. But in its realpolitik, the Islamic Republic negated the anxieties that it would implement a literal reading of the Qur’an and expunge women from the pubic and restrict their lives to the domestic sphere. A quick look at the human development indexes in relation to women’s status in education, health, sports, artistic and cultural production, and civic engagement shows that the women in Iran have the most visible presence in public sphere in its history.  These changes were not the result of top-down state policies, but rather the consequence of a contentious engagement between different factions within the polity, women’s community and civic institutions, and political parties and activists.

From the time of revolution in 1979 to the latest reports in 2019, women’s literacy rate rose from 36% to 97.93%; share of women students in higher education rose from 15% to 60%; women’s life expectancy rose from 55 to 77; infant mortality decreased from 90 per 1000 to 10 per 1000. None of these could have been possible without a remarkable presence of women in public space and their involvement in policy planning and implementation.

The significant presence of women in the public arena created unanticipated shifts in gender relations in the country, conditions that forced even the most patriarchal factions in power to advocate unlikely propositions regarding women’s role in society. In 2006-2007 school year, women comprised 60% of incoming class of university students, and that trend continues. The conservatives of the 8th Parliament introduced legislation for affirmative action for men to catch up with women in higher education. The conservative parliamentarians, who otherwise insist that the place of women is at home to raise a virtuous family, argued that women who use resources of free public universities had to commit to a 10-year employment (public or private) after graduation. The paradox there is self-evident.

Another measure that contributed to the remarkable shift in family structure and gendered relations in public and private spheres was an aggressive family planning and population control program that was instituted in 1989. Although the Islamic Republic repealed the family planning and protection laws of the old regime soon after assuming power, in a significant shift, in 1988, the government introduced and carried out one of the most efficient family planning programs in the economically developing world.   Dictated by the perceived necessity of containing an unchecked rise in population, the program successfully reduced the population growth rate from the high of 3.4% in 1986 to 0.7% in 2007. During the same period, the number of children per family dropped from 6.5 to less than 2. Before his death in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini endorsed the new program thus affording religious legitimacy to this ideological reversal.  As the Candadian-Iranian anthropologists Homa Hoodfar has shown, without national consensus-building, a massive mobilization of women, both by government agencies as well as non-governmental agents, promoted with effective religious justification, and offered through an efficient delivery service in birth control and contraceptives (such as distribution of free condoms), and premarital sex-education programs, this ambitious family planning project could not have been realized. Called by many “The Iranian Miracle,” the program was so successful that, fearing the emergence of an aging population, the authorities are now trying to encourage families to have more children.

The purpose of this brisk history is not to draw a sanguine picture of women’s conditions in contemporary Iran. The complexities of how government and non-governmental actors interact on these issues, how the expansion and containment of state power shape the social realities of women of different classes and ethnicities, or how religious doctrines and convictions hinder or facilitate women’s mobility cannot be fully detailed here.  Rather, I want to show that the Islamic Republic instituted policies and imposed patriarchal laws that produced unintended consequences in gender relations and women’s mobility. For an uprising to materialize, there needs to be a socially mobile, politically conscious, and subjectively free population. Iranian women have long been the fierce political actors we see on the street, not the oppressed, shadowy, veiled subjects that are the meat and potatoes of foreign misperception and paternalism. Yes, a mighty patriarchy shaped social order in Iran, like many other places in the world, but women were never its hapless captives. That image, the helpless veiled women, while effective in gathering support in global liberal feminist circles who believe that Muslim women need to be saved, does not correspond to the practice of those women’s everyday lives and fails to credit two generations of Iranian women for their political creativity.

At its core, Women-Life-Freedom is a movement for dignity and sovereignty of the subject.  It is a movement that has changed the political culture of defiance and expressions of dissent. Its radical creativity— posters, songs, graffiti, and imaginative forms of collective action, has opened in practice the possibility of thinking of politics anew. The transformative acts of insubordinate bodies and liberated souls has made party platforms and unruffled sermons ineffective and obsolete.

While Iranian women and their male allies fight against the state’s brutal crackdown, their aspiring revolt, with its novel singularities, faces instrumentalization by regional and global actors, facilitated through a misreading of Iranian women’s history of deliberate and agentive action. While the global reach of this movement through the media operates as an instrument of its effective dissemination, paradoxically, it also subjects it to a discursive violence.

We should not misread the core principles of Women, Life, Freedom as being a simple “desire for the west” by a population who are simply fed up.  Under such a misreading, a whole host of unsavory interests, from neocolonial expansionists to ethno-nationalist separatists, from delusional monarchists to all those who still lament being on the losing side of the 1979 revolution, try their best to claim ownership of this movement.  Yet Iranian women on the ground have been the very actors who historically have created the conditions of possibility for their protest.  They have opened space for themselves and their daughters in the face of a state desire for repressive patriarchy. Over decades they have succeeded to take advantage of the unintended consequences of state policies; they are not merely reacting—they are instead determined.

Today’s massive women’s movement in Iran represents one of the great achievements of the 1979 revolution—a revolution that generated hope-bearing, conscious subjects who have perpetuated themselves for more than four decades – despite and in the face of all manner of repression. The paradoxical effects of the Islamic Republic policies brought women to the centerstage of social transformation in Iran. Now that transformation has reached a point of frontal war with the state. Iranian women today hold key positions in journalism, artistic and cultural production, civic engagement, political organizing, higher education, scientific communities, local political offices, etc. Daughters of those women, irrevocably demand an extension and expansion of their mothers’ positions without any patriarchal restrictions, either by the state or inside their homes.

Those demands will only be realized through the transformation of the state, or by rethinking the meaning of the state. How this transformation will unfold and with what means is yet not known, but its inevitability is evident. How fortunate we are that these generations of women taking the lead.

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Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi is an Iranian-born American historian, sociologist, and professor.

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION . .

A survey by CPNN

The following 28 events in 15 Arab and Middle Eastern countries were listed in Google during the week of September 17-28 this year under the key words “International day of peace” “peace day”, “journee internationale de la paix” and اليوم الدولي للسلام .

About 18 events are listed on the maps of One Day One Choir and Montessori schools singing for peace, but there is no indication which took place this year and which took place only in previous years

Meeting of the League of Arab States on the International Day of Peace

ALGERIA

Today, Wednesday, on the occasion of the celebration of the International Day of Peace, the National Council for Human Rights affirmed that Algeria had several initiatives in this regard.

BAHRAIN

On the occasion of the celebration of the International Day of Peace, Her Excellency Mrs. Fawzia bint Abdullah Zainal, Speaker of the House of Representatives, affirmed that the Kingdom of Bahrain is a symbol of coexistence and openness and an example to follow in peace between different religions and sects, thanks to the wise visions and wise leadership of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

BAHRAIN, ABDUL RAHMAN KANOO INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL 

Abdul Rahman Kanoo International School (ARKIS) celebrates International Day of Peace also known as Peace Day, which is observed worldwide each year on September 21. . . . Under the direction of Mrs. Abeer Mahmood (Events & Activates Coordinator), 18 classes from Preschool supported the peace day celebrations and each class was given a large cardboard picture of a dove and were given the opportunity to stick a green leaf to paper, understanding the importance of the day. As a separate event, an olive tree was fitted to the garden at the Schools Main Gate, as a symbol and reminder to all students, parents, and stakeholders of peace and friendship.

BAHRAIN SCHOOLS

The schools of the Kingdom of Bahrain celebrated the International Day of Peace, which falls on the twenty-first of September each year.
The events focused on benefiting from the activities of the “School Enhancing Citizenship and Human Rights” project, which it implements The Ministry of Education for several years, with the aim of promoting the values of peace, tolerance, coexistence and dialogue in the school community . In an example of these efforts, 550 students and 58 administrators and teachers at Al-Qadisiyah Primary School for Girls participated in several Activities that varied between storytelling, coloring, crafts and educational games, with the participation of all school departments.

BAHRAIN, ISA TOWN

In order to enhance the concept of peace, the Al-Amal Institute for Special Education of the Child and Maternity Welfare Association held a simple celebration on the occasion of the International Day of Peace, which included a chant about peace prepared by Professor Batoul Abdel Rahim and implemented by the students of the Institute.

EGYPT, CAIRO

Arab Parliament Speaker Adel Abdulrahman Al Asoomi marked the International Day of Peace, celebrated annually on September 21. The Speaker stressed the importance of spreading peace and the culture of coexistence, especially in light of the conflicts and humanitarian crises around the world. Al Asoomi called for unifying Arab efforts in tackling violence and hatred.

EGYPT, DAMIETTA UNIVERSITY

Under the patronage of Prof. Dr. El-Sayed Mohamed Daadour – President of the University and under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Wael Farouk Al-Taibani – Vice President for Education and Student Affairs, the UNESCO Club, in cooperation with the General Administration for Student Welfare, organized today, Wednesday, 9/21/2022, the celebration activities of the day The International Peace Conference on the University Campus, in the presence of Prof. Dr. Mustafa Kamel Khalil, Dean of the Faculty of Law, Prof. Dr. Ahmed Al-Zaki, Head of the Department of Fundamentals of Education at the Faculty of Education, Coordinator of the UNESCO Club, and a number of faculty members and university students.

EGYPT, SHARM EL-SHEIKH

Sharm El-Sheikh hotels celebrated today, Wednesday, the International Day of Peace . . . A group of hotel staff, led by Sherine El-Hawary, assistant manager and training officer at the hotel, gathered, raising some slogans calling for peace, and taking a group of memorial photos at the peace icon. The icon, located in the Peace Square in Sharm El Sheikh, is the tallest peace icon in the world . . . The icon design is in the form of black granite clusters bearing lotus leaves topped by eight wings inspired by the wings of the god “Ra”, the sun god, among the ancient Egyptians. Above it is the pigeon carrying an olive branch as a symbol of peace, and the eight wings indicate the main directions, North, East, South, West, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest.

ISESCO

The International Day of Peace comes this year under the
 slogan: “Ending racism.. and building peace.” The Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) seizes this occasion to call for mobilization and solidarity, to meet the challenges of peace and security , which impede social development and human capital building around the world, with an estimated economic impact of approximately 10.5% of global GDP. In an effort to achieve a tangible qualitative leap, ISESCO launched its Leadership Training Program for Peace and Security, which in its first edition enabled the training of 30 young men and women who became ambassadors of peace, while 50 others from 45 countries will benefit from the training in its second Edition. ISESCO, in cooperation with the International University of Rabat in the Kingdom of Morocco, launched the program for integrating ISESCO’s “360 Degrees for Peace” approach into academia.

IRAQ

As the world celebrates the “International Day of Peace”, a number of Iraqi women activists and a human rights center are taking advantage of this day, to reveal discrimination against women at work, as well as the pressures and difficulties they face in their various activities, amid calls to stop “arbitrary practices” against them, which amounted to killing and displacement. . . . In this regard, the head of the Iraq Center for Human Rights, Ali Al-Abadi, explains to Shafaq News Agency, “Women have started resorting to civil activities due to the lack of justice in their rights, and despite the Iraqi and international laws’ emphasis on gender equality, but many aspects of life are still monopolized by men, or unequal pay, as The tribal institution, especially the southern one, underestimates women’s rights.”

JORDAN, ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLES OF EURASIA

On September 21, 2022, the Assembly of the Peoples of Eurasia held a reception in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on the occasion of the celebration of the International Day of Peace, approved by the UN General Assembly. The event was attended by prominent public and scientific figures, senators, members of Parliament, representatives of international organizations, state and non-state structures of Jordan. . . . The culmination of the evening was the charity ceremony “Peace Bell” for strengthening peace and mutual understanding between countries and peoples, which was accompanied by a video recording of the musical composition “Stork on the Roof” performed by Yaroslav Degtyareva and Valentina Biryukova.

JORDAN, AMMAN

 The participants in the conference “The Holistic Transformation Towards a Green Feminist Economy” unanimously agreed on the importance of empowering women and enhancing social, economic and psychological security; To achieve a green feminist economy in its holistic form.
The Minister of Culture, Haifa Al-Najjar, who sponsored the opening ceremony of the conference organized by the Feminist Economy Foundation and the “Think Project” yesterday evening, at the “W” Hotel in Amman, on the occasion of the International Day of Peace, said that she came to the conference not as a minister, but because of her absolute belief as a partner and a person who believes in a project. Think of all humanity and world peace.

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What has happened this year (2022) for the International Day of Peace?

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LEAGUE OF ARAB STATES

The statement of the General Secretariat of the League of Arab
States on the International Day of Peace . . . .  On this day, the League of Arab States affirmed, through joint regional efforts, the commitment to exert more effort and support joint Arab action, which would activate the participation of all parties in efforts to build and sustain peace without exclusion or discrimination. As well as emphasizing the importance of exerting more effort to support the peace process, unity and reconciliation, spreading a culture of non-violence in all circles, and working for a world free of racism and discrimination.

LEBANON, UNIFIL

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) held on 21 September 2022 a ceremony to commemorate the International Day of Peace at its headquarters in Naqoura, South Lebanon. Peacekeepers representing the current 48 troop-contributing countries in UNIFIL were joined at the event by representatives of the local authorities, religious leaders, Lebanese armed and security forces and members of the international community.

LIBYA, BENGHAZI

The Permanent Peace Foundation, in partnership with Vision Research, Training & Consultancies and Barah Culture & Arts, celebrates the International Day of Peace, which falls on September 21 of each year. At five in the evening at the headquarters of «Brah for Culture and Arts» in Benghazi.The celebration includes many cultural and artistic activities and a dialogue session for speakers who have experienced peace, according to “ Facebook ” .

OMAN, SALALAH

Participants in the first Omani Cultural Forum, which concluded in the Omani city of Salalah today, Wednesday, affirmed that “the Gulf states represent a global model for peace and coexistence among peoples, as it includes dozens of nationalities living in peace and brotherhood on one land.”  The conference was held over two days under the slogan (Oman, Love and Peace), in the presence of a crowd of people interested in culture and peace from various Arab countries, coinciding with the International Day of Peace, which falls on September 21 each year.  

QATAR, DOHA

Wijdan Cultural Center of the Ministry of Culture celebrated today the International Day of Peace, which falls on the Sept. 21 every year, which this year adopts the theme “End racism. Build Peace,” through organizing an event in which researcher Yasser Al-Gharbawi, head of the Research and Studies Department at the Center, delivered a speech, which was broadcast on the center’s social media platforms. . . . Wijdan’s head of the Research and Studies Department said that this global occasion is an opportunity to promote a culture of peace.

SAUDI ARABIA, RIYADH, MUSLIM WORLD LEAGUE

In conjunction with the commemoration of the International Day of Peace, which falls on September 21 of each year, the Muslim World League, with the participation of the presidency of the United Nations General Assembly and a high-level delegation from the Kingdom of Sweden, celebrated the inauguration of the famous symbol of peace; “The Knotted Pistol”, at the sub-headquarters of the Muslim World League in Riyadh, which has become a global icon that started from the United Nations headquarters, bypassing the framework of its first idea in New York, where the United Nations installed a model of the knotted pistol for its global connotation calling for peace and rejection of violence.

SOMALIA, MOGADISHU

Today, Wednesday, Somali Deputy Prime Minister, Saleh Ahmed Jameh, inaugurated an event to celebrate the International Day of Peace, organized by the Ministry of Interior, Federalism and Reconciliation in Mogadishu, under the title: “Together to Promote Peace and Reject Racial Discrimination.” This came with the participation of the Minister of Interior, Federalism and Reconciliation, His Excellency Ahmed Moallem Faki, his deputy, Mr. Abdul Hakim Ashkar, the United Nations envoy to Somalia, Mr. James Swan, and the ambassadors of a number of concerned brotherly and friendly countries to Somalia, in addition to representatives of regional governments and the Banadir Governorate administration. civil society organizations, and the Women’s Union.

SUDAN, DARFUR

To mark the International Day of Peace, ten youth peace advocates from Darfur met with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sudan, Volker Perthes, and his Deputy, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Khardiata Lô N’Diaye. . . . The discussion covered a wide array of subjects including the impact of the continued political crisis on the escalation of violence across Sudan, and gaps in the implementation of the Juba Peace Agreement and the National Plan for the Protection of Civilian. Participants also stressed the need for a comprehensive approach to peacebuilding and the importance of empowering women and youth as peace advocates.

SUDAN, KADUGLI

On Wednesday, the women of Southern Kordofan marched from Freedom Square in Kadugli to the headquarters of the Secretariat of the Government of Southern Kordofan on the occasion of the International Day of Peace. The women participating in the procession handed a memorandum to the Deputy Governor of Southern Kordofan, Al-Rasheed Attia, which contained 16 demands, including speeding up the formation of a civilian democratic government, involving women and not tolerating violence against them, in addition to activating the role of the police in protecting women and appointing policewomen.

SUDAN, KHARTOUM

On the International Day of Peace, the director of the General Administration for Women at the Ministry of Social Development, Mrs. Suad Dishol, said, “We celebrate this great occasion and take a moment to reflect on it and slowly read the slogan of this year’s celebration, to see between these phrases the state of our country and the pain that squeezes the hearts of millions of those who have been stung by the fire of racism.” The hateful and the distortion it caused in the relations of the various groups and tribes and torn apart their entities that were known for tolerance and living in peace.

SYRIA

Video: Peace Day, Syrian youth sing for peace and harmony.

SYRIA, WOMEN’S COUNCIL

The United Nations General Assembly declared the International Day of Peace in 1981 in order to celebrate and promote the ideal of peace among all nations and peoples. Two decades later, the General Assembly set September 21 as the date to celebrate the occasion annually. On this occasion, the Women’s Council in North and East Syria and the Human Rights Organization in Al Jazeera prepared a lecture entitled Women and Peace. (with photos of poster and meeting).

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, DUBAI

The International Peace Day Celebration, by the Council for Universal Peace, which is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is held at Sheikh Rashid Tower World Trade Centre, Dubai. The summit was inaugurated by His Highness Sheikh Obaid Suhail Al Maktoum and was presided over by Khaled Al Maeena, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Addressing the summit, His Highness Sheik Obaid Suhail Al Maktoum said, “It’s the right time to work together for Global Peace and Bond beyond boundaries.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, SHARJAH

The Department of Social Services in Sharjah organized community events and activities on the occasion of the International Day of Peace. . . Maryam Ibrahim Al-Zarouni, happiness specialist and social educator in the department, said that the occasion receives the attention of many institutions and authorities in the country, because of its importance in instilling the concept of peace and love in the hearts of members of society, and raising their awareness of its importance, in order to spread peace and tolerance among peoples.

YEMEN

Tomorrow Thursday evening, on the occasion of the International Day of Peace, the Nidaa Organization for Coexistence and Construction will hold a symposium entitled Peace Challenges in Yemen, via the virtual space ZOOM, in cooperation with the SAM Organization for Rights and Freedoms. 

YEMEN, ADEN

“Southern Women Group for Peace”, on the International Day of Peace, reaffirms its firm position and its call to all parties to the conflict to sit at the dialogue table under the supervision of the international efforts and for regional and international bodies to play their desired role and firm positions towards stopping the war that has drained human energies, resources and national wealth of Yemen . . . . A group of southerners for peace, on this International Day of Peace, renews its demands that southern women occupy their rightful place in all negotiations calling for peace, based on resolution (1325) issued by the UN Security Council.