Resource center

Project webpage:
The Arab Human Rights Index – referred to as AHR - chronicles the Arab countries' progress in human rights. It offers concise information about their ratification, reservations, and reports to the international human rights committees, in a one stop access in Arabic, English and French.

Most of the reports, already available at the website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) are organized on AHR in ways that enable quick comparative analysis. They are organized by country, by core treaty, by human rights committee reports, and by types of available resources (such as country reporting history and shadow reports).

Organisation website:
The Arab Dutch Women's Circle is a human rights organization established in 2002 as a non-profit organization. The organization's headquarters are in The Hague. Its founder and president, Dr. Tomador Meihuizen-Hassoun, was born in Syria and obtained her doctor's degree in France. She worked in France and in many Arab countries as a university professor, researcher in the field of women's and children's rights and as editor-in-chief of a woman's magazine (Hajes). Now she works as a consultant of the Middle East.

The Board of the ANVK plays a leadership role in planning, guiding and governing its activities. In order to strive collectively towards gender equality and women's and children's rights in the Arab world, the ANVK is working together with its partners, the Netherlands Association of Women with Higher Education, the International Dialogues Foundation, students of the Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden, the Algerian Women's Association, Bridging the Gulf, and Arab women NGOs in the Netherlands and in Arab countries.
Our aims

Women's and children's rights, gender equality and the empowerment of Arab women to become free to make their own choices, develop their capacities, their talents and their skills, these are chosen as the prime goals of the strategic plan of the ANVK. In addition, the development of Arab societies where governments, women's, men's and civil organisations can reinforce each other in the fight against injustice is equally part of our plan of action.

Organisation website:
International Relief and Development (IRD) is one of the premier organizations implementing development services and programs across a broad spectrum of regions and technical activities. In brief : "Our mission is to reduce the suffering of the world's most vulnerable groups and to provide tools and resources needed to increase their self-sufficiency. We accomplish this mission by running targeted, cost-effective development programs that improve the lives of these vulnerable groups. We work in regions of the world that present social, political, and technical challenges, and particularly specialize in helping communities affected by conflict and war to recover and improve. We collaborate with a wide range of organizations to design and implement humanitarian relief and development aid programs."

Organisation website:
Women for Women International provides women survivors of war, civil strife and other conflicts with the tools and resources to move from crisis and poverty to stability and self-sufficiency, thereby promoting viable civil societies. We're changing the world one woman at a time.

Project webpage:
"The aim of this network is to provide young Arab and Nordic scholars in the field of gender and politics with the opportunity to establish intraregional as well as cross-regional contacts with other PhD students and seniors in the same field and to provide additional academic supervising within the following research areas:
• Women's political empowerment (political representation, social movements)
• Policy changes and gendered rights (civil, political and social citizenship and violence against women)
• Labour market (gender segregation, equal pay, unemployment)
• Migration (including migrating care workers)
• Media, communication and cultural debates
• Religion

The purpose of the network is three-fold:
• to contribute to the development of research in the field of women in political life.
• to facilitate the exchange of theories, methodological approaches and empirical findings between young Arab and Nordic scholars.
• to facilitate contacts between senior and junior researchers in the field. Thus, the network will be of vital help to young scholars who are looking for international research contacts and who are in want of additional external supervision capacity."

Organisation website:
The National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) propels women entrepreneurs into economic, social and political spheres of power worldwide by:

Strengthening the wealth creating capacity of our members and promoting economic development within the entrepreneurial community
Creating innovative and effective change in the business culture
Building strategic alliances, coalitions and affiliations
Transforming public policy and influencing opinion makers

Organisation website:
'Karama' is the Arabic word for dignity, as well as an initiative fueled by a coalition of partners as constituencies to build a movement to end violence against women in the Middle East and North Africa. Karama puts emphasis on women from the ground up, addressing violence as they define it, with solutions of their own design.

Launched in 2005 to provide a framework for coordination, cooperation, and linkage among people working to stop violence against women, Karama has initiated an unprecedented range of multi-sectoral collaboration and advocacy by women across the region at the national, regional, and international levels.

Karama's partners include organizations in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Palestine with experience in political advocacy, research, service provision, community outreach, and working with targeted groups.

Organisation profile:
Foundation profile available in 3 languages. ( English, Arabic and French). In brief : "The Foundation for the Future (FFF) is an independent and multi-lateral non-profit organization which is fully committed to supporting initiatives by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) aimed at promoting human rights, democratic governance, and reform in the Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) region, while respecting the cultures and traditions of individual countries. "

Organisation website:
Lebanon affiliate of the international Young Women's Christian Association, provides social and educational development programs for women.

Organisation website:
The mission of Persian/ate Gender Network (PGN) is to establish a link and be a focal point among the multitude of organizations and individuals which work on gender issues in Persian-speaking countries(practitioners, researchers, academicians, civil society, policy makers, and advocates), so that they can capitalize on their collective knowledge and synergize each other's work and efforts.
The initial focus of PGN's work program is around women's economic empowerment through employment, self-employment and entrepreneurship. It serves women in Persian speaking countries of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
PGN is initiated and funded by the World Bank and operated by the Tunisia-based Center for Arab Women's Training and Research (CAWTAR).