abaad

Abaad and its partners launched yesterday their contribution to the 16-day world campaign to combat violence against women and girls.  The campaign is entitled “Saying God help her will not help her” and seeks to mobilize people to take action against violence.  According to the director of Abaad, Ghida Anani, violence against women is a multi layered issues which requires personal initiatives to challenge and prevent violence against women.
The campaign includes three TV spots, showing women and men witnessing domestic violence in their immediate environment but feeling helpless and simply saying “God help her”, whilst they continue their life as usual.  The campaign also includes a radio advert, advertising on billboards all over the country, in addition to small text messages and various training and awareness activities, all to be concluded on December 18th.
Source: Al-Nahar 29 November 2013

The Arab Association for Freedom and Equality launched in collaboration with Abaad the new gender and sexuality resources centre during a celebration held last Monday in Beirut.  The centre seeks to compile and produce resources related to gender and equality and MENA region and to disseminate them through a website available in both English and Arabic gsrc-mena.org.
The website already includes more than 1000 resources in its database categorised per country and type of documents (academic publications, reports, studies, laws, booklets, campaigns) and which are available in English, Arabic and French.
The director of the centre, Nour Nasr, noted in her celebration address that the centre will seek to compile resources and studies that have been produced in the region so that it becomes available to those interested and especially via coordination between various similar centers, associations and individuals. She added that the project has started mapping and analysing the existing resources and identifying geographical and thematic gaps. She also presented the key activities of the project namely developing a map of resources, research and analysis, gathering research resources, documenting case studies and various initiatives, activities and researches on gender and sexuality, disseminating these and producing a newsletter as well as archiving the resources online.
Source: Al-Safir, Al-Nahar 8 October 2013

The Daily Star published a report about a research paper issued last Tuesday by Oxfam GB in collaboration with ABAAD association, focusing on the negative coping strategies that many displaced women from Syria are employing to live in Lebanon.
The research was conducted during March and April earlier this year and involved both Syrian and Palestinian women displaced from Syria, to examine changing gender roles in displaced communities. The research paper entitled “Shifting Sands” was based on qualitative data collected through 11 focus group discussions involving more than 150 people as well as individual interviews with key informants.
The report indicated that 90 percent of the interviewed women regularly skipped meals and cut down on their own food intake to prioritize children and men’s access to food, while the level of domestic violence confronting women confront was on the increase.
Women also faced various form of fear outside the home – of being kidnapped, sexually attacked, theft, etc… According to the report, a large number of parents told researchers that financial and security reasons forced them into giving their daughters to marriage. However, and while some interviewees reported instances of girls as young as 15 being married to much older men, many also noted that it was not unusual in Syria to be married at the age of 18 years.
Source: The Daily Star 4 September 2013