By Ruba Hattar
Webster University Geneva will host a forum on women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region on Thursday, December 3. This all-day event will seek to shed light and analyze the on-going struggles, challenges and threats to women’s status and rights. It will critically assess these issues in the context of the long and enduring struggle of the Arab Spring that commenced a decade ago.
The Forum aims to create new opportunities for peace and development by assessing the achievements and setbacks to women’s rights in the past decade and addressing the challenging implications of COVID-19 for the lives and empowerment of women of the MENA region today and tomorrow.
Furthermore, the Forum on Women’s Rights in the MENA Region aims to study the emerging feminist activism in this vital part of the world. It will examine the new social movements and how they differ from those of the Arab Spring of 2010-2011. It will also investigate women in the media, social movements in the digital age, women and nonviolence, and political activism during the current pandemic. The Forum aims to create synergies between women activists in the field, academia, and international organizations in Geneva.
The Forum Will Consist of Four Panels:
Panel One: The Role of Education on Women’s Empowerment and Mobilization
Panel Two: Feminism and Identity Politics: The Rise of New Social Movements
Panel Three: Women’s Rights Movements, Technology and Digitalization: Opportunities and Obstacles
Panel Four: Feminism and International Organizations in the Age of Covid-19: Reimagining the Future
Webster University is a Private, Non-Profit Institution with a Century of Time-Tested Results. Established in 1915 by the Sisters of Loretto, who sought to make education accessible to all, Webster has an extraordinary history reflecting a determination to equalize higher education.
Recognizing the growing interconnectedness of our world, for 40 years we have been building a network of campuses to serve local communities. Today, we serve more than 12,000 students across 50 residential, metro, military, and international locations.
