More specifically the Province of Gorontalo. That’s where Governor Rusli Habibie is implementing a new policy, diverting the pay of married men who work for the provincial government.

From next month, their money will go directly to their wives. This follows petitions from women who say they’re not getting enough money from their menfolk to feed their families and pay the rent.

Gorontalo lies on one of the great islands of Indonesia. Can you name it?

From the air, the island looks a bit like an octopus on its side, with several long peninsulas extending into the sea, like tentacles. Due north is the Philippines. Go west and you hit Borneo.

The answer is Sulawesi.

Anchor Marco Werman gets details from the BBC’s Jakarta reporter, Karishma Vaswani.

Gorontalo, highlighted in green on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia (Map: Wiki Commons)

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English novelist Charles Dickens was born 2 centuries ago Tuesday, but he remains relevant even now said Archbishop of Canterbury because his books and characters explore what it means to be human.

In January 1842, Dickens sailed to America for the first time.

He wanted to see the Niagara Falls with his own eyes and also the American prisons and asylums.

He also traveled to a historic American city near Boston to see how textile workers, especially women, were treated in the busy and crowded mills.

And we want you to name that 19th century industrial city.

Lowell, Massachusetts is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

It was a place that Dickens sought out in 1842 when he first came to America.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Natalie McKnight about Dickens’ American tour to chronicle the injustices of the Victorian age.

Jan Seymour-Ford, a Research Librarian at Perkins, reflects on Charles Dickens.

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Gabriel Birenbaum is a senior researcher at the Academy of the Hebrew Language. (Photo: Daniel Estrin)

Now, it’s become a household expression after Orthodox Jewish soldiers refused to attend events that involved women.

Daniel Estrin reports that the phrase has also been used to segregate the men from the women.

But there is one settlement very much in the political spotlight right now. It’s called Migron.

About 50 Jewish Israeli families – 300 or so people in all – live at Migron. It’s mostly a cluster of mobile homes on a treeless hilltop outside the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

Migron is the largest of the so-called illegal outposts scattered throughout the West Bank. But in the case of Israeli settlements, illegal doesn’t necessarily mean unsanctioned. Migron spokesman Itai Chemo said there is bitter irony to the situation.

“There’s an electricity poll,” Chemo pointed out to me during a recent visit to Migron. “I cannot bring it on my own, it’s the country that put it over here, the state.”

People have lived at Migron for 10 years, Chemo added. “The houses that you see here were brought in by the ministry of housing. The ministry of defense built the roads and all the infrastructure.” As what about water, I asked? “Same thing,” Chemo said.

But thanks to a Supreme Court decision that came down in August last year, the future of Migron is uncertain. The judges ruled that Migron was built illegally on private Palestinian land. And they ordered the government to evict the residents and demolish their homes by the end of March.

Itai Chemo called the demolition order, “the most horrific thing that a country can do to its people.”

But there is another group of people just down the hill from Migron who not happy with the situation either. They are the residents of the Palestinian village of Burka.

Standing next to an old cemetery filled with stones bearing inscriptions in Arabic, a village native who did not want to give his name said, “Do they have a cemetery over there? We belong. This is our proof that this land is ours.”

The Palestinian man said Migron should never have been built. He said the settlers living there now should be evicted according to Israel’s own rule of law.

“What gives them the right to take the land? ‘God gave us this, God said in the Bible that this is our land.’ What about us?”

“It’s apartheid,” he said. That’s all it is. We’re looked upon as nothing, we don’t belong here, we’re a nuisance.”

Palestinians seriously doubt Migron will ever be evacuated. That is despite the fact that Israel’s Defense Minister, Ehud Barak has said “it’s out of the question” for settlers to remain on private Palestinian land.

There is also a precedent for demolishing illegal buildings at Migron. It happened last September. Settlers tussled with Israeli police as bulldozers knocked down two houses. It was the kind of scene that pro-settler politicians say cannot be repeated, regardless of the Supreme Court decision.

Vice premier Silvan Shalom recently paid a visit to Migron and weighed in on the issue.

“We need to find a noble compromise,” Shalom said.

What does that mean? It appears the Israeli government is going to build the residents of Migron new homes. The new houses will be put up on another West Bank hilltop, about a mile from where they live right now. It is not clear how long this would take, or what would happen to the existing buildings at Migron itself.

But Peace Now, an Israeli organization that opposes the settlements, says the deal would essentially reward settlers for breaking the law.

“The deals that they are trying to make are absurd,” said Etai Mizrav of Peace Now. “We already passed the debating part and we’re now in the part when, after so many years that this injustice is taking place, the Supreme Court said that Migron should not be where it is right now.”

The prime minister’s spokesman, Mark Regev said he agrees with that. The law is clear and the Supreme Court has spoken, he said. Migron has to be evacuated by the end of March.

But Regev also said that finding a compromise with the settlers there is about avoiding violence.

“We are seeking a negotiated solution involving a voluntary relocation,” Regev said. “But if that’s not possible. I have to be clear: the Supreme Court’s decisions will be implemented.”

That would still leave about 100 illegal West Bank outposts in legal limbo. But the Israeli government is moving to resolve the legal question of the outposts. It has just put together a committee of legal experts to look at ways of legalizing the illegal outposts once and for all.

More than a dozen people have died in four days of violence now and more than hundreds have been injured.

One shocking image from the clashes this weekend stands out. It shows a woman wearing an Islamic robe being dragged, semi-clothed and unconscious, by soldiers.

Video footage shows her being beaten too.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to New York-based journalist Mona Eltahawy who was recently attacked while covering the unrest in Egypt.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. At least two people were killed today in fresh clashed between Egypt’s military and protestors demanding an end to military rule. About a dozen people have died in four days of violence now, hundreds more have been injured. One shocking image from the clashes this weekend stands out. It shows a woman wearing an Islamic robe being dragged semi-clothed and unconscious by soldiers. The video footage shows her being beaten too. New York based journalist, Mona Eltahawy, was recently attacked while covering the unrest in Egypt. She says the image proves that violence against women by officials there is widespread.

Mona Eltahawy: What we see from that image is a clear and systematic use of sexual violence by the armed forces in Egypt that is perfectly in line with the systematic use of sexual violence that goes all the way back to the Mubarak regime. In 2005 the Mubarak regime began using this sexual violence against women. In March the military used it when it conducted the so-called virginity tests against women. I myself experienced it in Egypt last month. And that image clearly shows that they can’t deny that the use of sexual violence against women.

Werman: What happened in your case? Can you tell us about that?

Eltahawy: Well, in my case, this was in November. I was on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, which is one of the side streets off Tahrir Square that had become a site of confrontation between protestors, police and the military. And I was beaten by riot police. My left arm was broken and my right hand was broken. I was sexually assaulted by those same riot police, and then I was detained for 12 hours, 6 by the police and 6 by the military, and I was blindfolded during some of the interrogation during the interrogation.

Werman: I’m curious you know, how widespread this is because the image of this woman who we were speaking about earlier was on the front page of one of Egypt’s newspapers under the headline Liars, because the military said protestors wouldn’t be harmed. But now we’re hearing your story and you’ve campaigned about the use of sexual violence in Egypt and these protests. How wide is it?

Eltahawy: It is extremely widespread. It’s very disturbing how widespread it’s become because since the Mubarak regime began to use this system of sexual violence against female protestors and journalists in 2005, what it has essentially done is it has given a green light. It says that women are fair game because if the state can do it then anyone can do it. And if the state can do it then when I’m then sexually assaulted by an Egyptian civilian, how then can I expect the state to defend me or to hold that civilian accountable if the state itself has violated and abused my body? And when the state, whether it’s the military or the regime under Mubarak, can drag a woman through the streets of Cairo, strip her down to her bra and kick and violate her in that way, it clearly says that your body belongs to me. And our revolution is to clearly separate the two. My body is mine. My mind is mine and this is part of the campaign. We’re fighting many, many campaigns here. But unless we fight that personal revolution that separates my body from the state, our political revolution will not succeed.

Werman: Well, Mona, the state right now in Egypt is an interim military state. Is the military part of the problem rather than the solution?

Eltahawy: The military is completely the problem. The military is front and central the problem, and it’s time to talk about holding the military responsible. Field Marshal Tantawi must stand trial for crimes against humanity. The soldiers who are beating and violating people, including that woman, and others — they have killed children, they have killed unarmed civilians — why are they arresting 9-year-old children over the past four days in Egypt? These are not terrorists, these are children. We must hold the military accountable. They must stand trial for crimes against humanity. And the police must also stand trial. We haven’t seen one single security person stand trial for the martyrs that were killed during the revolution. So the military is front and central the problem and we need civilian leadership in Egypt sooner than later.

Werman: Mona, do you see any encouraging signs that Egypt can ultimately be a safe place for women?

Eltahawy: I definitely do because I’m seeing so many young Egyptian women and men, and it gives me great comfort to see the men take part in this, organizing protests and marches in Egypt against sexual violence. They’re organizing protests from Al-Azhar, which is the main seat of Sunni Muslim learning, to Tahrir Square on Friday to say very clearly to Field Marshal Tantawi who’s head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, that you will not undress my sisters and I will not be silent as you do that. So I think together there is a sense in Egypt of men and women coming together to fight this because this is a very special turning point in Egyptian history.

Werman: Journalist Mona Eltahawy, thank you very much for joining us.

Eltahawy: Thanks for having me.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: As we mentioned earlier, the third recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is Tawakul Karman. The Yemeni pro-democracy activist heard the news in the capitol, Sanaa.

Tawakul Karman: [speaking Arabic]

Werman: Karman said she didn’t even know she was nominated. She dedicated her share of the Nobel to “all the martyrs and wounded of the Arab Spring.” Letta Taylor is a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch. She knows Tawakul Karman and is familiar with her work.

Letta Taylor: Tawakul Karman is an irrepressible force and one of the pivotal figures behind the Yemen protests. She’s also one of the few role models for women in Yemen. And I think that awarding this prize to a Yemeni activist and to a woman at that provides a jolt of energy and inspiration to the hundreds of thousands of Yemeni protestors who’s eight-month struggle has been largely forgotten in the midst of other world crises.

Werman: Letta, I understand that you had an interesting phone conversation with Tawakul Karman earlier this year when the demonstrations in Yemen just began.

Taylor: Yes, I called Tawakul and asked her what she was up to. And she very breathlessly told me that she was in the process of organizing a peaceful revolution inspired by events in Tunisia to force the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who’d ruled the country for 33 years. And I was very skeptical. I thought well, good luck, this is Yemen, change is almost impossible. Little did I know that eight months later the protests would be going strong.

Werman: And what’s her background? Is she a grassroots activist or a professional, like a lawyer?

Taylor: She’s just been primarily a full time activist for the past several years. She’s also a mother of three. I don’t know when she sleeps. I don’t know when she eats because she is constantly on the go. She began as a journalist and comes from a prominent family. She has a lot of friends in high places, which I think has helped protect her to some degree. Nevertheless, she’s received numerous threats to her life. She’s been beaten. She’s been threatened with the jambiya which is the traditional dagger than Yemeni men wear strapped to their waist. So she’s certainly not immune to danger. As a journalist she founded a news service called Women Journalists Without Chains and this was almost a precursor to Twitter. She would send out news alerts, mostly on government violations against journalists, activists and others exercising free speech or free assembly. And soon gained dozens then hundreds, then thousands of subscribers before the authorities shutdown her operation.

Werman: Interesting, so she’s well-known in Yemen. Apparently some Yemenis though, even those that oppose President Saleh are not happy that Ms. Karman has gotten the prize. Why did they take issue with it?

Taylor: I believe that Tawakul Karman is a controversial figure to some degree and I think that’s because she is a woman in a male-dominated society, and does manage to do what most men cannot do. So I think there is some resentment. Also, Tawakul is very publicity savvy and I think some of her detractors see her as a publicity hound. I would say instead that she is a shrewd and gifted communicator in a country where this is unusual.

Werman: Right, so if it’s unusual, I mean how active have women been in the uprising in Yemen? Are they able to be activists there? I mean apparently Tawakul is.

Taylor: Yes, many women actually have been active in the uprising, a surprising number given the restraints that they face in the country. While Tawakul is one of the leaders, many other women, increasing numbers have played an important role in the protests and they’re braving beatings, harassment, and in many cases shame from relatives. I’ve spoken with young women who told me that they are protesting fervently, telling their parents they’re going to visit a relative or going to the market when instead, they’re joining rallies. With Tawakul receiving the peace prize perhaps more women in Yemen will fell that they can come out of the shadows and join protests.

Werman: Letta Taylor, a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch in New York filling us in on Tawakul Karman, one of the three Nobel Peace Laureates announced today. Thanks very much, Letta.

Taylor: Thank you very much for having me.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Instead, President Obama issued a written statement.

One line in that statement said that in Afghanistan the United States has shown itself to be a “partner with those who seek justice, dignity and opportunity.”

And one focus of that partnership is Afghanistan’s shattered justice system.

Restoring people’s faith in the rule of law is seen as key to diminishing Afghan support for the Taliban.

So millions of dollars have been spent on training lawyers and judges, and on building courthouses.

But many Afghans still shun the courts in favor of traditional methods that critics say do an injustice to girls and women.

Examples of Afghan Justice

I am being taken to a secret shelter in the capital. A shelter for girls and women who fear for their lives.

Inside this refuge, they learn how to make clothes and crafts, how to read and write and how to survive. They also try to forget the past.

One teenager has been here just a few months. She is pale, and her clothes hang loose on her thin frame. She speaks quietly as she recounts a terrible tale.

“My uncle ran off with a woman,” the girl said. So eight girls and I – sisters and cousins – were given as compensation to the other family. My cousin and I were the youngest. She was 3 and I was 5 years old. We had a really hard life, they beat us, and stopped us from leaving the house. I tried to kill myself several times, taking pills and drinking acid.”

Eventually, she said, she decided to escape and she did it in dramatic fashion.

“I wore men’s clothes and changed my hair. I decided to live like a boy on the streets and in the mosque,” she said. “Then one day, a woman found out who I really was and took me to the ministry of women affairs.

A ministry official brought her to the safety of the shelter.

The case highlights one of Afghanistan’s most ancient rituals for settling disputes. And while it violates Afghan law, it is still happening today. It’s called baad.

Nader Nadery is with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. He said that local jirgas, or councils sometimes settle disputes by simply giving girls and women away as payment for some wrongdoing. While Nadery doesn’t like it, he understands why it’s still happening.

“In absence of functioning formal justice system, especially in the last 20-25 years,” Nadery said, “people had to find another way of settling their disputes and finding remedies and that was those traditional mechanisms of elders or different figures sitting together and making and issuing a resolution and settling some disputes most often settled by giving another victim.”

Little Refuge in Kabul Courthouses

In the hallway outside the family court in Kabul, it is a chaotic scene. This is one example of the efforts of the government and its allies to rebuild and reform the justice system. It is a system that was undermined and politicized by the Soviets and the mujahadeen, then torn apart by the Taliban.

At the registry, men and women dump documents onto the desks of harried clerks, waiting for a chance to go before a judge. One couple is led into Chief Justice Rahima Rasai’s courtroom. It looks more like a living room with its comfortable sofas and chairs.

The husband opens the hearing by reading a statement claiming that the marriage was happy until his wife started to behave strangely. Then is the wife’s turn. She becomes more agitated as she speaks, suddenly removing her headscarf and pulling her hair back, trying to prove that her husband beat her.

“See my head, can you see my injuries?” she asked.

“Be quiet, be quiet,” Justice Rasai commanded. “Next time, bring a document from the hospital where you went for treatment to prove your injuries.”

As the two started to bicker, Justice Rasai grew impatient. With no gavel, she banged her desk with her hand to try to bring some order to the court. They both sate quietly as she lectured them.

“As I’ve said plenty of times to both of you,” Justice Rasai thundered, “I really don’t care as much about you, I am really worried about your children and their future”

They are told to come back in 15 days with witnesses and documents.

Afghanistan’s Hybrid Justice

After the session ends, Rasai admits many of the cases that come before her are not settled by her at all. She steers disputes toward so-called jirgas, but she keeps the court involved, insisting the jirgas keep a record and report back to the judge.

It is a hybrid model that she said ensures at least some court influence in a country where many simply do not want to use the official justice system. The reasons range from corruption to inefficiency to shame at making their problems public.

There are only six family courts in all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. This one serves a population of nearly five million people. Yet Rasai confirms there are only 350 cases filed in her courts each year.

Nader Nadery of the human rights commission said after a decade, Afghanistan is less than a third of the way to establishing a strong, independent effective system. He said the blame for that is shared by all those who seized power from the Taliban a decade ago.

“It was one of the biggest failures of both the Afghan government and its international partners to not recognize the importance of good governance, rule of law and justice,” Nadery said. “It could be a much more effective tool to deal with the insurgency also and build support among the population.”

It was never going to be easy to overhaul the justice system in a country so broken by war.

Even the formal court process has been stubbornly resistant to change in a country where harmful traditions are so deeply entrenched and that has led to arrests and convictions that Americans would find astonishing.

Jailed for “Bad Character”

Behind a locked gate and the high, secure fences sits Kabul’s only prison for women. The setting is almost pastoral, sitting near an orchard of almond trees.

This isn’t just a women’s prison though. Their children stay here with them, as they inmates serve their sentences. Many of the 120 or so women here have been jailed for drug-related offences and violent crimes, but here, real criminals live side by side with those who are in reality victims of justice.

They have been found guilty of offences not even recognized in law; in essence the offence of bad character. Twenty- year old Sohaila twists her black and silver headscarf around her fingers as she recalls how she ended up in jail.

She said she was five years old when her when her brother ran off with another man’s daughter. Sohaila said the man, a local warlord, came seeking revenge.

“My father was really scared of him. When he attacked our house, my father and I were both injured,” Sohaila said. “Three bullets hit my father’s hand and he’s disabled now. I was injured too and they burned down our house all because my brother ran off with the man’s daughter.”

Sohaila said her father settled the dispute by giving her away as compensation in a “baad.” As she grew older, she feared being forced to marry a man who was already a grandfather with two other wives. So at sixteen, she ran away with her cousin, married him and tried to disappear in Kabul. Two years ago, her father found her and turned her in to the police.

“My father claimed my husband kidnapped me,” Sohaila said. “During the court hearing he denied that he had given me away to the old man in a ‘baad.’ The judge put me in jail for two years and my husband for ten years.”

Sohaila’s baby son nestles in her arms as she recounts a chilling conversation she recently had with her father.

“I am having a really hard time here now. I have a son by my husband but my father said if I want to come home again, I have to kill my son first. “

Even the warden, Aneesa Descadezodah, tells me she does not want women like Sohaila serving time.

A paper published by NATO last year suggests would take at least two decades to reform the court system, and instill respect for the rule of law.

Nader Nadery isn’t optimistic.

“It’s not yet late but we have missed very very good opportunities in the last ten years and still I do not see a political will in both the Afghan government and the international community to engage seriously in one of the failures of the early time of the engagement,” Nadery said.

In the meantime, the country’s most vulnerable citizens are punished for crimes that don’t exist on the books, while druglords, insurgents and those tainted by corruption remain free.

For Afghans who have already had to wait too long for justice, it’s not easy to have faith in the future.

Deus Twesigye sits in the back of a bus in Uganda, dreading the inevitable whispers and stares. The 28-year old accountant pulls his baseball cap down to hide his disfigured face. Scars stretch in all directions like a jigsaw puzzle. Half of his nose is missing.

Twesigye is the victim of an acid throwing attack.

“It’s sad for me to be in environment with many people,” Twesigye said. “You see people looking at you, wondering what has happened to you. It has changed my life.”

Twesigye said his ex-girlfriend is to blame. They dated in college for three years, but Twesigye broke up with her when he moved to a different town to start a job. Six months later, he said, the ex-girlfriend confronted him and splashed sulfuric acid in his face.

“Immediately, I felt a lot of pain and I couldn’t see anything,” Twesigye said.

According to the police, the ex-girlfriend confessed to the acid attack. Inspector Constantine Tarasi said she was jealous that Twesigye was seeing other women.

“She said she was very disappointed he was no longer interested in her,” Tarasi, and that he was seeing other women.

Deus Twesigye before and after the attack.

Twesigye’s story is all too common here, according to Dr. Ben Khingi, a plastic surgeon who treats two or three acid-attack victims every month at Uganda’s national hospital.

But acid attacks are not common in Africa, compared to places like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where hundreds of women are burned and disfigured every year. Khingi said the victims in Uganda are both women and men, and he’s no longer surprised when a woman has engineered the crime.

“Most of the people who do it are women,” Khingi said. “But also some men have been paid to do it.”

It’s not entirely clear why acid attacks have caught on in Uganda, said Doreen Ayebare, with the Acid Survivors Foundation in the capital, Kampala. But she points out that throwing acid can be done from a distance, and that acid is cheap and readily available. The attacks are also rarely prosecuted.

Ayebare said most of the attacks are crimes of passion.

“It’s rejected love; I wanted you, you don’t want me. You’re cheating on me. You rejected me,” she said.

Why throw acid?

“Most of these people want to destroy,” Ayebare said. “If I can’t have you, let no one have you.”

There can also be an economic factor. Cambodia is another place where women commit acid attacks. A recent study there suggests that women are so dependent on men economically and socially that they seek revenge when their relationship with a boyfriend or husband is threatened.

In Uganda, that’s often the case as well.

Dorothy Komuhendo sells shoes on the side of the road in Kampala. She married a man who already had one wife. Komuhendo said that when the husband paid attention to her and gave her money to start a business, the other wife hired someone to pour acid on her.

The second wife wanted to burn her so that she would die, Komuhendo said. “It was out of jealousy.”

Komuhendo survived, but spent the next year undergoing skin-graft surgeries. She said she was lucky. The acid burned her back and neck, but not her face.

Deus Twesigye was not so lucky. But unlike most acid-throwing incidents, his case has gone to trial.

His ex-girlfriend now denies that she wanted revenge, and she said she can’t remember confessing to the crime. She said that she only remembers saying, “Deus, I’m sorry for how you look.”

Deus Twesigye said regardless of the trial’s outcome, he’s the one who will serve a life sentence.

 
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(Photo: Floris Van Cauwelaert)

Dina Wahba, a 25-year-old activist, chairs the committee. Like everyone else in the room, she fears that women, who helped topple Mubarak, will have little say in the country’s future. Wahba said it’s common, after revolutions, for women to lose out.

“You always give something of yourself in the conflict and then post-conflict you’re told: Thank you, now you go and we sit on the table and plan for you your whole life,” Wahba said. “And this is what’s happening. Women are not on the table. Now we’re not welcome anymore. It’s very worrying.”

The army that runs the country now has appointed only one woman to the new cabinet. It hasn’t appointed any female governors, or asked any female jurists to be part of a committee it formed to amend the constitution.

Women’s rights activist are also worried by the rise of Islamist groups, from violent fundamentalist to the once-banned but popular Muslim Brotherhood, which has announced it will form a political party.

Women in Public Life

Ironically, women have always participated in Islamist politics. But their role isn’t one that most women’s rights activists would appreciate.
“In this new stage in Egypt’s history all the laws that affect women need to be reviewed,” said Mariam Ibrahim.
Ibrahim joined a new Islamist party because she thinks it’s important for women to be involved in public life, to support religion and tradition.

“Of course I don’t support a quota for women in parliament,” Ibrahim said. She also doesn’t think it’s the government’s place to ban female genital mutilation. And she doesn’t believe women should have the right to divorce their husbands without their consent — it’s “something no Eastern man accepts,” she said.

Ibrahim believes that her party’s positions represent the views of most Egyptians. That’s exactly what progressives like Wahba are afraid of.

But Tahani El-Gebali , the only female judge on the country’s high constitutional court, says she isn’t afraid.

“It’s only natural, after decades of repression, for all sorts of political and cultural forces to rise to the surface now,” said El-Gabali. “Some of them will be against human rights and against a secular state.”

The best way for women to defend their rights is simply to be active participants, and leaders, in public life, El Gabali argues. She says the problem is that women are always waiting for someone to invite them to get involved.

“(Women ask): Why aren’t we present in leadership circles?” said El Gabali. “But no one invites women to play a role. They impose themselves by their presence, by their competence, by their awareness of what they have to offer. Before we talk about rights, let’s practice them.”

Socialized Not to Argue

That’s easier said than done, says Dina Wahba, when we meet a few days later at a cafe near her house. She says women in Egypt are socialized not to assert themselves: not to argue with men, not to raise their voices, not to compete.

“You are raised to believe that you are less than a man,” said Wahba. “So in everyday practices — in the street, at home, at school — you’re always seen as less.”

Not that she accepts that for herself. In fact, she’s planning on running for her municipal council when it becomes possible (she is too young to run for parliament).

“Even if I’m going to lose, which I pretty much will,” she said, “I want to know what it’s like, I want to get the experience so I can run again, stronger.”

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is “The World”, a co-production of the BBC World Service PRI and WGBH Boston. The Democratic Republic of Congo has long been mired in conflict. The civil war that ravaged the country for years ended in 2002. But even today, Congo remains overrun with weapons and guerrilla groups, especially in the east. And within that desolate reality, rape is routinely used as a weapon against civilians.  Now, a new study reveals that the incidence of rape in Congo was far higher than previously estimated. The study, published today in the American Journal of Public Health, suggests that more than 1,100 Congolese women are raped every day. That’s twenty-six times higher than previous estimates. Lisa Shannon is a writer and has spent a lot of time in Congo speaking with victims of sexual violence. She says the study is a milestone, in part because it shows skyrocketing rates of rape in Congo are not limited to conflict zones.

LISA SHANNON: It’s big news. Not only because the scale is so much larger than what we thought, but in particular, in this study, one of the interesting findings is that the pandemic is not contained to eastern Congo. So, traditionally, rape in Congo has been framed as women being caught between two armed groups, and what you see in Equateur Province is actually rates of rape that are higher than South Kivu. That’s remarkable. I was in South Kivu the year that this was collected, and I visited women’s groups where half of the women had been raped just in the last six months. So, to say that a non-conflict area has higher rates of rape is extremely significant, and points, really, to the categorical failure of the Congolese government to protect it’s own citizens from mass atrocity.

WERMAN: Well, break that down for us. Again, as an activist, how do you use this, this data to make progress out of this miserable situation and create consequences for the perpetrators?

SHANNON: Well, you have to begin with a comprehensive security sector reform program that’s led by the government of Congo. And the way you do that, is leverage the financial, uh, clout that we have in order to get them to engage in measurable milestones. So, on the ground, that means, for instance, paying soldiers, so that they have something to lose, ’cause right now they’re just given guns and expected to basically free-range. So that’s one thing. You have to prosecute. Um, you have to remove the war criminals from Army ranks. Basic stuff like that would go a long way towards securing the country. And I think, for us, um, looking at the larger systemic problem, I think the other thing you have to look at, is that the United States and the international donor community gives billions of dollars every year to the government of Congo, and yet makes very few requirements, few conditions, and it’s really not coordinated. So, in fact, the international community is actively participating in that systemic problem, and, in fact, enabling it. Uh, Congolese Army and police are primary perpetrators in the violence in Congo. For instance, there’s one woman on the ground in Congo who runs a coalition of thirty-five women’s organizations, trying to fight impunity. As punishment for her speaking out, soldiers actually came to her home and raped her daughter. She got her daughter to safety, and has continued her work. So that’s the kind of heroic, uh, work Congolese women are doing on the ground, but we have to look at the systemic issues that are  feeding this violence.

WERMAN: Finally, this is a difficult question to frame, but is there a danger in focusing so intensively on rape in Congo? I mean, maybe the focus becomes more on this inexplicably cruel and wanton violence in a part of the world we generally ignore, and, Lis, I’m really trying to better understand the fundamental problems in Congo.

SHANNON: Yeah, I would say for sure that the sexual violence in Congo is a symptom of a more systemic problem, which is the Congolese government’s failure to protect. You see, in, the Congolese Army is also known to murder people. They’re also known to steal regularly. Um, so in this case I would say one key, very concrete thing that we could do immediately, is appoint a Great Lake Special Envoy. So, we’re giving a billion dollars a year, but we’re not coordinating it; we’re not leveraging it. And there’s not coordination even within the government of the United States, in terms of programs. It would cost the US government less than two million dollars a year to coordinate and leverage that clout to help end the violence. Yet, up until this point, it really has not been prioritized. So that’s a very simple, concrete step that will lead to a comprehensive plan and really start to go after the key drivers here.

WERMAN: Lisa Shannon is the author of A Thousand Sisters and the founder of Run For Congo Women, a group addressing the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.