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  #11  
Old Friday, April 13, 2012
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Time to pass the domestic violence bill
By Bina Shah
Published: April 13, 2012

So the opposition have raised an objection to the Domestic Violence Bill (DVB) that was supposed to go through in Parliament.

This has delayed the passage of the bill, which was formulated by women’s rights activists in the National Assembly to make it a criminal act to enact violence upon women and children. But in a startling show of resistance, parliamentarians from the JUI-F and the PML-N have refused to bow down in subjugation to the American-Zionist-Indian conspiracy that they believe the bill represents, masquerading under the guise of human rights. “We won’t let Western culture dictate to us,” is the tagline used by the maulvis who want the Bill’s passage delayed and possibly cancelled completely.

What does this even mean? The mind boggles. If ‘western culture’ is opposed to domestic violence, does this mean ‘eastern culture’ is supportive of it? Of course, the answer is no. Domestic violence is not an ‘eastern’ or ‘western’ issue, but a global issue.

The debate on the DVB continues to rage in Pakistan’s parliament and behind the scenes. The Bill has not been thrown out; it continues to be discussed in a parliamentary committee. Apparently there are some technical lacunae which some of the parliamentarians find troublesome, but the greater objection is that its opponents say that the Bill itself is harmful to family structure. On the other hand, the Bill’s supporters say that the technical lacunae can be removed without losing the Bill’s intent to protect women and children against violence enacted in the household.

I’ve read through the Bill in its entirety and honestly can see nothing ‘un-Islamic’ or ‘anti-Pakistan’ or ‘anti-Eastern culture’ in it. At the most, it provides technical and legal procedures and due process under legal guidelines for how to stop domestic violence, harassment, and emotional and mental abuse (such as the withholding of money from a spouse in order to manipulate or control her). If anything, this Bill strengthens Pakistani families, and is completely in line with what Islam outlines as proper behavior between spouses in the sacred space of the home.

According to Marvi Sirmed, who is taking part in a civil society committee on the Bill that’s running parallel to the parliamentary one, The News International misreported that women demonstrators in favor of the Bill “insulted” Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the head of the JUI-F, on the floor of Parliament. What really happened, says Sirmed, is that women demonstrated outside Parliament, raising slogans against Mullah-ocracy (“Mullah gardi nahin chaley gi” or “Mullah-ocracy won’t fly here”). This was in return for Fazlur Rahman’s statement in Parliament that the proponents of the DVB were “home-breakers, shameless, westernised, pursuing a Jewish/westernised agenda”. This kind of bombastic soapboxing, great for headlines and soundbites, is very common in Pakistani politics. Incendiary, provocative and untrue, it has caused us more harm over the years than good.

In a parliamentary committee meeting held to discuss the objections to the DVB last week, representatives of both Maulana Ghafoor Haideri and Ataur Rehman of the JUI-F and Khwaja Saad Rafique of the PML-N attended the meeting, in which the Bill’s proponents and supporters — including Bushra Gohar, Attiya Inayatullah, Yasmeen Rehman and Nafisa Shah, amongst others — explained the necessity of the Bill, answering their questions and clearing their doubts about the Bill’s value and intent. There seemed to be general consensus on the portions of the Bill that criminalise violence against women from all parties, reports Sirmed, and women’s rights activists remain hopeful that the Bill will be presented in Parliament and passed as soon as possible.

As yet, no word on whether the Bill will make it through or not. But with headlines like “In-laws burn woman alive for not bearing a son” (April 11,The Express Tribune), sixty per cent of acid attacks taking place because of domestic disputes (according to Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy), and a persistent patriarchal mindset in which women who are the victims of domestic violence have ‘provoked’ men into beating, burning, and killing them, there is simply no more time to lose.

It’s a tough fight, but respect for women, for Pakistan’s parliament, for democracy, and for its institutions are all being demonstrated in the process of passing this Bill. We have every reason to hope. Perseverance will pay off. And Pakistan will be better off for it in the end.

The Express Tribune
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Old Sunday, April 22, 2012
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Binding women to restrictions
April 22, 2012
By Tariq Al Maeena

Women in Saudi Arabia continue to face restrictions. Or so that’s what most of the liberal intellectuals and social activists believe. And they are quick to point out a few examples among many that substantiate their claims.

Take the case of Dr Samia Al Amoudi, an obstetrician and gynaecologist by trade who found herself diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago. The ordeal with her affliction shook her to the core, but it also strengthened her resolve to meet her illness head-on. In her own words, she describes the moment she was diagnosed as “a date that has a special place in my heart and the hearts of my children, family and my loved ones.”

“Being a doctor, the moment I felt a lump, my medical instincts sharpened. I began to feel the lump and checked the tumour and the lymph nodes under my arm. The disease did not only make me a stronger woman, it also made me more capable of dealing with life’s crises. It added to my faith and made me see my life differently,” she said.

But she did not choose to suffer in silence. She informed her family about her condition and then turned to the requisite chemotherapy radiation for treatment. After beating the disease, she took the path of spreading awareness and received many global awards for bringing the issue of breast cancer to the forefront among Arab women. As a single mother of two, she was the first Saudi to share her private conflict with cancer with women in the region by bringing her ordeal and its impact out on the public stage.

In 2007, Condoleezza Rice the US secretary of state, recognised her achievements during an award — the first International Women of Courage Award — that was presented to honour her breast cancer awareness campaign across Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. In 2010, she was chosen among the top 100 in the region who had made changes in their societies. Samia also has written more than a dozen books and has received international honours from governments and international institutions.

After having successfully fought her personal battle so courageously and helped thousands of other women seek early detection and care, Samia admits that she remains defeated in one aspect of her personal life. And that is the restriction placed on her mobility by the issue of male guardianship which dictates that she, like all other Saudi women, requires the permission of a male to travel abroad.

It is not enough that driving is not permitted for women and often leaves women at the mercy of some very inexperienced hands at the wheel, but to be subjected to asking for permission to travel to attend conferences or lectures in her field is something that does not sit well with a woman who not only overcame a personal battle with a deadly disease, but along the way helped over 50,000 other women deal with it.

Narrow mentality

As she tweeted, “I have passed 50 years [age] and am a physician, and have received at my hands thousands of patients, and yet I am required to get permission from a male guardian to travel to a medical convention. In my case [as a single mother] it is my son who I will have to turn to, the baby I had given birth to.”

Why then, many wonder, is this restriction on women’s mobility still allowed to continue, especially in view of the kingdom’s publicly announced intentions of ensuring that women’s rights would be promoted and respected?

Perhaps it has something to do with the mentality of some of our clerics who arouse enough vocal complaints when it comes to women’s issues. Perhaps none can be highlighted better than a point of view raised by a Saudi cleric at a recent conference in Qaseem, a city outside Riyadh. During the ‘Women in the Prophet’s tradition and the modern woman: Saudi Arabia a model’ conference, Shaikh Al Fowzan, who is also a member of the Saudi Human Rights Commission, shared his apprehensions that CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women) could be implemented and that it sent shivers through him.

Since Saudi Arabia had formally signed the agreement in 2000, the conclusions of this conference were that the Saudis should withdraw from the CEDAW agreement, as its implementation may give women more freedom than they should be allowed. It is precisely this narrow framework of thinking that has left many, intellectuals or otherwise, perplexed at the continuing restrictions on women at a time when they feel the kingdom is coming of age. It is not an Islamic issue, they point out, quoting many scholars, but one of control. And that control is precisely what those who vigorously oppose women’s rights are afraid of losing.

Tariq A. Al Maeena is a Saudi socio-political commentator. He lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Source:Gulf News
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How to combat acid violence
By Sahar Bandial
Published: April 27, 2012

The writer practices law in Lahore and is a recent law graduate from the University of Cambridge.

Horrific memories have a staying power, easily rekindled upon the appropriate trigger. The tragic end of Fakhra Younus in Rome last month was one such trigger. It took me back to the summer afternoon, some years ago, at the Mayo Hospital in Lahore: a dark room with a hospital bed covered by a makeshift protective tent and a muffled voice emanating from behind. A disfigured limb reached out; I stepped closer to encounter a persona, not recognisable in its physical form as human, melted away indiscriminately by the corrosive acid thrown on her by her spouse. Words of comfort and promises of redress and legal action offered by the team of aid workers I accompanied did little to move the maimed woman, who had resigned to the dictates of fate, uninterested in seeking justice. The image is hard to forget and evokes horror, disgust, guilt and insecurity even today. It epitomises the capacity of evil, the frailty of life and the desperate dependability of women on patriarchal social norms and structures that remain untouched by a passive, and at times, complicit legal system.

Our legislature appears cognisant of the evil of acid violence and has taken the initial steps to redress it. The Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Act passed last December — through the insertion of Section 336-A and 336-B in the Pakistan Penal Code — has explicitly identified “causing hurt by dangerous means or substance”, including any corrosive substance or acid, as a crime. It also provides for stringent punishment, extending to life imprisonment. However, the definitional clarity brought by the Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Act is not a sufficient response to the incidence of acid crimes in Pakistan, where over 700 cases of acid violence have been reported since 2006. Violence against women is recognised as a human rights violation that states are duty-bound to guard against. Under the due diligence standard identified by the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) committee as a tool to assess state action, Pakistan is duty-bound to introduce and enforce appropriate measures for the prevention, protection, investigation, prosecution and punishment of all forms of gender violence, whether perpetrated by the state or private actors. Whether the Acid and Burn Crime Bill 2012 — which is a follow-up to the Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Act — meets these due diligence requirements, if approved by the federal and provincial assemblies, will have to await determination.

The experience of Bangladesh indicates that a legislative enactment that criminalises acid violence within a supporting legal framework that ensures effective and timely investigation, speedy trials and legal support to victims, can cause a significant reduction in the incidence of the crime. Following the promulgation of the Acid Crime Control Act 2002, in Bangladesh, reported cases of acid violence have fallen from 416 cases in 2003 to 84 cases in 2011 as reported by the Acid Survivors Foundation. The 2002 Act criminalises the commission of attempting to and abetting in ‘hurt by acid’ and specifies applicable sanctions. This aspect of the Bangladeshi law deserves particular reference because of its regulation and oversight of investigative and prosecutorial procedures in acid violence cases. The Act establishes special tribunals to prosecute ‘hurt by acid’ and mandates a verdict within a period of 90 days from the date of receipt of the file. Investigating agencies, too, operate on a defined time frame of 30 days to complete requisite investigations and are subject to review and scrutiny by the special tribunal, empowered under the Act to call for the replacement of investigating officers (if their actions seem wanting) and command censure for their negligence or tardy investigations by relevant superior authorities. Moreover, victim support centres established under the Act at police stations provide protection against intimidation to victims and witnesses, further reinforcing the investigative process.

Underlying this regulatory aspect of the Bangladeshi Act is the acknowledgment that systemic failures of delayed prosecution and inadequate and tampered investigations permit perpetrators of acid crimes to employ their sociopolitical prowess to manipulate and outwit the criminal justice system. Fakhra Younus eventually succumbed to these structural failures.

The Bangladeshi experience carries an important lesson. It is not argued that the Bangladeshi acid crime prevention regime is foolproof. In fact, gaps in the legal system permit lapses in investigation, police corruption, gender bias and witness intimidation — problems that are equally descriptive of our legal system. The Bangladeshi model should guide Pakistan in meeting the dictates of the due diligence standard to eliminate all forms of violence against women. For a start, the federal and provincial legislature should, as recommended by the National Commission on the Status of Women, pass the Acid and Burn Crime Bill 2012, which in a manner similar to the Bangladeshi enactment regulates the investigation and trial of acid violence and provides free legal aid and medical and rehabilitation services to victims. It is also critical that state undertakes measures to prevent commission of the crime and protect victims. The state of Pakistan should put in place an effective reporting system and an emergency response scheme that permits and trains investigation and law enforcement agencies to respond to acid violence. A mechanism should ensure monitoring and enforcement of protective orders, forbidding perpetrators or potential perpetrators from contacting victims and providing shelter where victims may seek refuge. Only within a more comprehensive legal system can the state’s criminalisation of ‘hurt by acid’ and its commitment to gender equality and elimination of gender violence bear fruit. Failure to discharge its due diligence duties through the provision of such a framework will render Pakistan complicit in the violation of human rights of its own people.

Victims of acid violence may find little consolation in what has been achieved thus far in the fight against the vilest form of domestic violence. Indeed, there was no consolation for Fakhra Younus or the despondent woman who lay under the protective tent at Mayo Hospital. However, there exists a pro-reform sentiment now that must be capitalised upon to spare future victims from the woeful fate that befell these women.

The Express Tribune
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Do we really need a domestic violence law?

Dr. Zaheer Ahmad Babar



Shareefan Bibi is beaten up every other day by her husband, for one reason or the other: sometimes for not giving him money she earns from working as a maid in others' homes, sometimes for not cooking food on time, sometimes for not 'properly' attending to the relatives of her husband, and sometimes for no apparent reason, especially when he is drunk and in a mood of having some fun.

Almost all people living in Shareefan's neighbourhood in Dubbanpura locality of Lahore know well in what circumstances she is living. A few days ago, Mukhtaran Bibi, one of her neighbours, came to know about a domestic violence bill through a private TV channel programme and she immediately visited Shareefan's two-room rented house to give her an important piece of advice.

"You should go to Sabzazar police station and register a case against your husband for beating you daily," she suggested. "The government has made a law, and your husband cannot beat you now. And if he will do so, he will have to go to jail," Mukhtaran told her.

Though Shareefan was not sure about any such change in her destiny, she decided to give it a try. When her husband raised his hand to thrash her that evening, she put up a resistance and warned him of dire consequences. "I'll go to the police and you will have to go to jail," she told her husband. And then she was battered more severely that evening, for speaking up in front of her "majazi khuda" (Lord on Earth).

In a fit of rage, she left her house, crying and decided to go to the police station. She was stopped by another neighbour Ruqayyia, a seasoned and aged woman, in the middle of the street. "Do you know what policemen will do with you in these late hours of the evening? You are still a young woman, and they will tear you apart…" She was warned by Ruqayyia. “After treating you in their own way, they will tell you that 'it is a family matter, and send you back, as all sitting in the police station are also men. Then how will you come back to your husband's house?

“And suppose they (police) help you, they arrest your husband and put him in a jail, what will happen then? He will divorce you at once when he will come to know that you have registered a case against him. Then what will be the future of your son and you? Do you think then you, a divorcee, will be able to get a better husband, who would not beat you?”

A long list of questions, put by Ruqayyia, had baffled her. "It is better for you bear with beatings by your husband, instead of being humiliated by the police," she was advised.

And Shareefan knew well Ruqayyia might not be wrong, as she had heard lots of dreadful stories, when the complainant had been a young woman like her. She came back to her house, once again to be beaten by her husband.
What do you think, Shareefan should do? Should she go to the police if a bill about domestic violence is passed by the National Assembly? Or is Ruqayyia's suggestion more valid? These are the realities of our society. And these realities are hindering the passage of the Domestic Violence Bill in one way or the other, for the past three years. According to newspaper reports, in the latest session of the National Assembly, a deadlock over the passage of the Domestic Violence Bill, 2009, could not be broken. Earlier, the government had promised to address the opposition's concerns over some controversial clauses, and then get it passed by the assembly.

The ruling alliance, led by the Pakistan People's Party, surrendered before the strong opposition of the Pakistan Muslim League-N and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl) when PPP Senior Minister Khurshid Shah announced, "We will not pass this bill till we develop consensus on the issue."

Aside from the fact whether the passage of bill would benefit the women of Pakistan, the opposition parties have their own reservations. The JUI-F, the only religious political party protesting against the bill, believes that various clauses of the bill will "promote Western culture in the Islamic state".

On the other hand, it is interesting to note that both Hindu and Muslim clerics have shown uncanny solidarity in opposing the new law as they argued that their scriptures fully endorsed child marriages. Clerics at Wafaqul Madaris Al-Arabia Pakistan have reached a unanimous understanding to 'resist' the passage of the bill in parliament, if the government does not consult them in preparing the legislation's final draft. They also demanded a 'review' of the bill, so that a consensus can be achieved on the law, before it is presented to parliament for approval. "Foreign elements are funding NGOs to promote an agenda that seeks to undermine Islamic values and traditions," a leader of the organisation said. He believes that passage of the bill would destroy the family structure of the Muslim community.

However, those pleading the case of women in Pakistan and campaigning for approval of the bill say that the new law would help a great deal in emancipation of women of the country. Maliha Zia, a lawyer who is an expert on gender and law, told this writer that the Domestic Violence Bill had been passed by the National Assembly in 2009. However, it lapsed in the Upper House of the parliament, the Senate.

What's special in the bill that frightens the males, she was asked. According to Ms. Zia, domestic violence includes much more than just physical beating. It includes assault, use of criminal force and intimidation, wrongful confinement, inflicting hurt, trespassing and harassment. Physical abuse is, of course, the most salient part. But an interesting new addition is the term "stalking" as part of domestic violence, which could mean watching, loitering
around or following the victim.

She said that economic abuse is also included, which could entail forcefully appropriating the woman's earning, as in the case of Shareefan Bibi. Willful or negligent abandonment of the aggrieved person is another form of abuse, she added. Section 4 (m), includes, very aptly, "emotional, psychological and verbal abuse". A humiliating or ridiculing attitude, for example commenting upon the wife's weight gain or lack of education, can destroy a person's self-esteem. And in such cases also, she can report to the police. While this clause thrills the advocates of the bill, it causes severe unrest among the opposing sections. They believe that the law would be misused, thus shattering the family system in the country.

Another aspect is also very important. If the bill gets passed, the aggrieved could bypass reporting to the police, and directly file a petition with a court of law, which is within the jurisdiction where the victim of domestic violence resides. A person authorised by the victim can also present the complaint.
There is another viewpoint also. A good number of educated and enlightened people believe that passing of bills and making of new laws are often no solution to various social problems. A change takes place in a society when people's mindset is changed. And a mindset can be changed through increasing literacy and spreading knowledge among people. John Stuart Mill, a
British philosopher and political economist, once observed, "Among a rude people, the women are generally degraded, among a civilised people they are exalted." There is greater need to create awareness among the people about women's rights, instead of making new laws. Otherwise, there are dozens of laws in the country, like the law about prohibition of smoking at public places, which are not observed. Without increasing literacy and creating awareness about the rights of women, another law would be added to the list of useless legislations, and the practice of domestic violence would continue unabated.

-Cuttingedge
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Beyond the story of the Arab woman
Max Fisher


Picture a woman in the Middle East, and probably the first thing that comes into your mind will be the hijab. You might not even envision a face, just the black shroud of the burqa or the niqab.

Women's rights in the mostly Arab countries of the region are among the worst in the world, but it's more than that. As Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy writes in a provocative cover story for Foreign Policy, misogyny has become so endemic to Arab societies that it's not just a war on women, it's a destructive force tearing apart Arab economies and societies. But why? How did misogyny become so deeply ingrained in the Arab world?
There are two general ways to think about the problem of misogyny in the Arab world. The first is to think of it as an Arab problem, an issue of what Arab societies and people are doing wrong. "We have no freedoms because they hate us," Eltahawy writes, the first of many times she uses "they" in a sweeping indictment of the cultures spanning from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula. "Yes: They hate us. It must be said."

But is it really that simple? If that misogyny is so innately Arab, why is there such wide variance between Arab societies? Why did Egypt's hateful "they" elect only 2 per cent women to its post-revolutionary legislature, while Tunisia's hateful "they" elected 27 per cent, far short of half but still significantly more than America's 17 per cent? Why are so many misogynist Arab practices as or more common in the non-Arab societies of sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia? After all, nearly every society in history has struggled with sexism, and maybe still is. Just in the US, for example, women could not vote until 1920; even today, their access to basic reproductive health care is backsliding. We don't think about this as an issue of American men, white men, or Christian men innately and irreducibly hating women. Why, then, should we be so ready to believe it about Arab Muslims?

A number of Arab Muslim feminists have criticised the article as reinforcing reductive, Western perceptions of Arabs as particularly and innately barbaric. Samia Errazzouki fumed at "the monolithic representation of women in the region." Roqayah Chamseddine wrote, "Not only has Eltahawy demonised the men of the Middle East and confined them into one role, that of eternal tormentors, as her Western audience claps and cheers, she has not provided a way forward for these men." Dima Khatib sighed, "Arab society is not as barbaric as you present it in the article." She lamented the article as enhancing "a stereotype full of overwhelming generalisations [that] contributes to the widening cultural rift between our society and other societies, and the increase of racism towards us."

Dozens, maybe hundreds, of reports and papers compare women's rights and treatment across countries, and they all rank Arab states low on the list. But maybe not as close to the bottom as you'd think. A 2011 World Economic Forum report on national gender gaps put four Arab states in the bottom 10; the bottom 25 includes 10 Arab states, more than half of them. But sub-Saharan African countries tend to rank even more poorly. And so do South Asian societies -- where a population of nearly five times as many women as live in the Middle East endure some of the most horrific abuses in the world today. Also in 2011, Newsweek synthesized several reports and statistics on women's rights and quality of life. Their final ranking included only one Arab country in the bottom 10 (Yemen) and one more in the bottom 25 (Saudi Arabia, although we might also count Sudan). That's not to downplay the harm and severity of the problem in Arab societies, but a reminder that "misogyny" and "Arab" are not as synonymous as we sometimes treat them to be.

The other way to think about misogyny in the Arab world is as a problem of misogyny. As the above rankings show, culturally engrained sexism is not particular to Arab societies. In other words, it's a problem that Arab societies have, but it's not a distinctly Arab problem. The actual, root causes are disputed, complicated, and often controversial. But you can't cure a symptom without at least acknowledging the disease, and that disease is not race, religion, or ethnicity.

Some of the most important architects of institutionalized Arab misogyny weren't actually Arab. They were Turkish -- or, as they called themselves at the time, Ottoman -- British, and French. These foreigners ruled Arabs for centuries, twisting the cultures to accommodate their dominance. One of their favourite tricks was to buy the submission of men by offering them absolute power over women. The foreign overlords ruled the public sphere, local men ruled the private sphere, and women got nothing; academic Deniz Kandiyoti called this the "patriarchal bargain." Colonial powers employed it in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and in South Asia, promoting misogynist ideas and misogynist men who might have otherwise stayed on the margins, slowly but surely ingraining these ideas into the societies.

Of course, those first seeds of misogyny had to come from somewhere. The evolutionary explanations are controversial. Some say that it's simply because men are bigger and could fight their way to dominance; some that men seek to control women, and particularly female sexuality, out of a subconscious fear being of cuckolded and raising another man's child; others that the rise of the nation-state promoted the role of warfare in society, which meant the physically stronger gender took on more power. You don't hear these, or any of the other evolutionary theories, cited much. What you do hear cited is religion.

Like Christianity, Islam is an expansive and living religion. It has moved with the currents of history, and its billion-plus practitioners bring a wide spectrum of interpretations and beliefs. The colonial rulers who conquered Muslim societies were skilled at pulling out the slightest justification for their "patriarchal bargain." They promoted the religious leaders who were willing to take this bargain and suppressed those who objected. This is a big part of how misogynistic practices became especially common in the Muslim world (another reason is that, when the West later promoted secular rulers, anti-colonialists adopted extreme religious interpretations as a way to oppose them). "They enshrined their gentleman's agreement in the realm of the sacred by elevating their religious family laws to state laws," anthropologist Suad Joseph wrote in her 2000 book, Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East. "Women and children were the inevitable chips with which the political and religious leaders bargained." Some misogynist practices predated colonialism. But many of those, for example female genital mutilation, also predated Islam.

Arabs have endured centuries of brutal, authoritarian rule, and this could also play a role. A Western female journalist who spent years in the region, where she endured some of the region's infamous street harassment, told me that she sensed her harassers may have been acting in part out of misery, anger, and their own emasculation. Enduring the daily torments and humiliations of life under the Egyptian or Syrian or Algerian secret police, she suggested, might make an Arab man more likely to reassert his lost manhood by taking it out on women.

The intersection of race and gender is tough to discuss candidly. If we want to understand why an Egyptian man beats his wife, it's right and good to condemn him for doing it, but it's not enough. We also have to discuss the bigger forces that are guiding him, even if that makes us uncomfortable because it feels like we're excusing him. For decades, that conversation has gotten tripped up by issues of race and post-colonial relations that are always present but often too sensitive to address directly.

Spend some time in the Middle East or North Africa talking about gender and you might hear the expression, "My Arab brother before my Western sister," a warning to be quiet about injustice so as not to give the West any more excuses to condescend and dictate. The fact that feminism is broadly (and wrongly) considered a Western idea has made it tougher for proponents. After centuries of Western colonialism, bombings, invasions, and occupation, Arab men can dismiss the calls for gender equality as just another form of imposition, insisting that Arab culture does it differently. The louder our calls for gender equality get, the easier they are to wave away.

Eltahawy's personal background, unfortunately, might play a role in how some of her critics are responding. She lives mostly in the West, writes mostly for Western publications, and speaks American-accented English, all of which complicates her position and risks making her ideas seem as Westernised as she is. That's neither fair nor a reflection of the merit of her ideas, but it might inform the backlash, and it might tell us something about why the conversation she's trying to start has been stalled for so long.

The Arab Muslim women who criticized Eltahawy have been outspoken proponents of Arab feminism for years. So their backlash isn't about "Arab brother before Western sister," but it does show the extreme sensitivity about anything that could portray Arab misogyny as somehow particular to Arab society or Islam. It's not Eltahawy's job to tiptoe around Arab cultural anxieties about Western-imposed values, but the fact that her piece seems to have raised those anxieties more than it has awakened Arab male self-awareness is an important reminder that the exploitation of Arab women is about more than just gender. As some of Eltahawy's defenders have put it to me, the patriarchal societies of the Arab world need to be jolted into awareness of the harm they're doing themselves. They're right, but this article doesn't seem to have done it.


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50% of the 99%

Laura Carlsen


What's 50 per cent of 99 per cent? Hint: This isn't a math quiz. To put the question in non-numerical terms: where are women in the global economic crisis?

The movement of the 99 per cent that began in the United States made visible the human beings who suffer the brutal inequality and injustice of an economic system that, in crisis, required them to sacrifice even more. The emphasis on deficits and big banks had relegated the human impact of the crisis to the feature pages or, worse, the obituaries. Women, who in many ways receive the brunt of the crisis, remain even more invisible. Economic planners leave out women as a group in their equations, except to implicitly rely on their unpaid work and the bonus that economies receive from gender discrimination.

Yet women, especially poor women, perform economic miracles every day to insure family survival. Their contributions go unregistered, and they themselves have little concept of the social role of their work. Economics has been mystified to shut out citizen participation and gender coded to exclude women. Ironically, the message that 'there is no alternative' is being actively enforced during a crisis that clearly demonstrates that there has to be an alternative.

The answer to the question "where are women in the global crisis?" is, of course, "everywhere." The problem is making that omnipresence visible, organised, and active. The problem is assuring that the road to economic recovery isn't built on redoubling gender discrimination and the exploitation of women's labour.

Last April, some two thousand women -from 140 countries met in Istanbul to discuss not just where we are in the global crisis, but how to transform how we see and how we wield economic power.

For those of us who have witnessed the vicissitudes of the feminist movement over the past 30 years, the most astounding and profoundly important achievement of the conference, organized by the Association of Women's Rights in Development (AWID), emerged the moment you walked in the door of the sprawling centre on the strait of the Golden Horn. The women milling about the registration tables represented every region of the world. A grand diversity of religions and cultures was proudly affirmed in their dress. Various age groups, colours, culture, classes and beliefs came together at the Istanbul conference. The base of representation has broadened for a movement that might not always call itself "feminist," but defines itself by fighting for women's rights and equality in a world of multiple threats.
Lydia Alpizar, a Costa Rican feminist who directs AWID, explained that now more than ever women need tools to integrate economic issues into their many movements for human, economic and social rights across the globe. The women's rights agenda has become so broad and so urgent that there's a tendency to become entrenched in single issues, which presents the risk of missing the links and failing to grasp the broader meaning of what's happening at a critical moment in history, she noted.
Unity in diversity

Amid the diversity in Istanbul, women came together with a surprising level of agreement on key premises. First, economic inequality is the sign of our times, and as economic inequality grows, women face even deeper inequality in a system designed to discriminate. The use of women's unpaid labour in what some feminist analysts call the "care economy" intensifies with inequality and is exploited to extremes under austerity measures.

There is also agreement, as expressed in the first plenary session by Turkish researcher Ipek Ilkkaracan, that this labour cannot - and should not - be commoditised. That is, the tasks of caring for others that women do every day can't be entirely incorporated into the labour market and to do so would in many ways dehumanise what is essentially a labour of love. That work is one of the few spaces left that is organized along principles of solidarity, community, and bonds between people, rather than profit. The basics of the solution, she told the audience, will have to be some combination of creating more social recognition and organization of these tasks and moving forward on stalled efforts to get men to share domestic work.

Gita Sen, a pioneer in the field of gender and development, pointed out that women are the victims of inequality in a global crisis that does not affect everyone equally across the board. She noted that when we talk about improving conditions for indigenous people and other pressing social needs, we're told there is no money, but there is always money for bailing out the rich.

"We need to move to the needs of the 99 per cent," she told the crowd. "The welfare state is being hollowed out to continue with business as usual in the financial world, while the crisis is used as a means of blackmailing states and increasing the control of corporations."

Sen expressed the most important consensus among the women activists who came to learn about the global economic context that constrains and defines their work: There can be no gender equality within the current economic development model. She stated the problem in a rhetorical question: "Who wants a larger share of a poisoned pie?"
Life and death issues

Some speakers talked about development alternatives and others, like Lolita Chavez Ixcaquic, Quiché indigenous leader of Guatemala, talked about "alternatives to development." All agreed that the equation that macroeconomic growth means greater general well-being has been thoroughly exposed as false.

Chavez and other especially indigenous participants spoke of a battle between life and death, where women are often on the front lines.
"How do we say yes to life? In many ways: our community comes together around our meaning and existence and its close connection with nature - the sun, land and everything that gives us energy. We are told that we have to have the latest model of Blackberry, and that's a kind of slavery. We identify what are our real needs are so we don't reverse what we are doing. We are told we're undeveloped, but are we? We don't want American development or the American dream."

Among feminists and women activists from around the world, "Mother Earth" is far from being a new-age moniker. Rather, it is a central precept in the struggle between basic values representing the need to reconnect human society with the environment in a mutually beneficial relationship. Many workshops examined climate change and the fight to conserve resources and a clean environment, as the crisis initiates a new level of degradation and depredation.

Srilatha Batiwala, an Indian academic and activist, explained some of the connections between gender and resource control. "Gender and social power structures uphold differential control over material resources, as well as intangible resources, knowledge resources and human resources. These are maintained through the ideologies of inequality, social rules and norms, institutions and structures and more and more, violence or the threat of violence."

Women from Mexico, Central America, Nepal, Colombia, the Middle East, and other places testified to the increasing use of violence in land and resource grabs, increasing militarization in their regions, and attacks on women human rights defenders, including those who defend the earth and its resources in indigenous territories and beyond.
More questions

As usual, the conference raised more questions than answers. Women's participation in the formal labour force seemed to get short shrift, leaving major challenges regarding union organisation in a hostile economic environment and a heavily male-dominated milieu.

Huge questions remained, to be worked out in the daily practice of on-the-ground organizing. How do we go about humanizing the economic model, when scarcity is driving it toward more fragmentation, militarism, and aggressiveness? How can we build on concepts like the Andean indigenous "Buen Vivir" (Good living) and women's defence of human relations and Mother Earth, to create real development alternatives? How can we make gender equality and justice an integral part of a larger agenda to transform the economic system?

Most difficult of all, how do we make our alternatives politically viable?
Many speakers noted that the enemy of women's rights and visions of the future has shape-shifted in recent years. Economist Susan George noted that today "financial markets tell governments what to do" and that for that reason "the women's movement has to join more coalitions, speak to people we don't usually speak to-unions, education workers, faith, and environmental groups."
"No single group can win by itself," she concluded.

No one left the Istanbul conference with clear marching orders or a road map. Women activists left with tools to understand the economic environment they struggle in. We left with a greater understanding of the links between us-- from region to region, from sector to sector, from woman to woman.
And everyone left with a renewed commitment to figure it out, step by step, empowering women in their daily lives toward solutions that respect women's rights and build new paths toward strong and just communities, a healthy planet, and a happy future for our children.

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Face saving needed for Saving Face
June 2, 2012
By Syed Mohammad Ali

It was upsetting to note recent media reports pointing out how some of the acid attack survivors portrayed in the Oscar winning movie, Saving face, have been compelled to seek legal assistance to prevent the director of the movie from releasing it for viewing in Pakistan.

Having done research for the same NGO which facilitated Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy in making her documentary — including firsthand meetings with many acid attack survivors, as well as with some of the perpetrators of such attacks, and visits to communities within which such heinous incidents had occurred — one does appreciate the nuances behind this seemingly strange turn of events.

I certainly do not begrudge Ms Obaid-Chinoy or her Oscar. Her accomplishment, in fact, has instilled a sense of pride among Pakistanis around the world. I also do not think that shedding light on a disturbing phenomenon, which continues to afflict tragedy and suffering in the lives of many people in our country, should be avoided out of fear that it will reinforce Western stereotypes. Even the fact that the US was quick to hand out an Oscar for a movie highlighting gender violence and thereafter denied granting a visa to another Pakistani documentary maker who chose to focus on the human cost of drone strikes, is more of a problem for US analysts and concerned citizens to contend with or to challenge. It is the ethical dimension surrounding the screening of Saving face documentary within Pakistan, however, which has evoked a personal sense of distress in me.

On the one hand, I realise the need to not only create awareness, but to take practical steps to prevent acid attacks in Pakistan. It is great to see Ms Obaid-Chinoy becoming very proactive on this issue subsequent to the Oscar win and the honours conferred on her by our government. However, she must stop insisting on screening the documentary within Pakistan if these survivors feel that they could be at risk of a backlash when and if the released film is seen by people they know. Given that the movie itself acknowledges the complex realities that these acid survivors must contend with, Ms Obaid-Chinoy must respect the wishes of these survivors, even if she had obtained some form of consent from them regarding its release. After all, the survivors featured in the documentary have not exactly signed acting contracts.

The NGO which initially provided access to the acid attack survivors — it prefers to use the term ‘survivor’ instead of ‘victim’ in order to infuse a sense of empowerment amongst people trying to recover and rehabilitate subsequent to acid attacks — is now trying to help them by providing assistance in going to court if required, to stop the documentary maker from showing the movie in Pakistan.

I have not had a chance to speak with Ms Obaid-Chinoy directly on this issue, so I do not know her side of the story. But whatever her perspective is, surely the need to protect the very people who have propelled her to international fame and glory must take precedence over any further publicity of her work. Moreover, there are several other ways to help create awareness on this issue, as well as countering the prevalence of acid attacks. Ongoing advocacy by those working on this issue have identified many practical means which merit further attention, ranging from curbing unregulated sale of concentrated acid to the need for demanding effective implementation of the new legislation that provides for the prosecution of acid attack perpetrators and to simultaneously paying greater attention to help survivors cope with recovery and rehabilitation. It is these unaddressed areas that Ms Obaid-Chinoy must offer greater attention on, rather than trying to insist upon screening her already awarded documentary in Pakistan.

The Express Tribune,
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Women’s rights must be part of future plans in Afghanistan
Alex Pearlman


The clear message of Amnesty International's Shadow Summit, held concurrently with the first day of NATO talks recently, was that Afghan women are not victims.

While heads of state discussed troop withdrawal, training of security forces, and European missile defence systems at McCormick Place, the country's largest convention centre, the Swissotel across town was host to an inspiring series of panels where it became clear that Afghan women refuse to be ignored and have taken the responsibility of the future of their country into their own hands.

Nearly 27 per cent of Afghanistan's parliamentary seats are now held by women. They have 1,500 positions in the Afghan security forces and according to Amnesty, roughly 10 per cent of prosecutors and judges are female. Women also make up 20 per cent of university graduates and 3 million girls attend schools across the country. There are three women on President Hamid Karzai's cabinet and for the first time, women were allowed to accompany the Afghan delegation to a NATO summit.

Afghanistan is not the barren wasteland of used and abused women of the familiar media refrain. Instead, it's a burgeoning society where women are actively taking part in civil life, working outside the home and creating positive change in their communities.

But the job isn't done. Afghan women say they will still require the help and support of NATO and the allies, and many fear a return to Taliban-era rule of law, which is imminent if the 2,014 troop withdrawal doesn't come with a plan for continued security for women and girls, and a metric for measuring progress of women's rights.

"We need to end our military commitment, but we also need to ensure that US support of Afghan women does not end when our troops leave," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) at an Amnesty International press conference before the event. "This weekend's NATO summit is an opportunity to begin discussion about a cohesive plan for protecting women and promoting their involvement in peace making."

Amnesty International released an open letter to Presidents Obama and Karzai calling for a plan of action "to guarantee that the clock is not turned back on a decade of strides in education, health, security and employment for women and girls." It adds that the signatories (which include such luminaries as Meryl Streep, William Cohen, Khaled Hosseini, Gloria Steinem and Sting) believe that "if women's progress cannot be sustained, then Afghan society will fail."
Women's rights and security are not mutually exclusive

Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright quoted former ambassador Swanee Hunt, in the first panel, saying, "Allowing men who plan wars to plan peace is a bad habit," a particularly well-received comment in light of the NATO summit happening in another part of the city. She added, "We're in Afghanistan in the first place to secure a better society for the Afghans and there can't be a better society if women aren't part of the solution. We know that when women are treated properly and politically and economically empowered, societies are more stable."

The first panel also included Rep. Schakowsky, a member of the House Intelligence Oversight Committee and a long-standing advocate of women's rights and reproductive freedom. She was boisterous and obviously excited at the prospect of having such Afghan pioneers as Mahbouba Seraj, Manizah Naderi, Hasina Safi and Affifa Azim next to her in the discussion.

She smiled as she refuted the common American opinion that securing Afghanistan and making progress on human rights are mutually exclusive. Schakowsky urged women in NATO countries to stand with the Afghans and press their governments for a monitoring plan in the future.

"We can't feel that when the troops leave that we can relent and not continue to monitor and report," she said. "We have to see ourselves as an international sisterhood and we're not going to abandon the women of Afghanistan and we're not going to fail to let policymakers know about our determination."

The Afghan women, who have survived wars, displacement and exile only to come back to Afghanistan to further the cause of women where they face death threats and abuse, were no less excited to dispense valuable advice to the NATO leadership and demand inclusion in peace negotiations.
Azim is the co-founder of the Afghan Women's Network, a coalition of 96 women-led non-profits, and lives in Afghanistan.

"It is very important to put pressure on policy makers to support women in Afghanistan," said Azim with a powerful accent. "NATO must make a strategic plan for a follow-up after 2014. Afghan women need to develop their own capacity and need financial support to play their role in society."

After all, who knows and wants peace more that the women, who have borne the brunt of the decades of war in Afghanistan? But it doesn't come easy. According to Afghan activist and radio host Mahbouba Seraj, before three women were added to the NATO delegation at the last minute, an unnamed Afghan minister said, "Don't worry dears, we'll look out for you."

The backbone of any society is a strong workforce and economic growth, and the military mission will only be successful if citizens can go to work rebuilding the country in peace. In Afghanistan, according to US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer, there is a USAID directive that has facilitated gender integration in the workforce in nearly every industry, including healthcare, education and even mining. Through these programs the US and its allies can continue to monitor the security of women - but these programs must continue to be funded.

"We have a lens to watch if women are involved in every way, at every level and that every effort is being made in recruitment and training of women," said Verveer, but we cannot abandon this mission, or the military mission will have failed.

The uncertain future

Previously radical ideas such as women working outside the home and getting an education are spreading the traditional way ideas are shared between women - by word of mouth. But these shifts are a slow process.
"The problem is that Afghanistan has become a culture of war and changing culture doesn't happen overnight," said Naderi, executive director of Women for Afghan Women, a non-profit that focuses mostly on counselling families through centres across the country. Naderi explained that while there's progress being made on these issues, it's slow going and takes hard, patient work.

Part of what WAW does is speak directly with heads of households, many times interfering in situations such as child marriage, abuse, and other atrocities women and girls face. Naderi works with the families to explain that what they're doing isn't actually compatible with Islam, despite what clerics might say. Many of these people are illiterate and only take the words of extremist clerics to understand their religion.

"It's like a lightbulb going on," said Naderi about reactions she's witnessed in families. "Once you make them understand [the true meanings of Islam], you can see the change. In the majority of cases, the girl goes home, or the women go home, and they're not abused anymore."

Even if the women cannot return home, WAW shelters provide housing and education for women and girls, furthering the potential of the next generation of Afghan women.

Similarly, Hasina Safi, the executive director of the Afghanistan Women's Education Centre, which operates in 17 provinces promoting education for girls, said, " If you don't invest in your daughter, she will beg her husband for money. But if you educate her, she can stand on her own feet."

Education, though, will only continue to be part of the lives of Afghan women and girls if the progress achieved in the past decade continues. When it comes to peace talks, it's clear that women want and need to be at the table, but what the outcome might be is anyone's guess.

Safi and Naderi exemplified the confusing debate taking place not just at the
mahogany tables of the NATO summit, but also on the ground in Afghanistan - to negotiate or not with the Taliban.

In a fascinating mini-debate the two women discussed both sides at the Shadow Summit.

Naderi vehemently opposes negotiations, repeatedly called the Taliban "terrorists" and said, "If they want to be part of the government, they can run for elections. They can be president if they want, but they don't want to be part of the government, they want the whole government. They break their promises. They say they want girls education, and then they poison girls. They aren't trustworthy, and history has showed us that it's not a good idea to negotiate with terrorists."

Safi disagreed, opining that it's better to reason with the Taliban, teach them about true Islam, and convince them of women's badly-needed presence in civil society.

"Rather than saying we don't want to negotiate, we have to show them we're living there and we're a very important part of Afghanistan, so we [must join] the negotiations," she said. "Education is always allowed in Islam. We have to reason with them and [ask] them, 'Which Islam are you talking about?' They are misusing Islam and in that they are misusing our rights."

It's obvious that Afghan women hunger for rights and involvement in the future of their country, and NATO must take this into consideration, said Seraj, or else there will be devastating consequences.

"The world cannot afford to go back to square one. If [the NATO peace plan] is not a success, if we don't achieve what we need to achieve, this isn't going to go down well," she said. "There is no going back. We have to achieve something, make anything and everything possible. There's always possibilities if we really work at it. Because we can't go back."

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Sanctity and care of women in Islam
Sohaib Sajjad


Despite West's bitter sentiments presented toward Islam and its alleged oppressive treatment toward women, it is imperative that Islam's role is singly distinguished from some of the misconstrued practices of Muslims.
Because Islam has always remained, on the grand scheme of scopes, so judiciously receptive of the treatment of women and their rights, no such allegations can stand on the ground of truth. Perhaps the culpability for such sentiments can be directed toward the extent of the bigotry and infamous reputation of Muslims in major news outlets? Or maybe it's the outlook on a Muslim woman's covering that makes them seem imprisoned and oppressed.

At a time in history when acts like burying female infants alive, or trading women as commodities in the marketplace were among the norms, Islam came to reform man's depraved mind and abusive power over women. The Islamic code of morals and ethics revolutionized the corrupted ideologies and ill practices of people and ushered men to uphold a more compassionate standard towards the sanctity and care of women. In fact, God revealed a lengthy chapter, "The Women," in the Holy Quran, with the following verse:
"O you who believe! You are forbidden to inherit women against their will. And you should not treat them with harshness, such that you may take away part of the bridal money you have given them, unless they commit open illegal sexual intercourse. On the contrary, live with them on a footing of kindness and honor. If you dislike them, it may be that you dislike a thing and God brings through it a great deal of good." [Quran, 4:19]

While these sentiments can be traced to an amalgam of various perspectives, I believe the root of the problem lies deeply embedded in the impractical interpretations and perceptions of the religion. Nevertheless, the vantage point of Islam towards women remains one that is misconstrued, and one that holds great untruth to it.

Muslim women must be given room to express themselves, their choices and hopes. Unfortunately, their voices have been progressively silenced by the biased representation of major news outlets. In the words of the American speaker and author, Wayne Dyer, "Judgments prevent us from seeing the good beyond appearances." As citizens of a leading nation recognized for its exceptional education, we have sadly suppressed our inherent reasoning concerning the treatment of women in Islam. For example, how is it that our society accepts the covering of Christian nuns as one of religious obligation, but when that same covering is placed upon a Muslim woman, it's unquestionably an act of coercion and oppression?

If we delve into the fourth chapter of the Quran, we see that Islam has given women rights concerning marriage, education, occupational earnings, divorce, inheritance and civil rights, and others. Furthermore, if we examine Islam's extraordinary and rich tradition, we will find the following being proclaimed by its last prophet, "Treat women with kindness, for a woman was created from a rib, and the most curved portion of the rib is its upper portion. If you try to straighten it, it will break, but if you leave it as it is, it will remain crooked. So treat women with kindness and compassion."

The Prophet Muhummad (PBUH) would go on to say in his farewell speech, "O people, it is true that you have certain rights with regards to your wives. But, they also have rights over you. Remember that you have taken them as your wives only under God's trust and with His permission. If they abide by your rights, then to them belong the rights to be fed and clothed in kindness. Do treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers." The Quranic scripture reminds Muslim men about treating women in a way that does not entail aggressiveness or for the sake of selfish ends. Men are to acknowledge that they are obligated to treat women with a distinct favor and kindness. Islam's reputation and status given to women, fourteen centuries ago, set a new standard of efficacy for all of humanity, despite contemporary misinterpretations and perceptions.

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Turning outrage into action
Ban Ki-moon
March 7, 2013

As we commemorate International Women’s Day, we must look back on a year of shocking crimes of violence against women and girls and ask ourselves how to usher in a better future.
One young woman was gang-raped to death. Another later committed suicide out of a sense of shame that should have attached to the perpetrators. Young teens were shot at close range for daring to seek an education.
These atrocities, which rightly sparked global outrage, were part of a much larger problem that pervades virtually every society and every realm of life.
Look around at the women you are with. Think of those you cherish in your families and your communities. And understand that there is a statistical likelihood that many of them have suffered violence in their lifetime. Even more have comforted a sister or friend, sharing their grief and anger following an attack.

This year on International Women’s Day, we convert our outrage into action. We declare that we will prosecute crimes against women — and never allow women to be subjected to punishments for the abuses they have suffered. We renew our pledge to combat this global health menace wherever it may lurk — in homes and businesses, in war zones and placid countries, and in the minds of people who allow violence to continue.

We also make a special promise to women in conflict situations, where sexual violence too often becomes a tool of war aimed at humiliating the enemy by destroying their dignity.

To those women we say: the United Nations stands with you. As Secretary General, I insist that the welfare of all victims of sexual violence in conflict must be at the forefront of our activities. And I instruct my senior advisers to make our response to sexual violence a priority in all of our peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities.

The United Nations system is advancing our UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign, which is based on the simple but powerful premise that all women and girls have a fundamental human right to live free of violence.
This week in New York, at the Commission on the Status of Women, the world is holding the largest ever UN assembly on ending violence against women. We will make the most of this gathering — and we keep pressing for progress long after it concludes.

I welcome the many governments, groups and individuals who have contributed to this campaign. I urge everyone to join our effort.
Whether you lend your funds to a cause or your voice to an outcry, you can be part of our global push to end this injustice and provide women and girls with the security, safety and freedom they deserve

-The Express Tribune
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