Asia

A group of women who are risking imprisonment to collect 1 million signatures on a petition demanding greater women's rights in Iran were presented on October with the Anna Politkovskaya award for courage.

Dozens of Afghan women protested against the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan (IECA) on October 7 for allegedly allocating less seats for women on the country's provincial councils, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reported.

Activists at the rally, which was organized by civil society organizations in Kabul, demanded a greater role for women on Afghanistan's provincial councils.

A mother protecting her child isn't anything unique. But in Iran, humanitarian activist mothers are now becoming global icons for human rights causes worldwide. In silent public protest, the ‘Mourning Mothers of Iran,' known locally in Tehran as the ‘Mothers of Laleh,' stand together each week, on Saturday evening vigils in Tehran's Laleh Park.

Pink wigged-protesters and hundreds of other demonstrators wielding posters calling for peace converged on Copley Square in an antiwar rally yesterday.

The regional gathering in Boston - one of more than 40 nationwide - brought protesters from throughout New England to shout, sing, and march against conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.

As an Afghan woman who for many years lived a life deprived of the most basic human rights, I find unbearable the thought of what will happen to the women of my country if it once again falls under the control of the insurgents and militants.

"The Iranian women's movement is not simply demanding equal rights alone. It is demanding a larger universal reality, which is democracy." - Shirin Ebadi, October 9, 2009

Through a courtyard piled high with heaps of trash and teeming with flies, two sturdy women sit in a cool, dark room before a group of nearly a dozen women who range in age from 15 to 50. The two are midwives who have come to talk to the women living here with limited electricity and little clean water about the importance of maternal health.

Iran has confiscated the Nobel peace medal and diploma of Shirin Ebadi, the human rights lawyer who is one of the hardline regime's most outspoken critics. Her bank account has also been frozen on the pretext that she owes almost £250,000 in tax.

As the world waits for President Barack Obama to announce next week his plan to send up to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, three female leaders of civil society efforts focused their concerns on nation building.

The trio wanted to talk about something else: the country's recovery.