This month, as the world marks International Women’s Day, conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, including in Palestine, Sudan, and Syria, are taking a severe toll on women and girls. Across these conflicts, women and girls contend with uniquely gendered attacks on their bodily autonomy, freedom of movement, and agency; they experience forced and child marriage, sexual violence and trafficking, and increased domestic violence.
The distinct dangers women face are further compounded by prolonged displacement; the targeting of journalists, healthcare professionals, and first responders; disrupted or nonexistent health services; rapidly deteriorating economies; and other impacts of war that leave women and girls vulnerable. Amid humanitarian crisis, period poverty, spikes in miscarriages, and complications with pregnancy become life-threatening. Understanding the gendered dynamics of conflict is key to meaningfully addressing the abuses women face and to achieving lasting, sustainable peace.
On Tuesday, March 26, 2024, the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) hosted a virtual discussion with Dr. Yara Asi (UCF), Reem Abbas (TIMEP), and Alaa Assani (TIMEP), moderated by Paola Salwan Daher. Panelists examined questions such as: What should international stakeholders understand about how women are particularly impacted amid conflict and humanitarian crises? How are women mobilizing to safeguard their well-being, human rights, and access to justice and accountability? How can women be meaningfully integrated into humanitarian response, peacebuilding processes, and political solutions?
Watch the discussion here:
Speaker Profiles:
Dr. Yara Asi
Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida, School of Global Health Management and InformaticsDr. Yara M. Asi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida in the School of Global Health Management and Informatics. Her research agenda focuses on global health, human rights, and development in fragile populations. She is a Non-resident Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, a 2020-2021 Fulbright US Scholar to the West Bank, and the Fall 2021 US Fellow at Al Shabaka Policy Network. Along with working at one of the first accountable care organizations in the United States, she has also worked with Médecins Sans Frontières, Amnesty International USA, and the Palestinian American Research Center on policy and outreach issues. She has presented at multiple national and international conferences on topics related to global health, food security, health informatics, and women in healthcare, and has published extensively on health and well-being in fragile and conflict-affected populations in journal articles and book chapters. Her work has also been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, +972 Magazine, The Conversation, Al Jazeera, The World, and other outlets. Her forthcoming book with Johns Hopkins University Press will examine war as a public health crisis.
Reem Abbas
Mohamed Aboelgheit Fellow, the Tahrir Institute for Middle East PolicyReem Abbas is a Nonresident Fellow at TIMEP focusing on land, conflict, and resources in Sudan. She is also the institute’s first Mohamed Aboelgheit Fellow. She has contributed to dozens of outlets including the Washington Post, the Nation, Al-Monitor, the Guardian, Open Democracy, and African Arguments. She has been working in the field of communications and advocacy for Sudanese civil society groups and international organizations for more than 10 years. She is active in the women’s movement in Sudan and was a former member in the coordination committee in Sudanese Women in Civic and Political Groups (MANSAM). She also spent years working with Sudanese refugees in Egypt and published a profile on a young refugee musician in the book “Voices in Refuge” published by the American University in Cairo Press. Her latest essay titled “Smuggling Books into Sudan: a Brief History from 2012 to 2016” was published in Art and Solidarity Reader: Radical Actions, Politics and Friendships. In 2022, she published “(Un)Doing Resistance: Authoritarianism and Attacks on the Arts in Sudan’s 30 Years of Islamist Rule” with her co-author Ruba El-Melik. You can follow her on Twitter: @ReemWrites.
Alaa Assani
Nonresident Fellow, the Tahrir Institute for Middle East PolicyAlaa Assani is a Nonresident Fellow at TIMEP focusing on housing, land & property, and gender in Syria. She is a passionate Syrian refugee and human rights defender with a background in computer engineering from Aleppo University in Syria. She is a development planner and holds an MSc in Development Administration and Planning from University College London (UCL), in the UK. She is a 2022 fellow with the “Women in Conflict 1325” program by Beyond Borders Scotland and was recognized as a Leadership awardee of UKFCDO Chevening in 2020 and a fellow Young Leader with the Swedish Institute in 2018. Her dedication lies in advancing sustainable feminist peace and justice in Syria. Alaa has over 10 years of experience working with INGOs, such as Women International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), GIZ, FBA, Expertise France, No Peace without Justice, Danish Refugee Council, as well as UN agencies (UNHCR and UNICEF). She has excelled in project management and advocacy efforts in the fields of gender, development, and human rights. She has worked closely with women-led organizations and civil society in Syria and the wider MENA region, centering their lived experiences and amplifying their voices and needs. Over the past four years, Alaa’s focus has been on gendered issues of housing, land, and property (HLP) rights for displaced Syrians, particularly women. Outside of her professional life, she is a proud mother to her three-year-old son, Sam. You can follow her on Twitter: @Alaa_Assani.
Paola Salwan Daher
Associate Director for Global Advocacy, the Center for Reproductive RightsPaola Salwan Daher is the Associate Director for Global Advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, based in Geneva. In this capacity, she oversees the Center’s work with international human rights mechanisms and WHO. Her areas of focus also include accountability for women’s and girls’ rights in humanitarian settings. Before joining the Center, Paola worked in Beirut, Lebanon, at the Center for Research and Training on Development – Action, where she led on a project on women’s economic and social rights in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco. After this, she was the UN Representative of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies in Geneva, where she focused on building and implementing a global advocacy strategy on civil and political rights in the Southwest and North Africa region. Paola has served on the Boards of Urgent Action Fund for Feminist Activism, a feminist emergency fund, and of the Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality, an LGBTIQ+ advocacy and service providing NGO based in Beirut. She is also currently a Senior International Fellow at the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut. She holds a B.A. from the Graduate Institute in Geneva and an LLM from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law and is fluent in spoken Arabic, English and French.