More Than A Magazine, A Movement
A region of 18 countries extending from Egypt to Iran, including the Arabian Peninsula and Turkey. The greater Middle East and North African (MENA) region also includes countries in northern and east Africa and east of Iran. Some European countries north of Iran are often associated with the Middle East because of socio-political reasons.
In her new documentary, Bread & Roses (available now on Apple+), filmmaker Sahra Mani reveals the fierce and courageous resistance of Afghan women defying the Taliban—who wish to make them disappear.
It’s a documentary about Afghan women, by Afghan women, at a time when the world had stopped seeing them.
Iraqi lawmakers’ proposal to amend the country’s family law and grant religious courts the authority to legalize marriages for underage girls is being pushed by the country’s Shiite parliamentary factions, as part of their appeal to conservative voters ahead of the country’s October 2025 elections, if not sooner.
The proposal has sparked a firestorm, particularly after initial reports suggested it could allow marriages for girls as young as 9 years old. Some experts contend the bill could also further fracture Iraq’s stability.
The Child Marriage Prevention Act is intended to combat child marriage—but some provisions in the bill actually would contradict, undermine and obstruct the national and global commitment to end child marriage by the end of the decade.
Sen. Durbin must withdraw or amend the Child Marriage Prevention Act. Girls in the U.S. and across the globe are relying on us to keep our promise to end all marriage before age 18, no exceptions.
Monday, Sept. 16, marks two years since the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini made international headlines and sparked an uprising in Iran. Her death triggered the longest citizen-led rebellion in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Nasrin Sotoudeh and her husband Reza Khandan are no strangers to brutal and violent government suppression. The two Iranian activists and attorneys have faced harassment, violence and imprisonment from a government that will do virtually anything to crush women’s rights and freedom of expression.
Afghan women’s voices and bodies are deemed ‘intimate’ by the Taliban and banned from public.
While the international community condemns these brutal and oppressive restrictions, it now faces a critical challenge: how to effectively respond to the Taliban’s gender apartheid policies and increasing human rights abuses. The need for the international community to codify gender apartheid as a crime against humanity grows more urgent.
Iraq’s Parliament is currently advancing an amendment to the country’s Personal Status Law that would shift governance of marriage from state courts to Iraqi religious authorities, posing dire threats to the human rights of girls and women. The new law would give legal recognition to marriages of girls as young as 9 years old and remove criminal punishments for men who marry young girls—thereby legally authorizing the rape and sexual abuse of girls by adult men.
“Girls belong in school and on the playground, not in a wedding dress,” said Sarah Sanbar, an Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch.
My name is Suraya Mohammadi, a girl living in the heart of Afghanistan, a country under Taliban rule. I write this letter with a heart full of pain and hope, a letter that aims to be the voice of all Afghan girls, girls who are enduring an imposed and cruel silence.
Since the day the Taliban regained power, my life and the lives of thousands of other girls have turned into a nightmare. We have been deprived of going to school and continuing our education, from working and having a bright future. Every day, I look out of the small window of my house and wish that I could go back to school, open my books again, and dream of becoming a doctor, an engineer, or a lawyer. But sadly, these dreams have now turned into a nightmare we experience while awake.
In September 2021—less than a month after the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan—the Taliban banned women and girls from participating in sports.
Three women and three men will represent Afghanistan in the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics, yet the Taliban has refused to acknowledge the female Afghan athletes playing for their home country.
Kimia Yousofi, one the three Afghan women Olympians, said she will be representing the “stolen dreams and aspirations” of women still under the Taliban’s gender apartheid.
A United Nations (U.N.) report released last month exposes the Taliban’s brutal gender-based system of discrimination, exclusion and oppression against Afghan women and girls.
Take action: Send an emergency action email urging the U.S. and U.N. to continue their non-recognition of the Taliban until they end gender apartheid and their crimes against humanity.
Over the last 15 years, I have had the privilege of meeting mothers and their children around the world. The universal experiences of motherhood—from the challenges of pregnancy and birth, to cooing over a newborn child—can make it seem that pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood are a great equalizer. But my own experience and my work have reinforced that motherhood remains undeniably influenced by privilege and power.
There is no single intervention that will stop complications in pregnancies, halt premature births and end neonatal deaths. But that shouldn’t stop us from making full use of what we know can make a difference for many.