Resource center

Organisation website:
The Muslim Women's League is a non-profit Muslim American organization working to implement the values of Islam and thereby reclaim the status of women as free, equal and vital contributors to society

Organisation website:
Association profile with an overview on services. In brief : "The Lebanese Association for development - Al Majmoua Is an Independent, Non Profit Lebanese Non Governmental Organization.
Started as a micro-credit program by save the children in 1994; Al Majmoua registered under the Lebanese ministry of interior in August 1997 and became fully autonomous on the 1st of january 1998."

Organisation website:
Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW) works nationally and in its home community of Washington, DC to build pathways to economic independence for America's families, women, and girls. WOW has a distinctive history in changing the landscape of women and work.

For more than 40 years, WOW has helped women learn to earn, with programs emphasizing literacy, technical and nontraditional skills, the welfare-to-work transition, career development, and retirement security. Since 1964, WOW has trained more than 10,000 women for well-paid work in the DC area.

WOW leads the National Women's Workforce Network, which is comprised of organizations committed to increasing women and girls' access to well-paid work, the Family Economic Security Program (FES), and the Elder Economic Security Initiative (Initiative).

Project webpage:
The Permanent Arab Court To Resist Violence Against Women is a symbolic popular court that aims at fighting all forms of violence practiced against women in Arab societies.
The Court was established by a group of Arab NGOs and distinguished personalities gathered in Rabat , Morocco on 30th November and 1st December 1996. The main purpose of the Court is to put an end to the intensifying and multifaceted violence against women. This need has become obviously clear by a public hearing on violence against women that was held in Beirut in June 1995, and was the first of its kind in the Arab world.

Organisation Website : portail en langue francaise. En bref "L'AEP est une association à but non lucratif, oeuvrant pour le développement socio-économique dans le domaine de la micro finance.
En pleine guerre, dans la tourmente et la débâcle, alors que beaucoup de Libanais baissaient les bras, ces hommes et ces femmes ont été parmi ceux qui ont cru, espéré, osé.
Au lieu de recourir à la mendicité, occasionnelle ou régulière, voire aux armes, ils ont préféré prendre leurs responsabilités par leur travail."

Organisation website:
The Arab Dutch Women's Circle is a human rights organization established in 2002 as a non-profit organization. The organization's headquarters are in The Hague. Its founder and president, Dr. Tomador Meihuizen-Hassoun, was born in Syria and obtained her doctor's degree in France. She worked in France and in many Arab countries as a university professor, researcher in the field of women's and children's rights and as editor-in-chief of a woman's magazine (Hajes). Now she works as a consultant of the Middle East.

The Board of the ANVK plays a leadership role in planning, guiding and governing its activities. In order to strive collectively towards gender equality and women's and children's rights in the Arab world, the ANVK is working together with its partners, the Netherlands Association of Women with Higher Education, the International Dialogues Foundation, students of the Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden, the Algerian Women's Association, Bridging the Gulf, and Arab women NGOs in the Netherlands and in Arab countries.
Our aims

Women's and children's rights, gender equality and the empowerment of Arab women to become free to make their own choices, develop their capacities, their talents and their skills, these are chosen as the prime goals of the strategic plan of the ANVK. In addition, the development of Arab societies where governments, women's, men's and civil organisations can reinforce each other in the fight against injustice is equally part of our plan of action.

Organisation website:
Women for Women International provides women survivors of war, civil strife and other conflicts with the tools and resources to move from crisis and poverty to stability and self-sufficiency, thereby promoting viable civil societies. We're changing the world one woman at a time.

Project webpage:
"The aim of this network is to provide young Arab and Nordic scholars in the field of gender and politics with the opportunity to establish intraregional as well as cross-regional contacts with other PhD students and seniors in the same field and to provide additional academic supervising within the following research areas:
• Women's political empowerment (political representation, social movements)
• Policy changes and gendered rights (civil, political and social citizenship and violence against women)
• Labour market (gender segregation, equal pay, unemployment)
• Migration (including migrating care workers)
• Media, communication and cultural debates
• Religion

The purpose of the network is three-fold:
• to contribute to the development of research in the field of women in political life.
• to facilitate the exchange of theories, methodological approaches and empirical findings between young Arab and Nordic scholars.
• to facilitate contacts between senior and junior researchers in the field. Thus, the network will be of vital help to young scholars who are looking for international research contacts and who are in want of additional external supervision capacity."

Organisation website:
The National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) propels women entrepreneurs into economic, social and political spheres of power worldwide by:

Strengthening the wealth creating capacity of our members and promoting economic development within the entrepreneurial community
Creating innovative and effective change in the business culture
Building strategic alliances, coalitions and affiliations
Transforming public policy and influencing opinion makers

Project webpage:
In 1996, Lebanon ratified, with reservations, an international covenant regarding women's rights known as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. This Convention sets out, in a comprehensive, legally binding form, internationally accepted principles on the rights of women. It further commits States Parties to take all appropriate measures, to ensure the full development and advancement of women and to guarantee them the enjoyment of the fundamental rights and freedoms to which they are entitled, on a basis of equality with men. Moreover, the Convention requires that Governments work to eliminate discrimination against women in public life as well as in private life. Indeed, according to the Convention, women must be as free as men to make choices not only in political and legal sphere, but also in such areas as marriage, the home and family life in general.

To implement women's rights, as stated in the Convention, the establishment of official and non-governmental monitoring mechanisms (national and international) helps ensure that goals are being reached and that legal rights and duties of women are recognized, understood and enforced.

The Lebanese government submitted, in 1999, its initial report regarding the progress made on the implementation of the Convention in its country, to the international monitoring treaty body known as the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against women (CEDAW Committee). Non-governmental organizations are also encouraged to submit a parallel report in conformity with the guidelines set by the CEDAW Committee.

In this respect, the Lebanese NGO Forum, an umbrella organization of various NGOs distributed geographically throughout the Lebanese territory has set a permanent monitoring mechanism entitled Women's Rights Monitor.

This project aims at helping NGOs monitor women's rights and implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in Lebanon by establishing a platform for co-ordination that will, at the national and regional levels:

- Provide information about the Convention and the CEDAW Committee

- Provide guidelines in view of helping NGOs to write their report to the CEDAW Committee

- Establish a set of baseline data regarding women's rights in Lebanon in accordance with the guidelines of the CEDAW

- Elaborate a permanent report regarding women's situation in Lebanon, based on the compiled data

- Establish a bibliography on the subject of women's rights and facilitate the exchange of information and documentation

- Provide a mailing list of participating NGOs