On the 8th March, around 15 young women, mostly from Iraq, celebrated the International Women’s Day (IWD) with training activities including presentations around IWD. They also played a game on women’s Rights and the event ended with music performed by the YWC’s participants.

Left: Maya - NRC computer teacher. Right: Haifa Farhat- NRC Monitoring Officer

Since July 2008, the NRC YW C has been providing computer training, Photoshop courses, English and Arabic literacy courses as well as sessions on social health awareness.

The young women used their newly acquired skills to design 10 posters related to the IWD.

NRC Monitoring officer Haifa Farhat attended the event and says:

“IWD means a lot for me. Being from the Arab world as well as being a Muslim, I know that Arab women do not enjoy all Rights, but we are working on it! I hope that IWD will bring new Rights to us, that this day is not just a day like any other day.

Changing some laws would be good but I do not want new laws to be offensive to my religion. We actually do have a lot of Rights but society neglect them and many women do not know about them. Ignorance is the women’s worst enemy

I hope IWD brings women around the world together with their respective national laws, not only westerns laws, in order to make a “real International Law” for women. Give a chance to oriental societies too.

It was wonderful to see the young women expressing their rights. We talked about subjects that we normally don’t talk about and listening to them talking about these issues was fantastic, it gives me a lot of hope. I know that they will spread their knowledge to their sisters and mothers”