A Path to Water, Syria's Healing Rags, and A Library for Girls, Here's Around the World In 5
Chad
When she was 15, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim founded the association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad.
Now, Chad is on the frontline of the climate crisis, with temperature increases predicted to be 1.5 times higher than the global average. In 2020, record rainfall caused a considerable loss of food stocks and displaced hundreds of thousands, while last year’s floods left more than 160,000 homeless.
Along with representatives from EOS Data Analytics, Ibrahim ran workshops with leaders from 23 villages in Mayo-Kebbi Est to map 1,728 sq km. Laminated copies of the maps were distributed to each community.
Ibrahim believes it is vital to involve women in the process, not just to ensure their representation but because of their knowledge, such as how to find water in the dry season.
Read more here.
Afghanistan
A year ago, The Taliban took control of Afghanistan. Secondary schools for girls have remained mainly closed after the Taliban went back on promises to open them in March. Most teenage girls now have no access to classrooms, and thousands of women have been pushed out of the workforce . This week, Afghan women's rights activists opened a library in Kabul, hoping to provide an oasis for women.
"We have opened the library with two purposes: one, for those girls who cannot go to school and second, for those women who lost their jobs and have nothing to do," said Zhulia Parsi, one of the library's founders.
Read more here.
Syria
Khloud Hnaidi, from Syria's southern city of Sweida, started reworking old rags into usable items such as table cloths, rugs and decorative artworks a few years ago. She was driven by her love for art and a desire to revive an old tradition of recycling shabby rags, particularly in light of the Syrian War.
Many women from across the country have joined Hnaidi's workshop to develop weaving skills and formed a close bond by sharing their own stories. Their friendship has inspired Hnaidi to call on more women to share their stories by making artworks out of recycled rags.
"It's special because they didn't know each other before. Each of them started introducing herself through her story about her life, her children and husband, or the place she came from," said Khloud Hnaidi.
Read more here.
United States of America
A New York City-owned golf course managed by former U.S. President Donald Trump's business is set to host a Saudi Arabia-supported women's tournament in October.
The plan to host the Aramco Team Series at the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in the Bronx comes after New York City's attempt to cancel Trump's contract to run the course was thrown out by a judge in April.
The Aramco Team Series, first played in 2020 as the Saudi Ladies Team International, is financed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
Read more here.
Canada
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has joined the group of journalists who have publicly shared a series of private, anonymous emails they've received.
Those emails contained specific, targeted and disturbing threats of violence and sexual assault, as well as racist and misogynistic language.
Public threats and intimidation of women in public life have intensified in recent weeks, with significant examples of abuse targeted toward politicians.
"It was very insidious, and the language around it was a perversion of some progressive language that was used to abuse and torment us. Also, we were told we were put on a list of journalists to be silenced," Erica Ifill, a columnist for The Hill Times
Read more here.