The Symposium Women Confronting Isis offers a unique and timely opportunity to engage with locally-based Iraqi and Syrian women activists working across sectarian lines, as well as international experts to address the crisis of women’s human rights in areas controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Participants will explore the relationship between gender-based abuses under ISIS and State-sanctioned discrimination and violence against women, highlighting lessons for policymakers and women’s rights advocates in diverse contexts of political and armed conflict.
Friday 6 March at CUNY School of Law
Speakers Include:
Laila Alodaat, Chairperson of the Syria Justice and Accountability Center; WILPF
Amir Ashour, Iraqi Human Rights Activist; Iraq Human Rights Officer, MADRE
Charlotte Bunch, a Board of Governor’s Distinguished Service Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies; inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame
Radhika Coomaraswamy, former U.N. Under Secretary-General, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict; Visiting Professor of Law at NYU Law School (invited)
Lisa Davis, Clinical Professor of Law, CUNY Law School; MADRE
Leisl Gernholtz, Executive Director, Women’s Division, Human Rights Watch
Jannat Al Ghezzi, Iraqi women’s Rights activist, Baghdad, Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI)
Camille Massey, Executive Director, Sorensen Center for International Peace and Justice, CUNY
Yanar Mohammed, Founder and Director, Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI)
Pramilla Patten, Vice-Chairperson of the UN CEDAW Committee (invited)
Oula Ramadan, Syrian Women’s Peace Activist; Member of the Badael project
Madeleine Rees, OBE, Secretary General, WILPF
Jacqui True, Professor, Monash University
Patricia Viseur-Sellers, former Gender Legal Advisor and a Prosecutor for the ICTY & ICTR
Yifat Susskind, Executive Director, MADRE; contributor, The W Effect: Bush’s War on Women
Nawal Yazeji, Syrian Women’s Peace Activist, Damascus; Member, Syrian Women’s League
