On Sunday 3rd July, 15 women and 5 children were arrested in Saudi Arabia during a protest to demand fair trials for their relatives. All but 2 women have now been released after they were believed to have signed pledges not to protest again.

The 2 remaining women – Rima bint Abdul Rahman al-Jareesh and Sharifa al-Saqa’abi – have previously signed petitions calling for reform in the country. In addition, al-Jareesh is believed to have refused to sign the pledge or to have her mahram (male guardian) act as her guarantor to secure her release.

Saudi Arabia has form when it comes to protestors – people face gross human rights violations at the hands of the security forces including being denied access to lawyers, torture, and forced confessions. Women face even more discrimination in law, including the need for a male guardian to travel outside their own homes.

If these women were arrested solely for peacefully demonstrating in public, then Amnesty considers them to be prisoners of conscience, and they should be immediately and unconditionally released.

Take action – Send a tweet to William Hague

Today the UK Foreign Secretary William Hague is in Saudi Arabia for talks with the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud. He’s most likely only there today, so we’ve just a few hours to ask him to raise the cases of al-Jareesh and al-Saqa’abi with the Prince Saud.

As William Hague is active on twitter, we’re hoping he’s checking his blackberry today! Let’s send him a message he can’t ignore. We’ve a couple of suggested tweets below – just press ‘tweet’ next the one you like most, or write your own – but keep it polite!

Dear @williamjhague, 2 Saudi women remain detained for asking for fair trials of loved ones. Will you raise their case?

Dear @williamjhague, Saudi women have been detained simply for asking for a fair trial of their loved ones. Please help.

Woman holding a sign which says 'Egyptians Creating Their Future', Al-abidin, Cairo, Feb 2011.

The media caravan has moved on and Egypt is yesterday’s news. Which is precisely why it’s so important to focus on what’s actually happening now that former president Hosni Mubarak and others are under arrest and the country has supposedly turned a corner once and for all.

How have things actually changed?

Well, if you ask some of the people who are still turning out in Tahrir Square you might get the answer: they haven’t.

Certainly the army has been cracking down on small demonstrations there with alarming violence. For example on 9 April soldiers used live ammunition, rubber bullets, tear gas, electric batons and sticks to break up a peaceful demonstration in the square. Two people were killed, many more were injured and at least 21 people were detained. A month earlier the army also violently cleared Tahrir Square of demonstrators and women protesters told Amnesty that they were beaten, subjected to electric shocks, strip-searched and forced to submit to “virginity checks” and threatened with prostitution charges.

These appalling incidents don’t fit an Egypt “narrative” which many observers have come to accept as almost inevitable – Mubarak repression > Arab Spring revolution > post-revolutionary move to democracy and human rights.

But this was never going to be a smooth ride. On the one hand the human cost of the Egyptian uprising has been huge and truly terrible: 840 people were killed by the security forces and nearly 6,500 (6,467) were injured, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Health. On the other, as Eric Margolis makes clear, Egypt has a kind of “deep state” run by a very powerful military-industrial complex awash with US military aid money.

Amnesty UK director Kate Allen (currently in Cairo assessing how things are changing, especially in terms of women’s rights) told me earlier this week that in Tahrir Square there are still banners up declaring “The army and the people are one”. The painful irony of this if you’ve just been beaten up by a bunch of soldiers in the square hardly needs spelling out.

Meanwhile, if the army is Egypt’s deep state you could say that administrative detention is the country’s deep form of repression. Under Emergency Law powers in force since 1981, the authorities have been imprisoning political opponents, human rights activists, alleged terrorists, Islamists and others without going through all the bother of putting them on trial. In the final years of Mubarak’s ill-starred rule a staggering 10,000 people were thought to have be held in administrative detention, some for as long as 20 years. Some – probably many – of these were also tortured. The human misery caused by this deep repression has been colossal. There need to be thorough investigations into who did the torturing and who ignored court orders for prisoner releases (another issue is Egypt’s role as a “go-to torturer” in the “war on terror”: this also needs thoroughly unearthing).

For more detail, see Amnesty’s new report on administrative detention here.

Nothing is inevitable in Egypt, neither the growth of a human rights culture nor a backward swing to repression and an army-police state run with an iron first. Recent moves by the interim rulers in the Egyptian Cabinet certainly don’t inspire confidence (especially proposals for a law that will criminalise protests and strikes) but a strong turnout and reformist vote in a recent referendum (albeit a flawed one) augers somewhat better.

For me though things are looking worrying. There’s a danger that things are already slipping backwards in Egypt and with the media caravan parked elsewhere there are few journalist to report the slow rewind to repression and dashed hopes. To pillage Gil Scott-Heron’s famous song title one more time – in Egypt the fear is that the post-revolution will not be televised.

The Egyptian authorities must amend existing legislation to better protect women in Egypt, and ensure they play an active role in reforms.

Women played a key role during the 18 days of protest that led to former president Hosni Mubarak’s downfall.

Young and old, veiled and unveiled, educated and illiterate, they stood up and chanted for change. Many abandoned the way they had previously led their lives, and overturned deeply ingrained attitudes surrounding ‘appropriate’ behaviour for women.

However, when discussions on change and reform in Egypt began, they were overlooked.

Click on the banner to take action:

Find out more on the main Amnesty UK site

Just 100 years ago women in the UK didn’t have the right to vote, they weren’t allowed to serve as magistrates or jurors, and they were barred from many professions.

March 8^th is the 100^th anniversary of International Women’s Day – providing us with an opportunity to celebrate progress, and to work towards a time when today’s inequalities will seem as shocking as those from 100 years ago.

This year we have teamed up with a number of other organizations as part of the We Are Equals coalition. As always there are plenty of ways for you to get involved, to demand equality in your neighbourhood and around the world.

1. Ensure women play an active role in the new Egypt

Women are being excluded by the caretaker government and the international community is turning a blind eye. Most recently, a new national committee formed to propose changes to the Egyptian constitution was composed only of men. This is not acceptable.

2. Get involved in the big debate

Head over to weareequals.org and if you’re on Twitter, use the hashtags #iwd and #weareequals

3. Watch and share the Equals film

James Bond supports International Women’s Day:

What else are you up to? Let us know below or send us a message on Twitter.

Happy International Women’s Day!

See what we’ve done in previous years:

2010: Every day should be Mother’s Day

You contributed to a giant Mother’s Day card – bringing the issue of maternal mortality to the attention of the main political parties.

2009: The #oneten campaign

We used Twitter to highlight a shocking stat: every year one in ten women in the UK suffer rape or other violence.

We all value the women and mothers in our lives and so we’re happy to be celebrating International Women’s Day, and saying thank you to our mums this March. Yet around the world many aren’t so fortunate and millions of women each year are dying needlessly in childbirth.

Pregnancy is not a disease, yet it kills one woman every minute. Almost all of these deaths are preventable and 95% of them occur in developing countries. Poverty, violence and a lack of education all contribute.

The lifetime risk of maternal death here in the UK is only one in nearly 16,700; in Sierra Leone it is one in eight. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Help us change this

We think a mother’s health is worth fighting for. We know you do too. So join us in telling our politicians that worldwide maternal health needs to be a priority for the next UK Government.

Together we can ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth safe and every child healthy. Together we can make every day Mother’s Day.  Here’s how:

1. Add your photo to our giant Mother’s Day card

2. Email a Mother’s Day message to the party leaders

We’ll also be filling our sites with actions relating to women’s rights all week, so keep your eyes peeled for other ways to get involved. Follow us on Twitter for all the latest.

About our Campaign

We are working with a coalition of UK-based NGOs, professional associations and civil society networks who believe that the world’s women – and its children – deserve better, and the manifesto for motherhood is a starting point for our campaigning around the UK general election.
Read the Manifesto for Motherhood (PDF)

You can find out more about our campaign for maternal health here.

For the last two days, reports of women’s rights abuses have dominated the homepage of our site amnesty.org.uk, bringing the subject of violence against women to the fore of Amnesty UK’s online campaigning.

Two of the items concern women’s rights in conflict and post conflict situations, one of the 2 most dangerous situations for women in today’s world.  In Bosnia and Herzogovina, the people who raped women during the 1992-1995 conflict have still not been brought to justice.  In Chadian refugee camps, women who have escaped the Darfur conflict continue to face further sexual violence and rape. 

In both of these cases, the women are not just victims of rape – but victims of how society relates to their situation. The Bosnian authorities have failed thousands of rape survivors by not providing them with the the support they need and the reparations they deserve for these war crimes.  In Chad, women are ostracised for having been raped and face rejection from current or prospective husbands; to add to their plight, it is the very people who are looking after the women in the camps that are raping them. 

Sexual violence is inescapable for these women. To varying degrees, violence against women is accepted by all societies  worldwide – making it an inescapable reality of our times. While politically unstable countries seem an obvious environment for mass violence against women, the other most dangerous envrionment for women is in fact the home. The home – that is, in any and every country. 

At last night’s launch of the book Created Equal, the pervasive nature of violence against women was brought into sharp relief.  Clips from Rape in the City (channel 4 Dispatches) showed how widespread violent attitudes towards women are in London.  An informal street interview with a group of young young men quickly revealed a belief that sexual violence serves as a just punishment for women who are seen to insult or offend them.  I was left in disgusted shock, seeing how casually and confidently these men relayed what they would do to ‘offending’ women; listening to a 14 year old girl talk about how she became the victim of gang rape left me reeling.

How to change this situation was a key question for last night’s panel. Damion Carnell of the Nottinghamshire Domestic Violence Forum believes we need to educate young men and boys on non-violence towards women. For producer of Rape in the City, Karen Edwards, it is perhaps raising awareness to incentivise people to take action in their own communities. For Patrick Stewart, who witnessed domestic violence against his mother when he was young, it is patronising and supporting women’s aid organisations and Amnesty’s Stop Violence Against Women Campaign.

So back to our homepage. It is because so many women face the horror of sexual violence everywhere that Amnesty reports so prolifically on it. It is startling to what level women are at risk from gender based violence (i.e. because they are women) in the world today.  It is of course our duty to shout about it, show people that women’s rights are being abused - and to give you the opportunity to do something about it. So here it is:  please pay attention to each item on the homepage and help women who have suffered or are suffering violence in Bosnia, Chad, here – and everywhere.

See Patrick Stewart talk about his ecperience of violence against women – watch the video below.

Although charities such as Womankind, Refuge and the End Violence Against Women coalition (EVAW) have done a lot to raise awareness of violence against women, the new report ‘Map of Gaps’ by EVAW and the Equality and Human Rights Commission indicates that there is still a distinct lack of services for women who suffer violence.

In fact, over 100 (one in four) local authorities in Britain have no specialised support services whatsoever- with ethnic minority women being especially poorly served.

The Commission has announced that it will target over 100 local authorities with the threat of legal action over this lack – and you can do your bit, too.  Simply go to EVAW’s new website Map of Gaps, find out about services in your area and take action by emailing your local MP.

The presentation of this lack of services as a Map of Gaps creates quite a detailed visual image of how women suffering violence fare across Britain – although quite eerie if you live in one of the most underfunded areas, such as the east of England.

It’s great to see the internet being used to such powerful effect, as maps are so accessible, giving a quick overview of a situation – and it seems that I’m not the only one who has come to this realisation, as some of you have even been using the map format to report local snow conditions.

On that note, let’s take inspiration from this map mania and come up with a map of our own;  What do you think we could map ‘live’? All answers on a postcard … or even better, as a comment on this here blog. Let us know what you think we could map out, and remember, points mean prizes!

Find out more on the Map of Gaps report:

• Visit the Map of Gaps website to find out more about services for women who suffer violence in your area and take action
• Hear End Violence Against Women’s Holly Dustin discuss the report on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour
• Read the BBC report Gaps in support for abuse victims