International Women's confernece in Fullerton, my research on Violence Against Women in Oppressive States or Conflict Zones,kurdish women case

http://www.fullerton.edu/sa/Womenconference2010/
http://www.fullerton.edu/sa/Womenconference2010/speakers.htm

Register for the Women’s Center
11th Annual Domestic Violence Conference: Global Perspectives on Violence Against Women.
The conference is scheduled for March 6, 2010, 9 am to 4 pm in the Titan Student Union.Click here for more information about this free event.





Partial List of Featured Speaker

Soraya Fallah Soraya Fallah is a lifelong Women and Human Rights activist, scholar, and a researcher of Kurdish origin, currently residing in the United States. She works extensively with local and International NGOs to promote human rights in the USA and throughout the world, specifically protecting the rights of ethnic minorities in the Middle East. She is the President and co-founder of World’s Women For Life, which is a world-wide movement to promote culture of life and preemptive peace. Soraya is also a board member and co-founder of Society for Human Rights in Iran, Southern California and member of Amnesty international. She was legal adviser of Amnesty in Denmark on Iranian/Kudish and middle Eastern cases. She is an active member of “Campaign for One Million Signature, Change for Equality”, which is a women’s movement in Iran. She delegated Campaign’s message for first time to the UN Commission on Status of Women. She is the chair and adviser of several other non-for-profit organizations, such as International Pen Kurdish sector, Northern America, UNAUSA, SanFernando, and chair of Kurdish women Rights Committee, KNC, all working for the advancement of human rights and democracy especially for women and minority rights. She chaired several International Conference in Iraq and US. She delegated violence against Kurdish women in their oppressed states to UN for first time in Kurdish women history in 2007. Soraya has her M.A in International Relations and Law, and wrote her thesis on “The Role of the United Nations in the Progress of Women’s Rights”. Her recent research and work has been focused on women and violence in the Middle East from a legal perspective.

Rucha Tadwalkar Rucha Tadwalkar has been involved in the movement to end violence against women for the past ten years. Rucha has worked with numerous women’s rights collectives, grass-roots organizations, and non-profit agencies to create social change. She has spoken on panels, organized workshops, written and published articles, and led community dialogues. Her passion has led her to participate in the Association for Women’s Rights in Development conference in South Africa and be featured on radio and television. Rucha holds a Master’s Degree in Women’s Studies. Currently, she works with a Los Angeles based domestic violence and sexual assault agency to educate the community about gender violence. In this capacity, Rucha has been able to raise awareness about the challenges that monolingual and immigrant survivors face in receiving help, as well as provide culturally sensitive services to the marginalized. Rucha will be speaking on the topics of gender selection, sex work, and dowry related deaths in the context of India. In many parts of India and the U.S., technology is being misused to determine the sex of a child. Sex workers in India have grown in substantial number, yet no proper laws are in place to protect their rights. Although the custom of dowry has been legally outlawed in India, the practice continues, placing a heavy price on women’s lives. Rucha’s talk will focus on the inequities women experience due to entrenched cultural & patriarchal norms, while also looking at the work being done by activists & NGO’s at the local and global levels to educate and prevent further violence against women.

Jolly Jolly has been involved with Invisible Children since the beginning. Her guidance enabled the filmmakers to see and understand the plight of children in northern Uganda, and her leadership and direction helped create IC’s initiatives on the ground. Among her many qualifications, Jolly holds a degree in Business Administration and is experienced in program development and coordination, logistics, and management. She says that developing IC’s operations in Uganda has given her the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream of educating children in the North, especially girls. In addition to her leadership at IC, Jolly also runs HEALS, a program that provides play therapy for war-affected children. Her goal is to continue to change Acholiland from suffering to joy, and to improve the living conditions of youth by providing them with education. And here is a few other facts about her and Invisible Children that may be relevant to your conference: Invisible Children is the largest supporter of secondary scholarships in northern Uganda. We currently are funding 180 students in our university scholarship program and 144 of these recipients are females. Jolly was nominated for a Noble Peace Prize. She was also featured in the film War Dance which was an Oscar-nominated movie. Invisible Children has a micro-economic initiative known as MEND. This is a program which hires women who were kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army as children and forced to become mothers. Following their escape from captivity with their families, these women were taught tailoring skills by another area non-profit. However, their skills were of little use due to an excess of trained tailors already in northern Uganda. We have hired these women to create handbags which Invisible Children then sells in the USA. In addition to now having a regular source of income for their families, these women are also given Savings and Investing Training so that they can learn to save and manage their money for years to come. Invisible Children is currently rebuilding 11 secondary schools in northern Uganda including Sacred Heart Secondary School. This is an all-girls secondary school that used to be among the top 100 schools in the nation. However due to the war, it is no longer considered an elite school by national standards. Students at Sacred Heart are benefiting from new buildings, more qualified teachers, scholarships, increased water and sanitation, and technology advances on the campus that will better prepare the students for national testing. Jolly was the cover piece recently in African Women magazine which is one of the most popular magazines across the continent. Jolly has played an integral role in the peace talks with the LRA and frequently relays messages to both the LRA and the government of Uganda about the wishes and well-being of the Acholi people.

Bryn Freedman Bryn Freedman is frequent speaker for Free the Slaves. She is on the executive council of Free The Slaves, a co-chair of the annual Freedom Awards and hosted the first ever information connectors gathering at the organizations inception in 2002. She is an award-winning journalist, producer, showrunner, creator, reporter, anchor and author. She is best known for having launched and created the series format for A&E’s INTERVENTION, the two-time Prism Award-winning, Emmy-nominated documentary series which profiles people trying to overcome dependence on drugs or alcohol or other compulsive behavior. Bryn served as the show's Executive Producer, overseeing production on 57 episodes over four seasons. "Intervention" was honored with "The President's Award," given by the Entertainment Industries Council, Inc., to a production that "not only raises awareness about drugs and alcohol but leaves behind a legacy." Prior to Intervention, she produced such television series as TLC’s SECOND CHANCE, Style Network’s SECOND LOOK and Discovery Channel’s ON THE INSIDE. Throughout her career, Bryn has served in a variety of positions in all aspects of broadcast news. She was deputy bureau chief for ABC News in Los Angeles, and she also worked closely with Barry Diller, then Chairman and CEO of USA Broadcasting, to develop a variety of projects, including The Times USA, a daily news program targeting 18-34-year olds. She is a founding member of International World Television's "The Real News," a non-profit international news network created by print, broadcast and online journalists to produce independent news and documentary programs across broadcast and online platforms. Bryn came to Los Angeles as an on-camera investigative reporter for Fox Entertainment News and Twentieth Television's nationally syndicated series EDJ (Entertainment Daily Journal). She also served as an on-air correspondent for Fox News, covering national politics, science and the courts for the Los Angeles bureau of Fox News Channel. Prior to that, she worked for WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, where she was named Best News Reporter by Philadelphia Magazine. Bryn is also an accomplished author, having co-written “In Eddie's Name,” a critically acclaimed nonfiction account of a 1994 murder case in Philadelphia, which exposed critical failings of the city's 911 emergency response system. Since 2002, she has taught seminars in radio and television writing, reporting and production as an Adjunct Professor of Journalism at USC's Annenberg School of Communication.