EVENT: WomenCentre Kirklees, raising awareness of FGM, Fri 8th Nov 2013, Huddersfield

From email:

Please find attached an event on raising awareness of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). This has been organised by WomenCentre Kirklees and the ‘Women Together’ project.

Friday 8th November 2013 – 10.00 – 15.30 – The Mission, Huddersfield

All details on attached flyer and booking form.

Also, along with the event the ‘Women Together’ project is launching its book around the narratives of asylum seeking and refugee women who have been affected by gender violence.

Please circulate around your contacts.

The event has got limited places so please book early to avoid disappointment.

Regards,

Melody

Huddersfield
Tel: 01484 450866
Email redacted.

WomenCentre, Calderdale and Kirklees
WomenCentre Ltd, 23 Silver Street, Halifax, HX1 1JN
Company Number 6084795, Charity Number 1118366

ACTION: Save Fozia and Nawaz from ‘honour’ crime

Please take action.

Fozia and Nawaz are a married couple in grave danger of so-called ‘honour killing’ if returned to Pakistan. They face extreme violence from Fozia’s faimly and community persecution because they have crossed the faith divide. yet UKBA is intent on deporting them.

Love across the faith divide

Fozia is a Syed Shia , Nawaz a Sunni. Well-established and successful in business, the professions, and politics across Pakistan, Syed are regarded as an elite caste. Syed girls are not allowed to marry outside the kinship group, and certainly not to a Sunni.

In 2005 Fozia’s home town of Muzaffarabad was struck by an earthquake, in which 150,000 people, including 28 members of her extended family, were killed. Fozia was dug out of the debris. Nawaz was in one of the volunteer team rescue teams, working alongside the Red Cross and UNICEF. They fell in love across the religious divide. Their love match was furiously opposed by Fozia’s family, one of the most powerful Syed families in Muzaffarabad. If a suitable match of her own age cannot be arranged, a Syed girl is expected to remain unmarried or marry an already married or widowed man. For Fozia’s family , family honour counts for more than anything in the world. In 1992 her cousin, Rehana, was killed by her family, as was the outsider boy she eloped with, with the police watching.

Rest the rest here on ipetitions and please take action.

HELP: Forced marriage campaign – ‘Because I am a Girl’

forced marriagePlan UK’s “Because I am a girl campaign”, by Josephine Tsui // 30 June 2011, 11:06

The charity Plan UK would like your support for the ‘Because I Am A Girl Campaign’ being launched asking the UK public and government to #TaketheVOW by signing an online petition to end early and forced marriage.

You might have already heard about the campaign (which went live yesterday) as The Guardian very recently published a story on it, “10 million child brides each year, charity warns: UK must help to cut level of forced marriages for girls under 18” (25/06/11).

Plan UK wants to inform you of the launch because the campaign will have more impact with the support of influential feminist bloggers like yourself. We hope that the issue of early and forced marriage is of interest to you and your followers and that you will back our campaign.

Lend your voice through a quick and simple action of ‘taking the vow’ today, in support of raising the voices of the millions of girls married young, against their will in the developing world.

One girl is married off every three-and-a-half seconds worldwide. We think forcing girls to marry young is wrong. Please help put a stop to this.

Help us spread the word about our #TaketheVOW action on Twitter – we’re hoping you take your vow before millions of girls in the developing world are forced to take theirs.

** Take your vow at http://www.plan-uk.org/what-we-do/campaigns/because-i-am-a-girl/vow
** Please use our Twibbon, Facebook and blog badges to show your support!
** Use #takethevow to tell friends about the vow and urge them to take theirs!