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Conference examines war’s impact on women

Fariba Nawa

The third annual Dialogue on Violence Against Women will focus on the embattled countries of Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon and specifically the impact of war and violence on women in those areas. The conference, titled “War, Women and Violence: Perspectives on Recent Events in the Middle East,” will be held on Saturday, Oct. 7 from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the University Union Redwood Room on the Sacramento State campus. The conference is open to the public. The registration cost is $30 for general admission and $15 for students.

“It’s important to focus on women and children in war-torn areas, because quite often they get lost in the rhetoric of politics,” explains Jessica Heskin, conference organizer and educator at Sacramento State’s Women’s Resource Center, which is sponsoring the event. “The news has focused on male prisoners who were tortured in Abu Ghraib, while tortured female prisoners were ignored by the press. Only three women were nominated to the interim Iraqi Governing Council, one of whom was murdered. In Afghanistan, a girls’ school is bombed or a teacher is murdered every day. The list goes on and on. These issues need to be addressed.”

Featured speaker Fariba Nawa, an Afghan-American journalist living in Afghanistan, will discuss topics such as the drug trade and reconstruction in Afghanistan, post-Saddam Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan. An award-winning journalist, Nawa’s work has appeared in the Sunday Times of London, Newsday, Mother Jones, The Village Voice, The Christian Science Monitor and other publications, and her essays have been published in two books, March to War and Women for Afghan Women.

Other sessions will cover the escalating hostilities between Lebanon and Israel and the challenges healthcare professionals face in Iraq, as well as an open forum on the Gaza situation.

Scholarships for the event are available to students. For more information, and to register for the event, contact the Sacramento State Women’s Resource Center at 278-7388 or visit www.csus.edu/wrc.