Advocacy and Lobbying

Megumi Kaneko stood on a podium in front of a poster of herself and dissolved into tears as she urged the mostly-male audience to pick her in this weekend’s Japanese election.

Women have complained about the recent primaries carried out by different political parties in the country saying they did not favour them and they were also cowed and forced into submission to the men.

Najiba Ahmadi is quiet and unassuming – mild-mannered even. She is far from your typical revolutionary. Last week, Ms Ahmadi was among the suited government officials gathered in Britain to discuss Afghanistan’s future.

For the past five years she has been working to improve the lives of women and girls. The 32-year-old runs a shelter in Bamyan province where she offers legal advice.

Photo-Toan Trinh

In a perfect world, there would be no need for a media platform highlighting groundbreaking women in history. But if history has taught us anything, it's that female achievements are often forgotten or filtered out. Female journalists, spies, investigators, pilots, soldiers, and even cinematic pioneers are only now being rediscovered and added back into the historical narratives where they always belonged.

Eight weeks from Election Day, the heads of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee view the battle for the Senate through very different prisms -- though they share some of the same views on how the midterms are shaking out.

We invite our users to read the full article published September 10 2014 

Wai Wai Nu is a diminutive 27-year-old with pro-democracy activism in her genes and a quarter of her young life spent behind bars.

The former political prisoner is now working to end the persecution faced by her people, the stateless Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar.

The mistreatment she and her family have suffered is just one example among many of abuse aimed at the Rohingya, a minority of around 1.33 million living mainly in Rakhine State. Most are denied citizenship despite having lived in Myanmar for generations.

Photo-Al Jazeera

After years of activism, Amal Basha's demands for guarantees of greater representation for women in the political system has finally edged closer to reality.

"Women have been fighting for it for a long time," said the prominent Yemeni human rights advocate, referring to the more than decade-long battle she and others have waged to secure women representation in public office in Yemen.