Nobel Women’s Initiative blog

by Roja Bandari, NWI rapporteur, PhD student in electrical engineering

Getting up wasn’t so easy this morning and my jetlag has been so hard to shake off. I got a cab to get to the conference this morning and had another good conversation with my driver. The Irish are really nice people! It is in the culture of taxi drivers in this region to entertain you with the most friendly conversations the whole way they drive. The B&B that Rebecca and I are staying at is also very cute and feels like home. I will definitely have to come back here with my husband as tourists!

Today was another amazing day at the conference. Women from Northern Ireland have achieved monumental success in ending a terrible conflict and have great insight and experience which must be utilized in dealing with similar situations especially the Palestine-Israel conflict. At the workshop titled “Challenging Fundamentalisms” we had a great conversation at our table with Iranian, Palestinian, Croatian, Syrian and Irish activists. I learned about Croatian women challenging Christian fundamentalisms in their country and also realized that collaboration among women from countries in the region who share some similar obstacles in women’s rights such as Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan, Kosovo, Iraq and Syria is a great opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.

The stories of Robi Damelin and Nadwa Sarandah from the Parents Circle-Bereaved Families Forum, who had all lost someone dear to them but were taking steps toward peace, made me cry but also showed me how we should never simplify the issue and take out the human factor.

In the end of the day, we watched a video on the Iranian women’s campaign for equality (the One Million Signatures Campaign). There were explanations given by Dr. Tohidi and Dr. Ebadi and questions asked about the forms of international support that are suitable. As supporters of this campaign in the US, a group of university students and I had been struggling for the past few months to contact someone from the NPR (national public radio) and ask them to include a report about the campaign but it is very difficult to find any contacts. I brought up this issue in the session and to my delight, Jody Williams immediately suggested that she would contact them so me and her can have an interview about the campaign. That was one of the highlights of this conference for me.