Press and Publications

Huddled around solar-powered radios, generations of Miskito women in Nicaragua tune in almost daily to the first and only radio station dedicated to women's rights in their native language. Airing from dawn till dusk six days a week along the country's impoverished north Atlantic Coast, the radio station is being hailed by U.N. Women and campaigners as a key way to reach remote indigenous communities plagued by violence against women and girls.

Indigenous women climate defenders from around the globe are taking a stand for climate justice and women’s rights at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) this week in New York. 

“It makes us happy that we hear the men from our communities are listening to the radio and saying ‘no more violence’ and acknowledging that women have rights.” This is how Luisa Ruiz* described the change brought to her community by the “Voices of the Women of Wangki Tangni” project, which established the first radio station to focus on women’s rights in the North Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua.

While Amir Ashour was growing up in Iraq in the early 2000s, he knew homosexuality existed but he didn’t know much else about it. “Aside from my personal feelings wondering ‘why am I attracted to this person?’ when I was 10 or 11, I had my first experience when I was 16 or 17,” he said recently.

Executive Director, Yifat Susskind, reflects on the late Michael Ratner, a MADRE friend and supporter. 

A young woman named Nehad recently shared her story about being kidnapped along with 27 other members of her family by the terror group ISIS. After being subjected to rape and torture, the 17-year-old managed to escape, and shared how she's coping.

The ravages of Syria's civil war include an increase in women who are having abortions and suffering injuries consistent with rape, a top United Nations official said this week. 

MADRE communications director Diana Duarte on the work being done by the organisation alongside partner groups working in conflict areas.

Jillian Schwedler spoke with Yifat Susskind on October 28, 2015, the week after Yanar Mohammed, head of MADRE’s partner group the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), testified before the UN Security Council about women’s vital role in sustainable peacebuilding and about the task of sheltering women fleeing sexual violence, including from areas controlled by ISIS.

Mohammed is the president of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, a Baghdad-based NGO. Since 2003, OWFI has used an underground network of shelters in secret locations across the country, to help hide and protect women from traffickers and domestic violence.

Yanar Mohammed, a women's rights advocate in Iraq, is known for the "underground railroad" of shelters she runs for women escaping ISIS. After a year of struggling to keep the shelters open and safe from police and government officials, who treat these shelters as illegal, Mohammed is now pressing the international community to also take action against the violence faced by women in her country.

Yanar Mohammed, an Iraqi activist who founded an underground network of safehouses for women trying to escape violence, announced Wednesday that she plans to testify before the council on Oct. 13 about how Iraq’s ban on shelters of this type puts women and girls in danger.