Unicef's Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa urges authorities to pass and implement laws setting 'reasonable minimum age' for marriage.

The United Nations Children's Fund, known as Unicef, said it was "dismayed" by the death of a 12-year-old Yemeni girl, who died three days after being married, and urged the country to take steps to protect child brides.

"The death of Elham Mahdi Al Assi from internal bleeding following intercourse, three days after she was married off to a man at least twice her age, is a painful reminder of the risks girls face when they are married too soon," Sigrid Kaag, Unicef's Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in an emailed statement.

One out of three girls in Yemen is married before they turn 18, she said, urging authorities to pass and implement laws setting a "reasonable minimum age" for marriage in order to comply with the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which requires consent to marriage to be free and full.

Child marriages are widespread in Yemen, the poorest Arab nation, and were highlighted by the case of another Yemeni child bride, Nujood Ali, who was married off by her parents and then went to court and managed to get a divorce.

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Gulf News

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In a sharp reversal, more young women are now embracing online communities than their male counterparts, a new study says.

By contrast, men are showing some signs of “networking fatigue,” with fewer men saying that their online communities are as important as their offline equivalents.

The shift in attitudes between the two sexes has taken place over just a couple of years.

Researchers at the University of Southern California are reporting this week that 67 per cent of women under 40 said they feel as strongly about their Internet communities as their offline ones, while only 38 per cent of men said the same.

In 2007, the numbers were just the reverse, with 69 per cent of the men and 35 per cent of the women feeling that way.

Internet communities don't just mean social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, but include online gathering sites focused on hobbies, politics or spirituality.

Michael Gilbert, senior fellow at USC's Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, said women tend to adopt new technologies more slowly than men, but once they do, they catch up and often surpass men in their enthusiasm.

Men made up the bulk of the shoppers who lined up Saturday to get their hands on Apple's new iPad in many cities including Seattle and New York, but that doesn't mean that gender disparity is permanent.

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The Globe & Mail

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It’s mid-morning at the Madinat Jumeirah, a luxury resort in Dubai. Dozens of well-dressed women sit on white couches, waiting. They include artists, gallerists, auction-house directors and local collectors, most of them princesses or wives of the well-off. They’ve been waiting an hour. Suddenly, 20 or so women, dressed in traditional Islamic abayas, enter the room and move through the crowd like black smoke. Her Highness Sheikha Manal, daughter of Dubai’s ruler, has arrived.

This is Ladies Day at Art Dubai, the biggest contemporary art fair in the Middle East. Sheikha Manal has come to attend talks by Judith Greer, an American collector, and Venetia Porter, a curator of Islamic art for the British Museum. The fair itself hasn't yet opened, but a select group of women is always given a chance to preview and learn about the art on their own, without men. In a culture notoriously dismissive of women, one could easily assume Ladies Day to be a sideshow. But that would be wrong.

Connoisseurs from the west generally consider the art market in the Gulf underdeveloped. Compared to other emerging markets, such as India and China, there are few collectors, and museums, galleries and exhibitions are thin on the ground. But a cadre of women, both at the royal and grassroots levels, is leading the effort to bring the Arab art market into the mainstream.

Sheikha Manal and her sister, Sheikha Latifa, also at Ladies Day, are among a handful of royal women at the vanguard of this push. Working independently, the two have established artist studios, an exchange programme with foreign art fairs, and awards for young Emirati artists. Nearby in Abu Dhabi, the oil-soaked capital of the Emirates where both the Guggenheim and the Louvre are building affiliate museums, Sheikha Salama and her daughter, Sheikha Mariam, have created a series of seminars and activities to teach locals about art and culture.

Sharjah, home of the region’s largest art exhibition (the Sharjah Biennial, which, incidentally, is directed by another princess, Sheikha Hoor) boasts similar projects, such as an arts management training programme for local Emiratis. In the four years this programme has been running, half of the 520 staff members are women, as well as 12 of the 14 curators.

The UAE is not, however, the foregone capital of art in the Middle East, or even of the Gulf states. It is also not the only country in the region where women are taking leading roles in the art world. Qatar’s Sheikha Al Mayassa, the daughter of the Emir, runs the Qatar Museums Authority. Her latest project is launching Qatar’s Museum of Modern Arab Art, a collection of more than 6,000 pieces. Kuwait’s Sheikha Lulu Al Sabah in February held her country’s first-ever contemporary art auction. “Especially in the Middle East, having a title can be very helpful,” says Libya’s Princess Alia al-Senussi, who sits on the board of Art Dubai, in a bit of an understatement.

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The Economist
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The Farjam Collection

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Her Majesty Queen Rania sits down with CNN's Richard Quest at the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss how education benefits businesses.



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Saudi poet Hessa Hilal lashed out at hard-line clerics' religious edicts in verse on live TV at a popular Arabic version of "American Idol."

It was a startling voice of protest at a startling venue. Covered head-to-toe in black, a Saudi woman lashed out at hard-line Muslim clerics' harsh religious edicts in verse on live TV at a popular Arabic version of "American Idol."

Well, not quite "American Idol": Contestants compete not in singing but in traditional Arabic poetry. Over the past episodes, poets sitting on an elaborate stage before a live audience have recited odes to the beauty of Bedouin life and the glories of their rulers or mourning the gap between rich and poor.

Then last week, Hessa Hilal, only her eyes visible through her veil, delivered a blistering poem against Muslim preachers "who sit in the position of power" but are "frightening" people with their fatwas, or religious edicts, and "preying like a wolf" on those seeking peace.

Her poem got loud cheers from the audience and won her a place in the competition's finals, to be aired on Wednesday.

It also brought her death threats, posted on several Islamic militant web sites.
Hessa shrugs off the controversy.

"My poetry has always been provocative," she told The Associated Press in an interview. "It's a way to express myself and give voice to Arab women, silenced by those who have hijacked our culture and our religion."

Her poem was seen as a response to Shaikh Abdul Rahman Al Barrak, a prominent cleric in Saudi Arabia who recently issued a fatwa saying those who call for the mingling of men and women should be considered infidels, punishable by death.

But more broadly, it was seen as addressing any of many hard-line clerics in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the region who hold a wide influence through television programmes, university positions or web sites.

"Killing a human being is so easy for them, it is always an option," she told the AP.
Poetry holds a prominent place in Arab culture, and some poets in the Middle East have a fan base akin to those of rock stars.

The programme, The Million's Poet, is a chance for poets to show off their original work, airing live weekly on satellite television across the Arab world from Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. Contestants are graded on voice and style of recitation, but also on their subject matter, said Sultan Al Amimi, one of the three judges on the show and a manager of Abu Dhabi's Poetry Academy.

Hilal's 15-verse poem was in a form known as Nabati, native to nomadic tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. She criticised extremism that she told AP is "creeping into our society" through fatwas.

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Gulf News
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