Women’s Struggle for Freedom in Iraq

Thursday 02 June 2005

Thursday 02 June 2005

5.30pm

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Seminar Room 1- Institute of Governance- 63 University Road- QUB

Free

Houzan Mahmoud is a leading Iraqi women's rights activist. She is the UK representative of the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, a co-founder of the Iraqi Women’s Rights Coalition, a representative for Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq and editor of Equal Rights Now! newspaper.

Houzan Mahmoud was born in 1973 in Iraq. She fled Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime and currently lives in London, where she is studying and where she was prominent in speaking out against the Iraq war.

She has been critical of the US-led occupation and the interim Iraqi Government and now campaigns against discrimination and violence against women in Iraq and for the creation of a new secular and equal Iraq. She recently helped found the trade union-backed Iraqi Freedom Congress (IFC) “to free Iraq from occupation and provide an egalitarian secular alternative.”

Through her writings, seminars and campaigns Houzan has helped make the voices of Iraqi women heard all over the world and is a significant and articulate human rights defender. She speaks as part of Amnesty International’s Stop Violence Against Women global campaign.