Saturday, March 14, 2009

Iraqi Women's Ministry to Rely on Volunteers?

This seems like a classic good news bad news story: The good news is that the Minister of Women's Affairs will return to work, having withdrawn her very principled resignation based on the failure of the government to provide the necessary resources to meet the mandate of the office. So, you assume that the problem has been resolved? Yes and no. Yes the resources have been found. But, the bad news is that rather than the government committing national resources and prioritizing women's issues (yes, more than half of their constituency!), the resources are in the form of foreign aid organization pledges and 50 IRAQI WOMEN VOLUNTEERS. Isn't enough that women are volunteering in their community each and every day to solve the community problems.... now they have to volunteer at the Women's Ministry?!

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