Discovering MENA and other thoughts

A score of inspectors sent by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the brand new winner of the Nobel peace price founded in 1997 and based in The Hague, arrived three weeks ago to Syria to check the status of the country's controversial chemical arsenal. The team was part of an advance party, sent out to hold talks with the Syrian authorities and smooth the way for the destruction process to begin. Once the list of facilities, lethal substances and weapons was finalized, a second group of experts travelled to Damascus to proceed to their elimination. According to the terms agreed upon by Russia and the United States later ratified by a key UN resolution passed unanimously, Syria's chemical weapons mixing and filling equipment must be destroyed by 1 November. According to the initial ambitious timetable last week , In the first half of 2014 all of them will have to disappear.

No es un secreto que la vida de las mujeres en Egipto no es siempre fácil. La mayoría de las veces ignorado por las autoridades y los políticos, cualquiera que sea la bandera que éstos ondeen, el acoso sexual es sin lugar a dudas uno de los problemas más graves a los que se enfrenta el país hoy en día. Un problema cuyas raíces son múltiples y resultan todavía difíciles de determinar con exactitud, pero que durante años ha representado al mismo tiempo un tabú y una epidemia para la sociedad egipcia. Un problema sobre el que que algunas valerosas organizaciones como  Tahrir Bodyguard  u  Operation Anti-sexual Harrasment/Assault  han estado intentando concienciar a la población egipcia lo largo de los años, pero que fue descubierto por Occidente únicamente tras la Revolución 25 de enero de 2011. Fue precisamente la película de la que hoy hablamos la que también ayudó a gente de todo el mundo a entender la gravedad de este flagelo.

Ursula Lindsey spoke to a d emocracy and human rights activist who affirmed that "the situation is the worst it’s been since the 1990s”.

It is not a secret that life for women in Egypt is not always easy. Most of the times ignored by authorities and politicians, whichever their background, sexual harassment is beyond doubt one of the most serious problems the country faces nowadays. A problem whose roots are difficult to determine, but which has for years represented both a taboo and a gangrenous wound for Egyptian society. An issue that many remarkable organizations such as Tahrir Bodyguard or Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault have been raising awareness about for years, but that has only been really discovered by the West after the 25 January Revolution. It was precisely a film that also people around the world to understand the gravity of this scourge.