The National Committee for UNIFEM in Australia

Promotes women's human rights, political participation and economic security

UNIFEM Australia Programmes

Peace Scholarships

UNIFEM Australia works with the IDP Peace Scholarship Trust of IDP Education to provide opportunities for young women to study at Australian Universities who have already contributed to peace and gender equality in their own country, and who have pledged to continue that commitment on their return.

The programme is supported by our Spring Walks campaign.

We have sponsored several students from the Pacific who have studied a wide range of subjects and attended various universities throughout Australia. We have also sponsored five law students from Afghanistan, including three students currently studying in Sydney.

Meet our Current Peace Scholars

Zohra Askeer
Studying Masters of Law

Talking about a post conflicted society such as Afghanistan and living in it is challengeable, dangerous and unsafe. Since I was born in Afghanistan I have just heard about political war, poverty, homicide of poor people, physical and mental hardship, violation against women and towards children, sexual harassment, forced marriages and many more issues.

This had a really strong effect on me, and after I graduated from school, I was thinking what will be the key skills that would enable me to defend the rights of my people and women rights, those key skills were Law and Political Science.

I hope that one day that I overcome all these challenges and see the women of my country in a good position and an end to all violence against the women and a realization that women are an important part of this world and they must be respected.

Haseena Askeer

Studing Masters of Law

I was born in the capital city of Afghanistan in 1984. From that time I have just heard about war and I was witness to the unstable and critical situation of Afghanistan. Although I grew up with all these difficulties, when I was 11 years old I left Afghanistan and migrated to Pakistan together with my family. During my staying in Pakistan I realized that I should do something for the underprivileged people of Afghanistan, a better way to put my inspiration and thoughts into

actuality was by choosing to study Law and Political Science.

One of my aspirations for the future is to build a strong women’s network; and this network will enable us to demonstrate for the women of Afghanistan for access to their essential rights, especially those who are still suffering of injustices through their communities such as honor killing, domestic violence, forced and under age

marriages, physical and mental hardship, sexual harassment, death immolation and suicides.

Shahrnaz Rafi
Studying Masters of Law

I am a graduate of the Law and Political Sciences Faculty of the Kabul University. I was born in 1983 in capital city of Afghanistan, which is known as a war torn or post-conflict country among the developing Asian nations, one that is still suffering a fragile security situation in addition to three decades of civil conflicts. I have experienced continuous conflicts in my country and have witnessed my people
suffering from losing a member of their family, starvation, disabilities, migration, basic rights abuse, killing, violence, ignorance, illiteracy.

I migrated to Pakistan for 7 years mostly during the dark years of the Taliban Regime with my family. There I had the chance to continue my basic education contrary to the majority of Afghan girls in my country, which faced forced postponement or various other reasons for not being able to be educated. While returning back to Afghanistan I got the chance to work with various International and
National Organizations. I wish for a stable peace and security for my country and considering the effects of conflict on my people I want to offer my best possible supports for them. I got the very rare opportunity to study in Australia (which I am very thankful to UNIFEM Australia and IDP) and will return as a Master of Law to my
country. This will make me able to find possible ways of implementing my Community Projects targeting Orphans, girl’s education sector and women’s economical independence projects.

We would like to thank ACL, a leading Australian provider of academic English preparation programs, whom generously provided a Full Time 13 week English Language Course to support one of the 2008 Peace Scholarship students from Afghanistan.

Previous Peace Scholars
As a result of the Peace Scholarship Programme many of these women have returned to their communities and continued their commitment to promoting women's rights and improving the lives of women in their communities.

Nasima Rahmani is one such young woman. After her Peace Scholarship, Nasima has returned to her community working for ActionAid in Afghanistan as the Women's Rights Coordinator.

Recently Nasima visited ActionAid in Italy and spoke at several high level events across the country to raise awareness of the issue of Violence against Women both in Italy and Afghanistan.

UNIFEM Australia is extremely proud of the work Nasima is doing in Afghanistan and believes that many other young women through the Peace Scholarship Programme will be able to contribute towards the empowerment of women in their communities.

If you like to make a donation to our Peace Scholarship and continue to empower women across the world, please click here.

Timor-Leste - Rural Women’s Leadership and Participation in Nation Building

Our 2008 IWD Fundraising will be directed to a Programme for Enhancing Rural Women’s Leadership and Participation in Nation Building in Timor-Leste (PERWL). Over the last several years, UNIFEM trained 1265 potential women candidates across 13 districts to stand in council elections in Timor-Leste. Altogether 1300 women were in fact elected. Funds raised by UNIFEM Australia at 2008 IWD events will support a pilot project in three districts to build the capacity of these women to be effective leaders in their districts and support them in their roles as councilors. This training will include leadership training, gender awareness, formulating gender sensitive policies, gender budgets, accountability to constituencies, as well as public speaking.

Bicycles for Democracy

Bicycles for Democracy supports women elected to local and state government in Cambodia primarily aimed at building stronger partnerships between elected women and their constituencies in rural Cambodia.

The project is also designed to support worldwide gender equity through local governments, to nourish local democratic processes that recognise social inclusion and citizens rights to participation and to nurture the quality and legitimacy of women's decision making in that process.

Since 1992 over 5000 women have received training in the skills needed to run for election and to govern once elected to local or state government in Cambodia. Nanda travels across the country every week mentoring elected women in the sorts of problems they encounter and the decisions needed to resolve them for their local communes. Many of these women live and work in remote, rural communities and their constituents are spread quite far apart so getting to visit them is often challenging and time consuming.

There is a huge need for these bicycles to help increase the participation of women in local government which in turn improves gender equity, decision making for communities and democratic governance through peaceful means.

Your one-off donation of $A80.00 will purchase one bicycle for an elected woman in Cambodia and help make her job representing her community so much easier to do.

Lao Women's Economic Empowerment through the Handcrafted Textile Industry

Camilla Franks "Women of the World" Book released in 2007 has raised over $60,000 which has been donated to a Laos project focussing on Women's Economic Empowerment through the Handcrafted Textile Industry.

The projects aim is to increase the economic security of women and men in the Lao village of Paktheap and therefore have a postive impact on the village as a whole.

Camilla described her reason for becoming involved "as a woman, I was inspired by the work UNIFEM do to grant women freedom around the world. As someone whose label is dedicated to the celebration of women, it was important for me to lend a voice to the many whispers of women who are denied their basic rights and privileges".

There have already been significant differences as a result of the program and Camilla's donation will build on these, for example:

the average annual income has increased from US$70 in 2006 to US$203
improvements to the monthly income from US$22 to $US190-220
increased school attendence for the children of project participants
Increase in visitors to the village

The project will continue to focus on fine tuning and enhacing the skills of the community, especially women to a higher level in order to ensure long-term benefits of the project.

If you would like to purchase a copy of the book please call the National Office at admin@unifem.org.au or call (02) 6285 8254.

Projects Funded in 2007

Capacity Building for EVAW organisations in the Pacific

As a result of a successul International Women's Day in 2007, UNIFEM Australia was able to funded the Capacity Building for Ending Violence Against Women project in the Pacific.

UNIFEM Pacific organized two capacity building workshops in proposal writing in the Pacific, to assist organisations working to eliminate violence against women (VAW), to further develop innovative and cutting-edge proposals in a form that they may be submitted in future to, and considered by, appropriate funding donors.

The first workshop, held in Port Moresby, saw 14 PNG organisations participate in in-depth and inter-active training over a period of 8 days. Independent consultant, Dr Juliet Hunt, assisted organisations to develop a common underlying approach to projects ending VAW, at all levels and in many different sectors of PNG.

Participant organisations, now able to complete a gender analysis of the problem of VAW, are reviewing, rewriting and representing their important proposals to other donors in PNG. The PNG training session were extremely timely with the recent expressions by the PNG Prime Minister, Mr Michael Somare, of his commitment to the elimination of VAW in PNG.

The Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre, ran its second capacity building workshop for Pacific organisations in Suva from 7-15 February 2008.

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