Beyond Equality: A Manual for Human Rights Defenders

by Mahnaz Afkhami, Ann Eisenberg (contributor)

A quick review of recent news headlines reveals the world’s growing detachment from finding solutions to human rights issues and, increasingly, shows that states are using human rights as a political bludgeon to chastise their opponents. The result is that where once human rights served as a near- universal benchmark for social progress, today their value and relevance is frequently challenged by young idealists and old tyrants alike.

Since 9/11, human rights have been marginalized at multiple levels of governance, from local to global. The trend toward more robust language and policies grounded in the human rights framework has given way to an international emphasis on promoting democracy as an end in itself. Security has become the counterpoint to freedom, with the former supplanting the latter in the unbounded “war on terror.” And to some extent, the terrorists are winning, in as much as they have convinced millions that their atavistic, tyrannical, and violent regimes are expressions of devout religion. More than a decade later, we are witnessing the harm caused by excessive security measures, such as the U.S.’s Patriot Act, to combat violent extremism that poses as religious orthodoxy.

In conversations over the past few years, WLP’s partners and colleagues have expressed their deep dismay over the global human rights situation and the air of helplessness in the human rights advocacy community. Today, there is a great need to revisit the fundamentals of universal human rights and examine what answers they provide to the rapidly evolving technological, political, and economic conditions around the world.

This manual is meant to serve as a tool for reigniting conversations about the relevance of human rights to the struggle for women’s freedom and advancement. We hope it will introduce new generations of activists to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights mechanisms. For those already well acquainted with international human rights law, the manual’s workshop sessions can provide a forum for frank conversation about the contradictions and conflicts that arise in promoting human rights and can help advocates develop new strategies for addressing them.

190 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2015

About the author

Mahnaz Afkhami is Founder and President of Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP), and Executive Director of Foundation for Iranian Studies both based in Bethesda, Maryland. She was born in Iran, spent her teen years and early adulthood in the U.S. and returned to Iran at age 27 to teach English Literature. She later became the first and only Minister for Women’s Affairs in Iran. She was exiled in the U.S. while on official business with the UN in New York during the Iranian Revolution. Afkhami is currently in the midst of writing a new book on the history of the women's human rights movement from a unique "South-South" pov.

Mahnaz’s leadership in the non-governmental, academic, governmental, international, and activist spheres has helped enable women in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia to make choices that impact their own lives and the lives of their families and communities.

She has authored and co-edited numerous publications, among them Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation (Syracuse, 1997), Faith and Freedom: Women's Human Rights in the Muslim World (Syracuse, 1995), In the Eye of the Storm: Women in Postrevolutionary Iran (Syracuse, 1994), Women in Exile (University of Virginia, 1994), and Women and the Law in Iran (1993). Among the training manuals she has co-authored are Claiming Our Rights: A Manual for Women's Human Rights Education in Muslim Societies (1996), Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women (WLP, 2001), and Leading to Action: A Political Participation Handbook for Women (WLP, 2010), and Victories Over Violence: Ensuring Safety for Women and Girls A Practitioner’s Manual (WLP, 2012).

Afkhami has appeared on the BBC, CNN, and PBS and in numerous television and radio interviews on NPR, BBC Persian, VOA Persian and other international outlets.

Mahnaz currently resides in Maryland, USA with her husband Gholam Reza Afkhami. She has a son, Asef Babak Afkhami, and two grandchildren.