• Egyptian Women. Photograph by Joseph Mayton and courtesy of Bikyamasr.com. •

“I don’t have full normal movement in my arm, even after three and half years since the fight,” says Marwa. “I still don’t speak to my family, with the exception of my mother, and till this day he never apologized.”

Marwa, an educated middleclass woman, decided to press charges against her brother. Her decision lost her the family’s compassion and made her an outcaste. She had to drop the charges and move out of the family home.

According to the 2001 government conducted survey Egypt: Abused Women Reluctant to Come Forward, 96 percent of women reported their spouse had beaten them at least once. Shockingly, the majority of the women survivors believe that their husbands had “the right” to beat them if they were disobedient or disrespectful.

“We all have family members, friends or acquaintances who have been hit by a father, a brother, or if married, by a husband,” says Kamlah M. Salah, a human rights activist. “Women suffer domestic violence in Egypt. It is not a secret. What is shocking is how tolerant we are towards it.”

Impoverished less-educated women, who are forced to wed at a much younger age than their urban counterparts, are more likely to experience spousal violence. Studies found that gender-based violence is far more widespread among these women. However this is not the rule. Fourteen percent of women who passed junior high said their partner battered them.

According to a 2009 survey by the El Nadim Center for the Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, conducted on 1,264 women from around the country, 43 percent of women had been beaten by a relative or a spouse and 43 percent had been subjected to verbal and psychological violence and intimidation. Another survey, by the deposed National Women Council of the same year, found an even higher number. Almost 63 percent of the women survivors were battered by a spouse or a relative. What is more shocking is that the survey found four out of five men openly and shamelessly admitted to using violence toward their spouse or a close female family member.

Women rarely report incidents of violence to the police and hospitals. Obliged by the law to conduct an injury report, they often lessen and soften the gravity of the damage inflected on the woman.

Why is it that in a society that considers beating women a taboo, with men flaunting proudly that they “would never lay a finger on a woman,” it is widely accepted and regularly practiced behind closed doors? Men, who admit to using force against their wives or relatives, see it differently. They call it discipline. They see it as granted right to “correct” women’s behavior. When a woman attempts to report an incident of violence committed against her by a relative or a souse, the police treat it very lightly.

According to Magda Adly, director of al-Nadim center, “Police officers and hospitals are accomplices in downplaying incidents of violence against women.” She adds, “Doctors refuse to conduct a full report on time and police attempt to turn it into a family matter that should be resolved internally.” That is why if a woman is being hit in public and someone tries to intervene, the magic words are “she is my sister/wife,” and good Samaritans keep on walking and police turn their head the other way.

Joe, a 28-year-old journalist based in Cairo, recalls a violent encounter. “I saw a young man slapping a woman repeatedly in City Stars mall. I had to intervene and stop the beating. The woman was trying to get away, covering her head and as I approached he stopped to tell me off and said, “‘She is my sister, it is none of your business.’ The beating stopped and they left.”

In 1996, the World Health Assembly declared violence against women to be a major public health problem that urgently needed to be addressed by governments and health organizations. The Egyptian Penal Code (band number 58 of the year 1937) defines any attack on women as crimes. Yet only violence that takes place in public places is punishable by law. Indoor and private violence by a husband or a male relative is considered a family business that should be resolved inside the family home.

Hence, the El Nadim Center drafted a law to criminalize domestic violence, bringing a sliver of hope to battered and abused women. The draft that was put on their website for others to sign and support reads: “This draft law targets the mobilization of societal participation against the phenomenon of domestic violence, break its infernal cycle and save victims crushed by this cycle.”

The draft continues, “Tolerating, justifying, and condoning domestic violence has not stopped at the level of legal denial of incriminating the act, but was also coupled with the standpoint of state institutions and an unsympathetic, indifferent and unsupportive – if not hostile – society toward women victims of violence. Police stations often take a biased attitude against women if they ever attempt to file a complaint regarding the incident of violence. Doctors in hospitals commonly tend to mitigate the effects resulting from violence because – by virtue of their culture and pre-bias- they do not wish to take any measure that would destroy the household.”

Adly explains that the law was in the lower house of parliament in 2010 and was accepted and almost passed when the uprising and mass protests against the regime broke out. The parliament was dissolved and the draft was void.

Although the Egyptian revolution has delivered great hope to many who lacked it, most notably women, very little has changed in their favor. The way that society looks upon women as a second degree individual has not changed - families still favor boys over girls, mothers prefer bringing up a boy over a girl, and girls get roughed up more often. In fact, in post-Mubarak Egypt, women have already lost many granted rights and it seems that we are going back to the starting line.

So, the El Nadim Center is starting all over again. New aspects, like marital rape, that are expected to raise a few eyebrows, have been introduced. The law states a penalty of three to seven years with hard labor for rape of a person, male or female. But marital rape has not even been heard of in Egyptian society.

“No woman will dare go to a police station and report that her husband raped her,” explains Salah. “This is a very sensitive issue as men, and most women, believe that husbands have the right to access their wives bodies at all times, hence the term rape is rejected.”

For Sally al-Hak, media director of the independent Egyptian Women Union, “As a woman, it breaks my heart when I see females get oppressed and beaten and the worse that they don't even know their rights.”

She adds that as a feminist, “I believe that we can do something to stop these crimes through raising awareness on how violence influences the females' psychology and activity, and also, what the state looses…Violence toward women in Egypt cost the state 147 billion in the last 50 years.”

For Marwa, she hopes that she will never have to face a similar situation again, and even though her family ties are partially broken, she says she has formed her own family with loving, protecting friends. “I have to relive the beating every time I try to move my arm, but I have forgiven him. I only wish he understands the ramifications of his action.”

*real name has been changed

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About the Author:
Manar Ammar is an Egyptian journalist who was born and raised in Cairo. Her work has appeared in the Daily News Egypt, All Headline News (AHN), Al Helwa Weekly, Women News Network (WNN) and Bikya Masr. Manar's writing and reporting focuses on politics and women's issues in the MENA region.

Recently I partnered with a colleague from OneChild, a children’s rights organization, to travel throughout Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand for several weeks to investigate prevalent social issues affecting children and youth in the region. Such issues include child sex tourism, absolute poverty, largely inaccessible primary and elementary education, and health problems arising from large populations inhabiting informal housing districts. In order to gain the most from our exposure trip, we partnered alongside a number of hosting organizations.

One similarity among the varied hosting organizations was the implementation of “advocacy tours.” Geared towards both foreign tourists and wealthier local citizens, advocacy tours (sometimes referred to as “poverty tours” or “poverty tourism”) provide opportunities for participants to understand a variety of social and economic issues common in the Global South.

While my purpose is not to argue that the NGOs or companies that implement advocacy tours uphold purely capitalist intentions, it is important to think critically about how such tours fall short of promoting sustainable development practices. First, however, I would like to describe the contributions that advocacy tours have the potential to make.

Advocacy tours can play important roles in stimulating local job creation, generating funds to help marginalized populations, and drawing attention to pertinent social issues.

In terms of job creation, NGOs and the tourism companies require human personnel to carry out the research and development components of the tours. Advocacy tours require the services of drivers, tour guides, and translators. Indirectly, advocacy tours have the potential to create the demand for products for tourists to buy, such as handicrafts and jewelry, created and sold by resourceful local entrepreneurs.

By local standards, advocacy tours are rather expensive. Riverkids, a non-profit organization in Phnom Penh, Cambodia charges each participant 80 USD for a full-day tour. Revenue from the tours, including the ones implemented by Riverkids, not only support local job creation, but also channel into projects established to support the marginalized individuals who are put on display during the tours. These projects include vocational training and education programs and rehabilitation centers. For example, the Brazilian company Favela Tours regularly donates money to Para Ti, a non-profit organization that helps socioeconomically disadvantaged children and youth who live in the favelas (“slums”) of Rio de Janeiro.

In addition to revenue coming in from the sales of advocacy walks, participants often also donate directly to the hosting NGO. Florence Chea, Volunteer and Project Manager of Riverkids Cambodia, tells me, “While we don’t have a percentile breakdown of how much money comes from donor participants, I can tell you that more than a third of those who join our advocacy tours do provide Riverkids with additional financial support. This money really helps us carry out our important work to help empower child labourers by enabling them to attend school programs.”

• Photograph of an elderly woman taken on the island of Don Det in Laos, close to the border of Cambodia. Photograph courtesy of Erik Putz •

Vancouverite Jessica Flerver tells me, “I traveled to Mumbai in 2011 with a group of friends just for a fun cultural experience. One afternoon we decided to participate in a tour of the shantytowns. We just thought it would be cool. We didn’t expect that it would be so incredibly eye opening. I had never witnessed poverty like that before. It was so heart-wrenching that my friends and I decided to deviate from our pre-planned itinerary and volunteer at an orphanage for a few days.”

Urban traveler Indrawan Prabaharyaka also shares how advocacy tours provide opportunities to debunk some of the prevailing myths of slum life, “It [advocacy tours] eases the spatial association of slum as a crime spot. It is the chance of affluent citizens to feel the warmth of the slum.”

Despite the potential merits of advocacy tours, there are three main shortcomings that demand attention. It is because of these shortcomings that I had originally decided back in 2010 against participating in the advocacy tours organized by NGOs in Southeast Asia.

At the macro level, advocacy tours do not challenge the structural inequalities that force children and youth to prematurely drop out of school and engage in potentially dangerous income generating activities, such as waste picking and sex tourism. In fact, advocacy tours can create systems of dependency, whereby some locals come to economically rely on the benevolent NGOs that operate such tours as well as on the good-doing tourists who participate in the tours.

Geographer Hilary Ferguson argues, “Ideally, tourists should avoid giving monetary handouts to the impoverished children who occupy tourist-laden spaces. As heartbreaking as it is to see youngsters milling around desperately begging tourists for a few coins, those who do give street children money oftentimes unintentionally end up supporting systems of exploitation. For example, their parents may send them out begging to supplement household income, having them miss school to do so...If you do feel the need to provide the children with some token, as I often do, make it useful to them – a pencil or pen. Be educated in your kindness, so that it helps rather than harms.”

At the institutional level, advocacy tours can reinforce problematic and exploitative power relations. Who gives NGOs and companies the right to sell tours that turn real, complex spaces into living museums for travelers? It is important to understand advocacy tours in relation to the nuanced and ongoing histories of colonialism. Such tours can transform poverty and child exploitation into tourist spectacles; and in that process, hierarchies of power differences are not challenged, but rather are maintained.

At the individual level, the issue of consent often is not attended to in a thoughtful, well-supported manner. Some tourists from the Global North feel entitled to engage in poverty tourism and automatically assume that their participation is what the locals need to escape poverty. David Fennell, an expert on ethical tourism, writes, “Maybe you give 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 percent of the profit back to the community, but you’ve now commodified these people, you’ve turned them into a product in the service of an industry. I’m not sure that’s ethical… We feel we have the right to go anywhere we want on the planet…If you put your money down, you have a right to go."

This line of entitled thinking is dangerous because it does not accommodate critical questions regarding informed consent and collaboration.

Finally, advocacy tours reinforce the troublesome shift to privatized development. There is an increasing overreliance on private citizens, mostly those coming from wealthier countries, to provide financial aid to support international development projects. This is problematic largely because privatized development gives a small fraction of persons, who are largely detached from the issues facing the majority of the world’s population, the power to decide the flows of monetary aid.

While a mix of altruism and curiosity propel both privileged tourists and locals to sign up for advocacy tours, do the shortcomings of advocacy tours seemingly outweigh the benefits? Should ethically conscious tourists engage in advocacy tours? There is no easy or single answer by any means. Each individual must choose what he or she deems appropriate in context-specific situations.

As an attempt to ensure that as tourists we do not consume the real living spaces in the Global South for merely voyeuristic pleasures, I have developed a brief list of best practices.

First, evaluate why you want to participate in the advocacy tour. Keep your motives in check. Is it realistic to expect that this tour will change your life? Are there other ways to understand the local community that do not necessarily turn people into objects to be consumed by the privileged tourist? If not, be sure to reflect on what you are learning throughout the duration of the tour. Marcelo Armstrong of Favela Tours also advises tourists to restrict their use of photography, particularly in the residents’ houses, as one way to demonstrate respect for the locals.

Second, develop ways to give back to the local community. Can you give your time to the hosting organization for a couple of days or weeks during your trip abroad? Alternatively, could you provide financial support to the NGO? How can you support the initiatives of the hosting organization throughout the year once you are back in your own neighbourhood?

And third, brainstorm how you can raise awareness in your home community about what you learned while on the advocacy tour. Can you give a presentation to a local Rotary International chapter in your hometown? Will you share what you have learned with friends, family members, and colleagues?

By following these guidelines, hopefully we can minimize the shortcomings of advocacy tours, maximize the teachable moments, and provide needed financial support to NGOs.

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Katie Palmer was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. She recently earned a graduate degree in Geography from the University of Toronto. She earned her bachelor's degree in geography and gender studies also from the University of Toronto. In her spare time, she volunteered at ECPAT-Philippines - an anti-trafficking NGO that provides rehabilitation and residential services to girl survivors of trafficking and forced prostitution.

With the current inflation in Kenya, the number of Commercial Sex Workers (CSW) in Nakuru, the capital of the most populated Rift Valley province, is rising steadily – a trend that began after the 2007-2008 post-election violence.

The dangers CSWs are exposing themselves to range from HIV infection to mistreatment by clients and other workers. Karen Gakii, 22, will never forget the ordeal she underwent at the hands of her fellow CSWs.

“I was introduced to the ‘job’ by a neighbour, who also came from Meru. She told me I would make more money that what I was earning as house help,” says the mother of one son.

True to her advisor’s words, Gakii made an average of KES279 (USD 3.40) per night while working as a CSW along Gusii road in Nakuru’s Central Business District. This was four times what she was paid per day as a domestic worker.

“I had never dreamt of working as a CSW, but my parents in Meru demanded that I send money for my son’s upkeep, yet I earned too little.”

For close to two years Gakii would sustain herself and send home some money. While at work, Gakii was introduced to four other women from Meru who also worked as CSWs in Nakuru. The group would often meet at the junction between Nehu Pandit and Gusii roads.

“Every one of us had regular clients, but sometimes we served new ones. The regular ones were from around here while the new ones were mostly visitors from other towns,” says Gakii.

She says her colleagues were unhappy that she got more clients and often accused her of using love potions to woo clients. But it was not until she served a colleague’s regular client that Gakii would face the wrath of her life.

“They all turned against me. My colleagues swore to teach me a lesson,” she tells me.

Somehow Gakii’s colleagues had learned that Gakii had not undergone Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a practice still rampant among the Meru tribe. “One day they drugged me with a drink, carried me to a lodge in Kivumbini slums, and mutilated me,” says Gakii. “I woke up the following day. The only thing I remember was taking a drink with my colleagues. I was bleeding furiously.”

It took Gakii two weeks to seek medical attention. By the time she went to the hospital, the infection had spread. “Doctors told me my condition was very bad and I risked losing my uterus. I regret having served that client although he paid me KES 492 (USD 6). I have spent much more on treatment,” she tells me.

Mary Masinde* is also still nursing injuries she suffered at the hands of her client. I was informed about her experiences by sources within the Kenya Police and met her at her home in the Kwa Rhoda slums.

Masinde’s client, a banker, picked her up along Gusii Road and took her to a relatively high-class hotel. After negotiation, they agreed she would be paid KES 984 (USD 12) in the morning.

“Normally I charge KES 189.29 (USD 2.30) for a night but sometimes I increase the price judging by the type of client,” says Masinde. “This one had a good car and also took me to an expensive hotel.”

In the morning when Masinde asked for her pay, the client drove her to an Automated Teller Machine. He withdrew cash and drove towards Eldoret. “I kept asking for my money but he only gave me KES 189.29 (USD 2.30) instead of the amount we had agreed on,” says Masinde.

Near the Ngata Bridge, he slowed down and pushed her out of the car. Masinde was left nursing a hand fracture and a badly bruised body.

“I will still go back to the CSW job. This is the only way I get food for my two children,” she says.

The Peer Counseling Department at the Catholic Diocese of Nakuru (CDN), which deals with rehabilitation of CSWs, blames the government for the increase in twilight women. “If the government created jobs for women, then most of the CSWs in Nakuru would not be in the streets,” says Vincent Omollo, the program coordinator.

According to Omolo, who has been working in this department for 10 years, the last five years have seen the number of CSWs swell rapidly in Nakuru, Molo Gilgil, Naivasha, and Kampi Samaki in Baringo. Poverty, he says, is the bottom line of what drives most women to join the trade.

“The situation is so bad that even high school girls confess to getting involved in commercial sex to raise school fees and earn pocket money,” says Omollo. Such girls, he says, attend school during the day and ‘work’ at night. Some are even their family’s breadwinners with most of them coming from slums.

Most CSWs, Omollo says, prefer to be referred to as single mothers. This way, they try to justify the fact that they are involved in commercial sex to feed their children.

While the CDN advises CSWs on the dangers of their job, Omollo says the challenge lies in giving them an alternative means of livelihood. “Most of them are willing to leave the commercial sex trade if they are funded for an alternative source of income, but sometimes we are faced by financial constrains to fund such projects.”

According to Omollo, about 60 Nakuru CSWs have benefited from the program and have been helped to start businesses.

While Nakuru District Commissioner Kangethe Thuku admits to having received the report on the rise in numbers of CSWs, the government has yet to do anything about curbing the situation. “I am planning to discuss the issue with the Security Committee to see how the women can be arrested and charged before court,” he told me.

Thuku advises CSWs to reform, form groups, and take advantage of the Women Enterprise Fund offered by the Ministry of Gender and Children Affairs. Such women will be taken to a government hospital for HIV testing, treatment, and counseling.

Thuku blames inflation and the fast growth of the town of Nakuru for the increase in CSWs. The government has already started several projects to fight poverty, especially among women. Under the Women Enterprise Fund, women are funded to start businesses and given a grace period of three months to repay at an interest of eight percent.

While poverty may surely be blamed for increased prostitution in this region, women also need to become creative and active. They need to learn that there are better, more decent ways of earning a living.

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Rachel Muthoni is a Kenyan journalist. She holds an International Diploma in Journalism and Media Studies and has worked in international and local media for the last seven years. She is pursuing a bachelors degree in Communications and would like to tell many stories about under privileged people to change their lives for the better.

Sunk deep in thoughts, Rania sits alone in her dark room oblivious to the thumping of feet on the roof where neighbor’s children are playing. The screams of Yousaf, her three-month-old, and the ringing telephone simultaneously interrupt her thoughts. She carries the baby on one arm and takes the call with the other hand.

This is a phone call she has been waiting for all day long. As she boards this emotional roller-coaster, her husband Muthana gently takes Yousaf in his arms.

“I can do nothing about her state of mind. I comfort her and pray. She is caught in two emotional worlds,” Muthana explains to me.

Rania lives with her husband and their only child in a posh Damascus suburb. Nothing makes her happy since her family was forced to flee the violence in Syria three months ago. With limited international dialing facility, Rania awaits their call daily, even though the poor financial situation only allows them to telephone her once a week.

Millions of Syrians, spread across the world, contact their families and loved ones back home with similar desperation. The killing of over 7,000 people at the hands of the state since March, 2011 has created an international outcry.

The Assad family annexed power in Syria in 1970 and has ruled the country with an iron fist. To curb a 1982 uprising in Hama, Hafiz Al-Assad used brute force and killed over 20,000 Syrians. The son, Bashar al-Assad, took office in 2000 after his father’s death and has proven equally harsh and dictatorial thus far. A sizeable number of Syrians quietly fled the country for a respectable and prosperous life.

"Please come and live here, the situation is scary in Syria,” Rania recalls her younger brother advising her over and over again during the telephone call.

“I tell him that you are crazy. I am going to lose my job at the insurance company, my newly-built home and someone may steal my car.”

Rania believes her exiled family can hardly make both ends meet. Like other employees, Rania got a notice that leaving the job once would disqualify her for any future opening in the same office.

After losing her father at the age of 20, carefree and fashion-loving Rania transformed herself into an ambitious and responsible person. She was born with the trait of sacrifice. She always supported her mother in bringing up her younger brother and two sisters. Rania refused to marry someone outside Syria as she never wanted to live away from her mom and siblings.

“More than their desire, it was Rania’s insistence that convinced my in-laws to head for Jordan before it became too hard to escape bandits of Bashar Al-Assad,” says Muthana as Rania offers Isha, the late evening, last prayer in a Muslim’s day.

Her husband speaks highly of Rania’s self respect. She preferred to self-off her jewelry instead of borrowing money from him. “I came to know only last week when I saw see Rania without her favorite earrings,” he explains.

Muthana feels Rania is in double agony now. Her brother keeps pressuring her to find a way to Jordan, while she has to stay with her husband and in-laws.

"I am not crying. I am only missing them and tears come without control,” she says while looking at Muthana, who tries to calm down the baby as he woke up to noise of rattling tanks outside.

"We can go to them if you like," Muthana tries once again to ease her nerves. Rania shakes her head in disapproval.

“How can I go to Jordan and leave him in harms’ way. The border police won’t let Muthana come along with me for he did not complete mandatory military service,” she says in a somber voice. Men who do not serve in the military are barred from leaving Syria and immigration officials check the citizens against regularly updated lists.

“I detested our armed forces and Bashar regime since my childhood in Hama,” Muthana quips.

Rania and Muthana’s family days of happiness are long gone. Last March, two cousins of Muthana went missing from Dara’a where they had gone to attend a wedding. Six weeks later, the disfigured bodies were found along a highway.

Muthana is a successful businessman dealing with imports from Lebanon and developing new housing facilities. Amid lowering imports, due to sanctions and a standstill housing sector, he still has to attend to the office.

“Until I hear his voice from the office landline, I can’t do a thing except pray for his safety,” Rania says, hastening to add that his office is in the heart of the city where risks of all sort abound.

Muthana adds, “She becomes normal a few hours after the call and feels guilty of stressing me and ignoring our son, but I understand the pain she has been going through.”

Rania regrets that she cannot give full attention to Yousaf and worries that he might be getting affected by her sad mood and neglect.

Spending a few hours with the couple it is evident they cannot watch TV together. Worried but composed, Muthana wants to update himself about the situation while Rania seeks escape in popular Turkish drama serials.

"Till now more over 7,000 have been killed but anyone in Syria can say the figure is an understatement," he tells me as his wife gets up to flip the channel. Muthana complains, but no one listens.

Muthana is hard hit by the sanctions while the regime continues to get money and weapons through its own means. “These sanctions from the world hurt us as people but do little harm to the regime,” he says in an ironic tone.

Rania interrupts him, saying, “His business in Damascus was so good only two years ago when we got married.” She says neither her husband nor her brothers-in-law has a good income now.

“Nobody knows where Bashar is taking Syria to,” the 26-year-old mom explains. This has pushed the small family to delete many things from their lives, like eating meat or using cars which have become too expensive after the shortage of fuel in Syria.

“My heart beats for love and I am living here only due to my responsibilities as a wife and a mother,” Rania says to herself. She hopes her son will be brave and live in a free and prosperous Syria.

Even if Rania agrees to leave for Jordan with Yousaf, Muthana’s conservative family will not agree. In traditional families in Syria, a wife has to stay with her husband to exhibit “loyalty and respect.”

Rania tells her husband, “To be fair to your mom, she once told me that I can leave for Jordan if conditions worsen further.” With tanks leveling residential areas and jets pounding the city squares, the situation looks far worse. But Rania will not leave her home and Muthana will have to live with his anxiety-ridden wife and the gory scenes all around.

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About the Author:
Aloosh Devrim is a journalist whose family struggled against Hafiz Al-Assad's rule and policies. She has traveled to the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East for her work.