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In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth, women are not merely tolerated but valued." - Aung San Suu Kyi, 1995
Like Mahatma Gandhi in India and Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Aung San Suu Kyi has become an international symbol of democracy and non-violence resistance. Being placed under house arrest for 15 out of the past 21 years, Ms Suu Kyi has finally sworn to the oath and she is now the leader of the opposition in the Burmese parliament after she led her party, National League for Democracy, to a landslide victory in the 2012 by-election. It is seen as a historical moment as the Cambodia Foreign Minister points out “So that people in Myanmar can enjoy better opportunities to realize their aspirations for peace, national reconciliation, democracy and national development”.
At Wedu we believe that not only Ms Suu Kyi’s victory is significant to Myanmar’s political development, it is indeed also a sign of women’s empowerment within the country. Traditionally, gender inequalities have been prevalent in the Burmese society and it is still an existing problem today. In 2011, the Human Development Index for Myanmar was 0.483 and under the Gender Inequality Index, the country’s score is 0.492 (96 out of 146 countries). This is particularly true
Angela Merkel, Dilma Rousseff, Yingluck Shinawatra, Joyce Banda... Just to name a few of the incumbent female heads of government around the world. Compared to a century ago, women are gaining importance in both international and domestic politics as they are occupying various important positions in national governments and multilateral organizations. While it seems that more and more female politicians are rising in power, let us not be contend with the status-quo: only one-fifth of the seats in the parliaments are occupied by women worldwide, and the figure in Asia, Middle East and Pacific is even lower than the world average. Women, in today’s world, are still underrepresented in the political arena. What are the major obstacles that women face in political participation? According to studies, it is a complex issue as it can be traced back to a number of institutional, historical, socio-economic as well as cultural factors. UN Women found that in Bhutan,
One month after the 15-year-old Pakistani education activist, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban, the United Nations called upon the international community to observe November 10 as the International Malala Day. The UN special envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown marked the significance of this event that “country after country is adopting Malala as its symbol for a girl's right to school [as the] Malala Day is being celebrated with events in more than 100 countries”. It has symbolized that the fight of Malala and 32 million girls more for their basic rights of education will go on, and the world is in solidarity with ensuring education for every single child across the globe. Malala’s story has touched millions of people. She started writing a blog for the BBC describing people’s lives in her community under the Taliban’s rule – where girls are prevented from going to school because the regime believes girls' education is an obscenity – and
Gender equality has been one of the founding principles of the European Union, and the principle has been successfully upheld as believed by many: men and women seem to enjoy equal fundamental rights in their daily lives, and nine out of ten highest ranked countries in terms of gender equality are in Europe, according to the United Nations Development Programme. The European women are apparently better off than their counterparts in other parts of the world, but the recent developing in the EU might have suggested that women still face invisible barriers to their advancement in the workplace. A week ago, the EU decided in the last minute to postpone the vote on a plan to oblige companies to reach a 40 percent female boardroom quota by 2020 as it was deeply unpopular with many of its member countries.
If we are going to see real development in the world then our best investment is women. - Desmond Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize This year’s International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) will be observed on 13th October. Since 1990 when it first begun, IDDR has become an important event which highlights the successes and the continuous attempts toward achieving safer and more resilient communities. “We cannot eliminate disasters, but we can mitigate risk”, said Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations in his statement for the IDDR. “We can reduce damage and we can save more lives.” The IDDR reminds us of the importance of preparedness at normal times. Natural hazards, such as earthquakes, floods and cyclones, need not to turn into “disasters” with casualties and economic damages – if effective preventive measures are in place. This year, the theme of the IDDR is 
Education plays a critical role in the reconstruction and national development plan of the post-Taliban Afghanistan, as it is possibly one of the most effective way to solve the many prevalent problems within the country. Before the fall of the Taliban, the formal education system in Afghanistan had been in complete disarray as there were no national authorities that monitor the distribution of educational funds and program implementation. The non-formal sector of education, as operated by organizations such as UNICEF, used to be a good supplement to the underperforming formal sector and once accounted for more than three quarters of schools in Afghanistan. However, the situation changed drastically after the Taliban issued its 1995 edict prohibiting the education of females in the areas under its control, and most humanitarian relief agencies had to suspend their assistance to the education programs throughout Afghanistan. As a result, even though theoretically compulsory education is provided to children aged from 7 to 13, only a mere 22 percent of the country's school-aged children were enrolled in schools by the end of the twentieth century. Girls, among all young persons, were the most affected due to