York University’s Diaspora, Islam and Gender (DIG) project was one of four sponsors of an international conference on Gender, Displacement, Memory and Agency, held in Ramallah, West Bank, March 4-6.
Right: Speakers at conference in Ramallah held March 4-6
Haideh Moghissi, director of the of the project and a professor with York’s Atkinson Faculty of Liberal & Professional Studies, attended the conference along with organizer Fadwa Al-Labdi, director of the INSAN Centre of Gender Studies, Al-Quds University, East Jerusalem. Dignitaries at the conference included Salam Fayyad, Palestinian minister of finance, and human rights activist Hannan Ashrawi, director of the MIFTAH (Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy), and representatives of the UNDP, the Canadian International Development Agency and various non-governmental organizations.
Left: Haideh Moghissi, director of the Diaspora, Gender and Islam project at York
The conference was opened by Zahira Kamal, Palestinian minister of women’s affairs, and Ahmad Abdulrahman, representative of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who read the president’s address to the more than 150 academics, politicians and members of international and national NGOs from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Australia, Italy and Norway. Palestinian universities such as Al-Quds and Palestine’s Bir-zeit University were also represented. The Canadian delegation consisted of Professors Mark Goodmann, Saeed Rahnema and Moghissi from York, as well as scholars from Queen’s University.
Other sponsors of the conference included the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Palestine’s Ministry of Women’s affairs, and INSAN Centre of Gender Studies of Al-Quds University. York’s Diaspora, Gender and Islam project is funded by a grant from the Major Collaborative Research Initiatives fund of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Ford Foundation.
This article was submitted to YFile by Professor Saeed Rahnema of York’s Department of Political Science and the Atkinson Faculty.