The Center for Gender and Development Studies (CGDS) at American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS) received a grant for Internews’ Women’s Voices project, funded by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The project started in April 2018 and ended in March 2020. The Women’s Voices project aims to raise public awareness of womens’ rights issues in Iraq, especially on traditional and social media.
As part of the project, CGDS organized several roundtable discussions in the Kurdistan region with prominent activists and members of public and civic societies. The discussions, led by the Director of CGDS, Dr. Choman Hardi, focused on invoking open dialogue on women’s rights issues, gender, and proposing ideas to approach and tackle these issues. Central to our conversations was the role of the press on influencing discourse within Kurdistan.