Centre for Applied Human Rights
Christeen Maher
Egypt, CAHR, Autumn 2013
My Name is Christeen Maher. I am 28 years old. I live in Minya city in Upper Egypt. I am an Egyptian human rights defender. I grew up close to Minya Governorate near the poor communities east of the Nile. My father is from one of these poor communities where they practice a lot of bad customs and traditions such as domestic violence, female genital mutilation (FGM), and early marriage, but my father refused all of these habits and worked to challenge them.
All my family works in social work seeking to raise the awareness of the poor and marginalized people and empower them in order to eliminate poverty. Since I was a child I attended different seminars, conferences and trainings with my parents about different developmental concepts and issues. I started work with the people in the communities when I was in university. I was a volunteer in NGOs for different issues such as child labour, open literacy classes, FGM and women’s empowerment.
My greatest motivation and what impresses me, is to find marginalized people who are aware of their rights and able to demand and defend themselves. I now work for an NGOs supporting women’s rights issues in Upper Egypt. The women in Upper Egypt are deprived from their fundamental rights, for instance the right to education, right to work and right to healthcare. Additionally, they are victims of bad habits and traditions such as FGM, and early marriage, and they suffer from low standards of living. I am a human rights advocate for women who live in these communities, firstly by establishing education for women about their human rights and combating the harmful habits which are widespread in these communities, and then by creating cadres and strong groups of self-supporting women who advocate for change in their own communities, to start to access education, to establish businesses and to take up political positions in their villages.
We have succeeded in applying the rights-based approach in poor rural communities where harmful socio-cultural traditions are deeply ingrained. Other NGOs work in these communities but they use a charity approach and simply provide money or food. This is often very attractive because of the immediate benefits, but its impact is very short lived and it doesn't tackle the root causes of the problem. We believe, and women's testimonies support our belief, that empowering women is vital to overcome poverty in the long term.
We believe that empowering women is vital to overcome poverty in the long term.
We are facing a number of challenges during our work with women in these communities, one of the most difficult challenges we have been facing is that over the last couple of years there has been a backlash against women. It was hoped that after the 25th January revolution women would be able to enjoy all their rights, but instead they have been further deprived. The new constitution under the Muslim Brotherhood did not contain articles that would protect women‘s rights and criminalize violations against them.
Moreover, Minya Governorate is considered a stronghold for extremist and radical groups who advocate a violent approach to life. They consider human rights and women’s rights a contradiction to Islamic law and they argue that human rights are being promoted by the western world to change Egyptian customs and traditions.
My family has been supporting me to continue to work in this field in spite of the threats which I face regularly, in particular my husband. He always encourages me and gives me the power which makes me able to overcome these challenges. I dream of all the women in the rural areas being able to obtain their rights and enjoy a decent life.