Exploring New York 31 years on

Culture and the Arts, Guest Contributor, Social Issues, View from Abroad
Strand Book Store, New York: 18 miles of books
Strand Book Store, New York: 18 miles of books

By Zeenat Hisam

guest-contributor29 July 2016: Today is my first day of exploring New York. It rained last night. And the morning is bright, the air crispy, the weather pleasant. The heat has subsided. Manhattan is 30-minute subway train ride away from the place in Brooklyn we are staying in. Well, not a bad bargain for a low-budget traveller.

All the way from Stony Brook to New York I saw America shining and prospering: well-maintained infrastructure looking almost new; a lot of construction/repair work in progress; highways filled with big, gleaming cars. In New York the subway stations and the carriages all looked new. So far I have not detected anything that looked dilapidated, worn out or shabby. Continue reading Exploring New York 31 years on →

Changing Lives

Books, Children and Youth, Culture and the Arts, Education, Human Rights, Library, Women
Official launch with Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland.- Photo by GWL
Official launch with Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland.- Photo by GWL

By Zubeida Mustafa

WOULD you expect to see Qurratulain Hyder’s Aag ka Darya on the shelf of a public library in Glasgow? Probably not. But I actually found Annie Apa, as she was fondly called, in the Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL). The discovery was made more exciting by the fact that the library was a distinguished one as only a feminist library can be.

Set up in 1991, the GWL has grown and never looked back. In 2015, it celebrated the 25th year of its existence. Containing 30,000 books on women or by women (about 20,000 writers), the GWL is distinct from other libraries by the feminist ownership shown by those who manage it and those who use it. Continue reading Changing Lives →

The Glasgow Women’s Library

General
Story Cafe at the library,--Photo by GWL
Story Cafe at the library,–Photo by GWL

By Zubeida Mustafa

As you approach the stately Glasgow Women’s Library at Bridgeton (Glasgow) there is no way you can miss it. A large name plaque in black announces its presence.

The “extraordinariness” of the library is visible in the mural painted on a fence across the road in front of the building. It depicts the struggle of an Inuit girl, Sedna,  who resists the brutality of her father who wants her to marry a man she doesn’t want to. He pushes her into the sea and chops off her fingers when she clings to the boat to save herself. She is later declared by her people the Goddess of the Sea. The most distant planet of the solar system is also named after Sedna. Continue reading The Glasgow Women’s Library →

Measuring peace

Administration, Defence and Disarmament, Development and Poverty, Economy, Environment, Foreign Policy of Pakistan, Health, Housing, Human Rights, Law & Order, Mental health, Politics, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

WE seem to be living in an age when countries are constantly being measured, classified and ranked. The trend was set by the United Nations Development Programme 25 years ago when the Human Development Index was introduced. Many others followed suit as new technologies were developed for gathering and collating data from diverse sources that made the compilation of such indices feasible.

Today, virtually no area of national life has been left without being probed. We have international rankings on education, disease, poverty, corruption, press freedom, gender empowerment, religious freedom, and even happiness. Only recently, the Global Peace Index 2016 (GPI) — a relatively new area to be measured — was released which warns us how wars are taking us down the path of self-destruction. Continue reading Measuring peace →

Catch ’em young

Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Education, Human Rights
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By Zubeida Mustafa

ACCORDING to Unesco’s Global Education Monitoring Report [GEMR] 2016 released recently, only two-thirds of children worldwide would have completed primary schooling by 2030, the deadline set by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The report also stresses the need for human dignity, social inclusiveness and equity in education so that economic growth does not intensify inequalities in society but empowers everyone. For this, Unesco calls on policymakers to adopt new approaches and fundamentally change their thinking on education. Thus it hopes to create a safer, greener and fairer planet for all. Continue reading Catch ’em young →