Cover Story: Women in Pandemic and other stories
SGBV - A Virus For Which There No Vaccine by Oby Obyerodhyambo
A most virulent pathogen than the recent Coronavirus, and worse than HIV has been wreaking havoc, causing mass mortality among women for years, but surprisingly one does not hear of any efforts...
It's Boom And Bust For Women Journalists In The Covid-19 Pandemic Era by Rose Lukalo-Owino
Everything that Mildred Kaguhia Makaya had planned was derailed once the first coronavirus case was identified in Kenya. So, the irony is not lost on her that she has benefitted from some really...
Back To The Future – The Plague And COVID by Neera Kapur-Dromsom
THE PLAGUE PANDEMIC - Nairobi, Early 1900s Hardei was well into another pregnancy. Some women, not much older, had already given birth to seven or eight children. By the time they were...
Beauty Saved Us, My Book Club During The Corona Pandemic By Lucy Mulli
In his speech on receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, ‘One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world”. What sort of a...
Women And The Pandemic In The Sacrifice Zones by Firoze Manji
Over the last year I have been conducting interviews with activists around the world about their experiences of [1] (#_ftn1) — although it is striking how similar their stories have been to ...
Women In The Pandemic: Stories Of Survivors & Frontline Responders By Maureen Kasuku
In Kenya, as in many countries around the world, women have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 crisis. They have borne the brunt of the social and economic fall out of the pand...
Women’s Human Rights Violations During The Covid-19 Pandemic by Martin Mavenjina
On 13 March 2020, the Government announced that it had recorded its first case of Covid-19 in Kenya. This was after a 27 year-old woman tested positive for the virus on 12 March in Nairobi, ...
Closing The Gender Wealth Gap: One Woman Investor At A Time by Aamera Jiwaji
You don’t need to have met Asha to picture her sitting at her kitchen counter in Dubai first thing in the morning before her family awakens and her home becomes a hive of activity. She has ...
COVID-19 And Patriarchy In The International Year Of The Nurse And Midwife by Salimah Valiani
In an effort to shed light on the vital but undervalued labour of predominantly female health professionals, the World Health Organisation named 2020 the International Year of the Nurse and ...
LGBTQ+ Persons in The Era of COVID-19 by Lorna Dias
Under ‘ordinary’ circumstances, the year 2020 would have been a very progressive year for the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK). The Secretariat had overcome severe broad-ranging co...
A Potent COVID-19 Vaccine: Socialism
How KK Shailaja and her ‘Covid brigade’ won a victory against the virus www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/dec/22/how-kk-shailaja-and-her-covid-brigade-won-a-victory-against-the-virus F...
Chelagat Mutai: The Lioness of Nandi By Maureen Kasuku
She was brazen, beholden to no one, firm in her resolve and an outlier. Firebrand politician and activist Philomena Chelagat Mutai was ‘trouble’ from the start. Good trouble. Standing up for...
Lord Buddha’s Wife – A Feminist! By Neera Kapur-Dromson
Siddhartha Gautama, from an aristocratic family, who would be known as the Buddha, the ‘enlightened one’, was born in Northern India (now Nepal) some 2500 years ago. At his birth, it was p...
Eleanor Marx: A Fighter for the Oppressed by Karim F Hirji
Eleanor Marx, the youngest daughter of Karl Marx, was born in 1855. Her formal schooling was limited; school costs drained family finances and, in any case, she disliked school. But she was ...
Palestine Collective
In the interest of advancing a truly intersectional and decolonial feminist vision for the United States, Palestine (https://www.madamasr.com/en/2019/12/16/opinion/u/taliat-our-struggle-to-r...
Socialism, Feminism and Patriarchy by Zarina Patel
The #END Sars Movement and especially the horrendous massacre at the Lekoi Toll Gate and the continuing suffering in Nigeria has had me thinking……… Though I gather the protest was not organ...
Regular Column
Editorial
‘Women in the Pandemic’ is our cover story for this issue which focusses on Women. It is globally accepted that women are bearing the worst brunt as the Covid-19 virus continues to ravage humanity. We...
Pandemic Fallout
London Calling So a whole year of Covid-19 has passed and we are still mired in the thick of it. This is what I wrote at the outset, in March last year (Issue 1/2020): ` …...
Special Feature
‘It's The Birthright Of Every Child To Have An Education’ by Farah Qureshi
The women of AMARA empowering thousands of disempowered children through education and training. My research led me to explore technology and business advancements in Kenya over recent years, a process encouraged by the sharing of ideas in entrepreneurial innovation across cities...
The President Who Burned Kenya’s Heritage, Humiliated Girls And Elderly Women by Sultan F Somjee
One of the barbarities of Moi I will remember most is of a president who burned material culture, humiliated girls and elderly women. He held the dreaded club considered a weapon among many nationalities, and had a red rose bud...
Revolution Blooms From A Busted Skull On The Road by Nandita Haksar
Nandita Haksar follows up a 2019 conversation with Soe Myint, a media ...
International Women's Day 2021 Video
#InternationalWomensDay2021 https://secure.avaaz.org/IWD2021yt (https...
Friends of Awaaz
About Awaaz
In tribute to Kuldip Sondhi 1942-2021
On sanded shore the palm trees wilt,
Each grove by grove in grief;
In turns and churns the sea surf beats
The beach drum for their chief,
And breezes breathe the legend of
That Titan of the Reef.
Upon the reef that up and down
The storied coast engraves
A tempest’s line where wrecks still lie
And rest in sunken graves,
By dint of wit and will he built
His temple to the waves.
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Book Reviews
Film Reviews
Footsteps
Bhushan Vidyarthi 1937-2021
It was eight decades ago that a journalist in colonial Kenya devoted his newspaper, the Colonial Times, to exposing the...
Josaphat L Kanywanyi 1938 – 2021
Professor Josaphat L Kanywanyi, simply Joe to his close compatriots, was perhaps the longest serving academic in Tanzania. He grew...