Women-centric 2013

The year 2013 slides into the pages of history as a year of great accomplishments by distinguished women representing various walks of life across the world. In fact, 2013 deserves to be looked at as women-centric year.

It is also marked by several gory incidents of bloodshed in the Middle East, Africa and in our own neighbourhood in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The massive snooping mission by the NSA and deaths of several iconic personalities also have also taken place in 2013.

The 1997-born Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai emerges as the most fascinating girl icon of 2013. She was shot in the head by a Tailban militant in her home town of Mingora in Pakistan in 2012 because of her activism in the promotion of education and equality for women. She narrowly escaped from the jaws of death following expert treatment in a hospital in Birmingham, UK.

She was nominated to the Noble Committee for the award of Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2013. She is a recipient of Honourable Canadian Citizenship, National Youth Prize and Simone de Beauvoir Awards. She also won the UNO Human Rights Award; Netherland Children’s Award; Peter Gome’s Human Rights Award by the Harvard University; Sakharov Human Rights Award, and Garavi Gujarat-II Leadership Award in 2013. Her book, I am Malala, has become a source of inspiration to young women and men alike. This is an outstanding record of achievements by a girl in her teens in a single year.

Alice Munro, Canadian short story writer, won the Nobel Prize for literature for her in-depth study of man-woman relationships in the context of patriarchal bias against women. The 1967-born Indian American Jhumpa Lahiri, winner of the most prestigious American Pulitzer Prize, was shortlisted for Man Booker International Prize for her 2013 novel, The Lowlands. But the award was finally bagged by American Lydia Davis.

The 74-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner and the first woman President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was conferred with the Indira Gandhi Peace Prize in September this year. The 25-year-old Afghanistan dentist and Women’s Rights Activist, Anarkali Honayar, was named ‘Afghanistan’s Person of the Year’ in May, 2013, for her outstanding services regarding women’s rights.

The 48-year-old Indian mountaineer, Premalata Agarwal of Jharkhand climbed the Mount Winson in Antartica in January 2013 earning the distinction of climbing six highest mountains across the world. The 1989-born Indian American, Nina Davuluri, whose parents are from Vijayawada, won the title of Miss America.

Socialist leader Veronica Michell Bachelet was elected second time as the President of Chile on December 16 while Angela Mekerel was sworn in as the Chancellor of Germany third time on December 17.

The year 2013 is not without its share of cruelty and injustices to women of stature across the world. Sri Lankan Chief Justice, Shirani Badararnayake, was impeached by Parliament on charges of ‘financial impropriety’ and interference in legal matters. She was removed from her office in January this year. The UNO and several Heads of States indicted the Sri Lankan government for the gross injustice done to the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka.

Bengali woman Sushma Banarjee who married Janbaz Khan, an Afghan business man in 1988, was shot dead by the Taliban militants in Afghanistan in September suspecting her to be an Indian spy in Afghanistan. Devyani Khobragade, Indian diplomat in the Indian embassy of America, was handcuffed, arrested, stripped, and cavity-searched inhumanly for her alleged underpayment of wages to her Indian domestic help.

Edward Snowden’s disclosure of massive snooping by the American National Security Agency (NSA) caused considerable embarrassment to the US Government and resentment among those affected by it.

Dilemma Rouse, President of Brazil, protested strongly against the snooping of vital and sensitive information from Brazil including the tapping of her own telephone by the National security Agency (NSA) of USA. She even cancelled her official visit to America in 2013 on this issue. She has planned a global conference in her country in April 2014 to checkmate the NSA’s snooping in various countries.

The NSA-snooping caused considerable embarrassment to the American administration in the light of dissent and protests by several countries. John Kerry, US Secretary of State, expressed regret for the same and even conceded that the NSA had gone beyond its limits.

The news, “India among top targets of spying by NSA” evoked the wrath of the Indian elite against the American surveillance and tapping of phones and Internet interceptions of individuals. However, Salman Khurshid, Indian External Affairs Minister defended the US surveillance programme saying that it is “it is not actually snooping…”

NSA picked up 13.5 billion pieces of information from India alone in one month from its telephone and Internet networks. Snowden is in exile now in Russia. The government of India is supremely indifferent to the snooping of sensitive and classified information from the government sources.

The world lost iconic leaders in the year 2013. Nelson Mandela, one of the greatest among world’s statesmen, died on December 6 at the age of 95; Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, one of the greatest leaders of our times, died of cancer on March 5. Melees Zenawi, the pragmatic Prime Minister of Ethiopia died on August 29 when he was only 57; Margaret Thatcher (87), the iron lady of the United Kingdom, breathed her last on April 7. Chinua Achebe, one of the greatest writers among the first generation of African writers and Doris Lessing, the Nobel Laureate, also left the world in 2013.

(The writer can be reached at [email protected])