Professor Bennoune Interviewed by Australian Broadcasting Corporation on UN Report

Professor Karima Bennoune was interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation regarding the report she recently presented to the United Nations General Assembly about the threat posed by fundamentalism and extremism to women’s rights around the world.

The report, issued by Bennoune in her capacity as United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, for which she received 54 submissions from governments, academics, and non-governmental organizations, details ways in which diverse extremist agendas are undermining women's liberties around the world. In her interview, Bennoune voiced concerns about the rise of “populist ultra-nationalism” and problems associated with the rise of cultural relativism.

"In many places where governments have strategies for what is called combatting violent extremism or CVE, they sometimes base strategies on partnering with what they deem to be 'moderate extremists' or fundamentalists of various stripes — and I think this is a terrible mistake," Bennoune said.

Karima Bennoune is an author, lecturer, teacher, and international law scholar as well as the first Arab-American to be honored with the Derrick A. Bell Award from the Section on Minority Groups of the Association of American Law Schools. In 2014, she was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her book Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight against Muslim Fundamentalism, now available in paperback from W.W. Norton & Company. In October 2015, she was appointed UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights.  She was recently presented with the 2016 Rights and Leadership Award by IANGEL, the International Action Network for Gender Equity & Law.

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