Kainat Riaz, an education advocate and the keynote speaker at the ‘United for Peace, EU-UWC youth leadership’ forum in Cyprus recently, speaks to Magda Zenon on kaleidHERscope about October 9th 2012 when she was with Malala when she was targeted by the Taliban, about the value of education and the UWC and about ‘Beydaar Society’, the NGO she co-founded that helps to promote peace & harmony in Pakistan by using education as a tool.

Dr. Habiba Sarābi, the first Afghan woman to become a provincial governor and 1 of the 4 women at the negotiation table with the Taliban in Doha this year, speaks on kaleidHERscope about the life of the women in Afghanistan, the mental health of all Afghans and the rise in suicides and about how we can help.

Evie Theocharous, a researcher and a board member of Cyprus Youth DiplomaCY, speaks on kaleidHERscope about why it is imperative that there is a substantive inclusion of youth in the Cyprus Peace Process and about transitional justice, especially its gender perspective. Disclaimer: The House of Youth Representatives is a simulation of the House of Representatives co organised by Cyprus Youth Council and Cyprus Youth DiplomaCY. DISACT is a 5 year ERC - Funded Project. It investigates the logic of the crime of disappearances in repressive and (post)conflict settings. 

Naw Angeline, a Women Human Rights Defender, an educator and a member of WASL speaks on kaleidHERscope about Myanmar, one of the ‘invisible’ global conflicts; what is happening in the country now, the lack of security, the internal displacement, the humanitarian needs, the role of the women and Gen Z and the message she wants to send to the international community.

Following the brutally public discussion and treatment of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting’s during the Paris Olympics especially online, on kaleidHERscope Magda Zenon speaks with Phyllis Ellis, film-maker and former Olympic field hockey player about gender and the focus on ‘what you look like’ rather than on performance, the 90-year history of sex testing and how sports organizations police only women’s bodies, and the toxic misinformation spread on-line, lead mainly by rich, uninformed, white people. Phyllis Ellis is director of the 2022 documentary Category: Woman about the heart-breaking stories of 4 women athletes from the Global South, torn from their sport,…

Lebanese cultural practitioner, writer, and researcher, Myriam Dalal, speaks to Magda Zenon on KaleidHERscope from Luxembourg about being an artist and how forced migration disrupts, yet creates opportunities for new creative expression including a totally contemporary ‘love dance’, about Intangible Cultural Heritage and what it is, but mostly about the lesser-known stories of different groups of women that were fundamental to the survival of communities throughout history.

On kaleidHERscope this week from Bogota, Colombia, Rosa Emilia Salamanca, Director of CIASE (www.ciase.org), a Colombian peacebuilding organisation with a particular focus on women’s rights, and a member of WASL speaks about inclusive peacebuilding within a peace process in a very diverse Colombia, about breaking up the increasing binary thinking and learning to embrace our own paradoxes and about how, as a feminist, she knows that security needs to be redefined through the lens of care.

On kaleidHERscope Cypriot-Australian writer, performer and bestselling poet Koraly Dimitriadis, a fearless feminist voice for the southern-European diaspora, speaks to Magda Zenon from Melbourne about violence against women and opening up the space to talk about the violence of men, about the challenges of single parenting and about ensuring that the voice of the Cypriot diaspora is not Greek but Cypriot. Koraly closes the interview with two of her poems, ‘Πια εν τούτη’ and ‘She's Not Normal’.

On kaleidHERscope Nitsan Joy Gordon, author and director of the Together Beyond Words Organization ( Together Beyond Words | Healing For Peace ) speaks to Magda Zenon about the organization she helped found together with Arab and Jewish colleagues, to help empower and train women as peace builders so they can promote the understanding and healing of prejudice in Israel. She also speaks of the aim for 2024 of TBW to create an Army of Healers (therapists and group facilitators) who will run at least 60 groups all over the country in common spaces where it will be safe…

Tatiana Der Avedissian, head of business development for Economist Impact’s World Ocean Initiative, the recently appointed chief adviser and climate-justice coordinator for the 2024 meeting of the W7, and a women’s rights and gender equality engagement group within the G7 in Italy, speaks to Magda Zenon on kaleidHERscope about the development of a sustainable ocean economy and the nexus of gender equality, climate change and peace and security.