In Iraq, Activist Struggles as Women's Rights Shrink
Yanar Mohammed, an internationally renowned Iraqi activist, founded the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq to advocate for women's rights.  It's an uphill fight: From the 1950s to the 1970s, Iraqi women could legally work, study, marry and divorce, and wear what they wanted, but the new constitution in Iraq, based on the Islamic Sharia law system, denies women the civil and social rights guaranteed to men.  As repressive attitudes have re-emerged, atrocities against women have increased. Several of Mohammed's colleagues have left the country, and Mohammed herself has been the target of death threats. Still, she stays, and her organization has set up a network of women's shelters, along with a kind of Iraqi Underground Railroad, to protect women who have been abused or become targets of "honor killings."
General Irene Khan, who leads Amnesty International, recently traveled to Zimbabwe on a fact-finding mission to investigate reports of human rights abuses and to meet with government officials there. Khan's trip marked the first time any leader from London-based advocacy group visited Zimbabwe. She sits with host Michel Martin to share observations from Zimbabwe and tells why the human rights cause there is such a delicate matter.