Documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy spent a year with Taliban recruiters and children who were training to become suicide bombers.

Her mission? To understand how the Taliban convert children into live ammunition, and why the children actively sign up to their cause.

Based on first-hand, up-close personal observation, Obaid-Chinoy believes the Taliban use a powerful five-step process

Twenty-two-year-old engineering student Ambreen Rahman knows what it takes to build strong bridges.

And it has nothing to do with steel or concrete.

"As long as you meet people with passion, compassion and understanding, you can make friends with them, and you can build a lot of bridges," she told me in a recent online interview.

Rahman should know, she’s been building bridges between

The auditorium fell dead silent when Dr. Sunitha Krishnan stepped onto the stage at TED India on November 6, 2009. And Tedsters around the world, watching via a live stream webcast, were transfixed – or at least we were in Dubai!

The diminutive, soft-spoken, anti-trafficking crusader, who was gang-raped as a teenager, began her talk with the heart-wrenching stories of three children –

Here's a taster from the latest video blog update (#5), from Dubai-based Canadian journalist (and AWR member) Natalie Carney, who is producing a documentary on children in Afghanistan.

See the 10-minute "full meal deal" here.

Find out more about her fledgling charity Kids Being Kids: Afghanistan here.

 

Related links:

As post-election trauma and violence sweep across Iran, the powerfully positive forces of music and dance are also at work transforming our world.

Today, I was exposed to two inspirational musical initiatives, one of which I’d like to share with you now (I’m saving the other one for later).

I never thought I’d see a show that rivals the magic of Cirque du Soleil.

I recently enjoyed the Cirque’s Alegria, the last performance of which was delivered in Dubai in April. It was the fifth time I’ve experienced the Cirque since I first saw them during the Arts Festival held in conjunction with the Olympic Winter Games in Calgary in 1988. Since then they have risen from virtual

This is an open letter to Mr Johann Hari in response to his article The Dark Side of Dubai, published in The Independent, Tuesday April 7, 2009, in which he describes his recent misadventures and negative impressions of Dubai, its policies, its politics and its people.

Sadly, I’m sure many of the stories you recount in your article are true, Mr. Hari.

Even more sad is the fact that

The Love-to-Hate-Dubai Debate rages on with yesterday’s excellent article by Linda Heard in Arab News entitled "Dubai-bashing becomes an art form" and a piece in the Gulf News reporting that:

The British government has distanced itself from the slanderous stories carried by some British newspapers that target Dubai in relation to the effects of the global financial crisis. British

Two days ago I blogged about Zainah Anwar, a Malaysian Muslim feminist activist, who advocates for change in the way women’s rights are interpreted in Islam.

Today, a friend of AWR sent me a link to a BBC story about how women in Nepal are confined, often in unsanitary and arduous conditions, when they are menstruating, and during the 11 days immediately following childbirth.

Some Nepalese

Imagine living in a slum that houses over 800,000 people. There is no drinkable running water. Garbage is piled everywhere. People sell secondhand clothes from other parts of the world to make a living.

Now imagine the poverty, lack of education, and lack of opportunity the residents of this slum would face.

This is reality in Kiberia; a place located in Nairobi, Kenya. Kiberia is said to be