SAHAR MEDIHA AL-NAAS

Sahar Mediha Al-Naas is a member of WILPF and the founder and director of Libyan Women for Peace and Freedom. She is a UK based independent researcher and human rights defender. She holds an MA in Gender and Identity in the Middle East from the University of Exeter, with the focus on Political Islam as a factor by which Libyan women's political representation and participation in the public sphere have been shaped, constructed and limited in the post Gaddafi era. Born and educated in Libya to university level, Al-Naas moved to the UK in 1995 and has worked with women's organisations in both Libya and UK, becoming a consultant on gender based violence, honour-based violence and FGM. Since 2011, Al-Naas has been travelling between Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and the US to attend and organise conferences, workshops, seminars, and meetings. She has also lobbied, planned and strategised campaigns for human rights issues in general and women's issues in particular. She is a Co-author of: ‘Women’s Bodies in Post-Revolution Libya: Control and Resistance’, in Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance: Lessons from the Arab World (2015).