MEDIA CONTACT:
Polly Burks, 561-297-2595,
pburks@fau.edu

BOCA RATON, FL (March 8, 2006) - Katrin Michael, a former member of the Iraqi Kurdish army and survivor of Iraqi chemical weapons attacks, will present “The Future of Women’s Rights in Iraq” on Monday, March 20 at 7:10 p.m. The lecture will take place in the Live Oak Pavilion of Florida Atlantic University’s University Center on the Boca Raton campus, 777 Glades Road. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Michael joined the Kurdish army in Iraq in 1982, the same year that she received her Ph.D. in geology. She served as a political advisor to Kurdish women until 1987 when she was severely injured by a chemical weapons attack initiated by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Michael fled Iraq after the attack and has lived in exile ever since. Though she has been active in the Iraqi opposition movement, she is also an advocate for peaceful resolution. Michael describes in her soon-to-be-released autobiography, “her gradual conversion from [the advocacy of] violence toward the [advocacy of] adoption of non-violent means as a pattern for opposition to injustice and suppression.”

Michael has always been active in women’s rights groups and is currently co-chairwoman of the Women’s Peace Initiative for the Middle East and South Asia.

The lecture is sponsored by the Middle East and National Security Organization in FAU’s Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters department of political science. For further information, call 561-297-3210.

-FAU-