Dalia Ziada

Social media for social activism in Egypt

One of the key leaders in that Egyptian blogging community is Dalia Ziada, the Cairo-based North Africa Director for the American Islamic Congress.

She was profiled in international media in the spring of 2009 in articles in both Time magazine and the History News Network for her efforts to help develop a democratic voice in her region. She won the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Journalist Award in 2010.

Ziada has dedicated her life to promoting women rights, freedom of expression, and nonviolent action in her homeland, Egypt, and the whole Middle East. Ziada is also a public speaker at different events all over the world. The list of the venues that hosted Ziada as a speaker include: US Congress, US Senate House, Harvard University, CATO Institute in Washington DC, Al-Akhawyn University in Morocco, American University in Cairo, and several local, regional, and international NGOs. Dalia will be taking part in the SHARE Conference via a video link.

In 2010, she co-authored “New Narrative for Muslim Women in the Middle East”, a guidebook for policy makers in the Middle East on how to efficiently push for women rights. In 2008, Ziada co-authored “Egypt, whereto?” a non-fiction - in Arabic - documenting the current statuesque of Egypt’s civil rights movement. By the end of 2007, she translated and published "The Montgomery Story" a comic book about Martin Luther King Jr. with the purpose to inspire young Middle Eastern activists to adopt nonviolent strategies in their struggle for civil rights. In 2006, she co-authored and translated into English "Implacable Adversaries: Arab Governments Vs. The Internet" a report monitoring the power of internet medium in confronting the suppression of Arab regimes on people in the Middle East.

By mid-2010, Ziada launched a nation-wide campaign called “AB Human Rights” to educate kids at primary schools and orphanage houses about human rights. On September 11th, 2009, Ziada founded Fearless Fighter for Faith Freedom (5Fs) campaign for promoting religious freedom and tolerance. In November 2008, Ziada held the first Cairo Human Rights Film Festival; the first film festival of kind in the history of the Middle East, despite all the hardships and challenges she faced on both security and logistics levels.

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