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Iranian Women's Organization Featured by VOA's Persian News Network


Live broadcast to feature activists from One Million Signature Campaign

Washington, D.C., January 21, 2009 – One Million Signature Campaign, a grassroots Iranian women's organization that received the prestigious 2009 Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women's Freedom today, is the subject of special, in-depth Voice of America (VOA) coverage.

Hamideh Aramideh, the anchor of Today's Woman, a daily show on VOA's Persian News Network (PNN), is in Paris, France to cover the event. On Thursday, she will host live from Paris a show that features poet Simin Behbahani, a human rights activist at the forefront of One Million Signature Campaign, and Shahla Shafigh, who has also worked on the campaign.

One Million Signature Campaign works against discriminatory laws in Iran, such as men's uncontested right to divorce, polygamy, and child custody.

Alex Belida, PNN's acting director, said the coverage is an example of the network's "ability to go anywhere, anytime, live, to bring our Iranian audience news and information that they deserve to see and hear."

The Simone de Beauvoir Prize, founded in 2008 on the 100th anniversary of de Beauvoir's birth, is awarded annually to individuals or groups fighting for gender equality. The prize is named for the French philosopher who espoused gender equality.

VOA has the largest combined radio and television audience of all international broadcasters in Iran, with one in four adult Iranians tuning into a VOA show at least once a week. PNN broadcasts seven hours of television a day, repeated for a full 24 hours.

The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA broadcasts approximately 1,500 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 134 million people. Programs are produced in 45 languages.

For more information, call VOA Public Relations at (202) 203-4959, or e-mail askvoa@voanews.com.

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