Maryam Zar

I was seven the first time I went away from home. I lived in Iran and my parents sent me off to Switzerland for summer camp. I have thought for years if shipping my brother and me off each summer tugged at their heart strings a little.

Recently I've given...

Every year, March brings the rebirth of Spring, the holiday of Nowruz for people across the Middle East and Asia, and International Women's Day for women -- and men -- around the world.

This year is the one hundred and first year the globe celebrates women and advocates for...

Whitney Houston was big in the 90's. So big that even young folk in Iran were listening to her music.

At the time, I was a correspondent in Iran and I had befriended a young man who worked in my mother's Central Tehran office. He was 24 years old when...

Indulge for a moment, in a little imagination: It is January 2013 and the Western hemisphere's embargo on Iranian oil has begun to have an impact on the nation's economy. What happens to Termeh, Simin and Nader from the award-winning movie A Separation, under the sanctions?

Let's take a peek...

Ever confuse Iran and Iraq? Well, you may begin to -- if history repeats itself in the way it looks to be headed at the moment.

In case you've already forgotten, the U.S. wrapped up its "involvement" in Iraq just last month, complete with a ceremony at Baghdad International Airport...

With a Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukkah to everyone who takes part in the Winter Holidays by virtue of a belief system that celebrates the season with joyful traditions of faith, family and friends, I must also make note of the Persian conundrum, in which I and my like-minded...

Today I am going to take the liberty of using the precious space I have on this screen to introduce you to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, because Saturday is the International Human Rights Day.

How many of us really know what the Declaration stands for? It...

Today in Tehran, crowds of menacing men hurled stones at the British embassy, set nearby cars on fire and chanted "Death to England" while burning the British flag.

If I juxtapose the word "British" or "England" with the word "U.S.," you would think this were 1979. But it...

This weekend as we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, it is difficult for those of us in the aid community not to think of the scarcity of food that grips much of the world. With a global recession underway and climate change affecting the way the rain falls and the sun...

This week Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced new, stricter sanctions on Iranian banks and those doing business with them, in order to put pressure on Tehran to engage in nuclear negotiations. Last week, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Mark Kirk introduced an...

On Sunday in the Ivory Coast, women were massacred in an ambush while protesting peacefully in the streets. Last week in Libya, women were gunned down while being used as human shields by mercenaries. Still, despite these attacks, women are out in protest across the Middle East and beyond, asking...