On March 5 we launched the first of a 3-part webinar series, titled, "Arab Women & Feminist Visions for Equity and Belonging," featuring speakers from Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, and Algeria. This first event in the series was on the theme, "Rights, Equity, Dignity & Social Justice," with the discussion covering the efforts to promote gender equity, intersectionality, and the diverse struggles and identities of Arab women.
The Arab Women & Feminist Visions for Equity and Belonging webinar series is the inaugural series of the Global South Lab, and Global South Women and Feminist Visions for Worldmaking at the Othering & Belonging Institute. Learn more here.
Speakers included:
- Leila Hessini (moderator) is a pan-African feminist organizer and strategist of Algerian heritage with over thirty years of experience working at the intersections of philanthropy, organizing, research and advocacy.
- Siouar Douss [she/her] is a Tunisian gender justice practitioner, human rights defender, and feminist philanthropy professional, currently serving as the Manager of Feminist Crisis Response at the Global Fund for Women.
- Wafa Mustafa is a Syrian activist, senior communications and advocacy lead at The Syria Campaign and a former non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) and Refugees International.
- Yanar Mohammed is the founder of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) that started the first shelters for women from domestic and systemic abuse.
Transcript
- Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everyone. Assalam Alaykum and welcome. And Ramadan Mubarak to those observing. My name is Basima Sisemore and I'm a Senior Researcher in the Global Justice Program at the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley. And I'm a co-designer for the Arab Women and Feminist Visions for Equity and Belonging webinar series. It's our pleasure to have you join us today for the webinar, for the first webinar of the series, which is being held to coincide with International Women's Day, also known as International Working Women's Day, on March 8th. And we want to start the session in conversation today by honoring and acknowledging the histories, achievements, and the current moment of women around the globe struggling for social, cultural, economic, and political change to advance women's rights, gender equity, labor rights, human rights, and the health of our planet. In honor of International Women's Day, the theme of today's webinar is on rights, equity, dignity, and social justice. And the conversation will focus on Arab women and feminist-led movements and their role within society in the Arab region in shaping civic life and social and political progress in the Arab region to advance, as the title suggests, rights, equity, dignity, and social justice. Additionally, the conversation today will uplift the intersectionality of Arab women and feminist movements and struggles as they strategize for social and political progress for women and society as a whole. I would also like to take a moment to make an acknowledgement regarding this series, in that in designing this series, we've strived for a diverse representation of topics, struggles, geographies, identities, expertise, lived experiences and histories as related to Arab women and feminists living in the Arab region and diaspora. And we fully acknowledge that this series barely touches the surface of the many topics that can and should be centered in these conversations. And each session is designed to provide a small window or glimpse into the immense diversity of Arabs and Arabic-speaking peoples that create the rich cultures, identities, histories, social and political fabric of the 22 Arab countries that span East, North, Sub-Saharan Africa, and West Asia that constitute what we know as the Arab region. We would also like to acknowledge our OBI colleagues in our Communications team and Lara Habboub on the Democracy and Belonging Forum team for their close collaboration and support on this series. And we'd also like to thank the Sultan Program of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley for partially funding this webinar series. And of course to thank our incredible speakers and our moderator for being here with us today and for participating in this inaugural event. I'd now like to invite my dear colleague and Global Justice Program Director Elsadig Elsheikh, who is a co-designer for this project and webinar series, to introduce and to provide some context to the Global South Lab, which this webinar series is a part of and that we're publicly launching today. Elsadig, please come on. The floor is yours.
- Thank you, Basima. Hello everybody. I'll try to be brief. Our work today is filled with all sort of othering across the global government systems and international relations. To minimize such outcome, for over a century, generation of global south thinkers, public intellectuals, movements, and civic institution have called for imagining a different world outside of the dominant political, social and ontological thoughts of the global north. They argue that such a modality exists within and throughout the global south's historical and contemporary diverse modality and imagination of world-making. Almost 90% of the world populations lives in the global south. At the same time, the region is not merely a geographical location, but a truly global project that has long been ignored, it is knowledge being concealed, and it is vision deliberately being marginalized. The global south has unmatched social and natural diversity and varying degrees of economic and political development and governance systems. And the multifaceted experiences and perspective of the global south would contribute significantly to a more inclusive and equitable world. This reality underscores the importance of the global south's role not as passive participants, but as a critical co-creator of today's and future design of global governance systems. As such, our lab, the Global South, past, present, and future of homemaking is a platform for engaging with the global south's social assets and institutions. It is dedicated to unearthing the wealth of global south experiences, perspectives and visions. We aim to foster mutual understanding, respect, and deeper bridging that will help improve people's life and preserving our planet. To do so, we will partner with social actors in institutions and movements across the global south to bring together a wide range of perspectives and vision from the global south to engage with global citizens, both in the south and in the north, on contemporary challenges to build common strategies that envision a future where everyone and everything belong. Furthermore, the lab's activities, which will include lectures, interviews, and webinar series like the one you will be watching today, will focus on the need to uplift and disseminate knowledge so that global citizens can learn from each other, contribute and co-create strategies to realize such a future. But more than just a platform for learning and discussion, the lab will also serve as an incubator space where future global citizens' strategies and cooperation could emerge. I will encourage you to follow us and share your ideas with us. Thank you. Back to you, Basima.
- Thank you, Elsadig. And I'll just underscore the intentionality behind the Global South lab in this series, in that both the series and the lab are part of a larger effort at the Othering & Belonging Institute as Elsadig illuminated to create platforms where global citizens can learn from each other, contribute and co-create common strategies that envision a future where everyone and everything belong. So, thank you for being on this journey with us. This three-part public webinar series, Arab Women and Feminist Visions for Equity and Belonging, focuses on Arab women and feminist-led efforts and their essential roles within society in the region in shaping civic life and social and political progress in the Arab region. Women and feminists throughout the region and diaspora representing different countries, lived experiences, struggles and identities will share their knowledge and expertise in advancing social and political change, democratization, women's rights and gender justice, knowledge production, food sovereignty, land rights, and much more, while simultaneously centering their voices and demands for rights, equity and justice for all. And so that's a little bit of a teaser of the webinars and conversations to come that we'll have in April and in May. And of course, we'll send out more information to join those. And this is also an invitation and effort to center global south perspectives and voices that are often underrepresented. And for this series in particular, we want to reflect the priorities of Arab women and feminists and their visions, values, and strategies toward equity, justice, belonging, and world-making, as well as to broaden narratives and perspectives beyond a Western narrative and Western public opinion pertaining to Arab women, Arab peoples, Arab societies, and the Arab region at large. And as I wrap up, I have a quick note on housekeeping, in that following our conversation today with the speakers, there'll be 15 minutes towards the end for questions to be brought forth from the audience and shared with the speakers to answer. So, please continue throughout the event to add your questions in the chat and we'll be sure to share those with the speakers. With that, I'd like to transition to our conversation with our incredible speakers, and I'll start by introducing our moderator for today's session, Leila Hessini. And it is my honor to introduce Leila. Leila is a Pan-African feminist organizer and strategist of Algerian heritage with over 30 years of experience working at the intersections of philanthropy, organizing, research and advocacy. Leila was born in Algeria and educated in the United States, France, and Morocco. And she has lived and worked in over 40 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Leila currently works as a Senior Strategist with philanthropic foundations, feminist funds, social justice movements, and women's rights organizations across Africa and the Middle East to advance social justice and rights-based resourcing and movement strategies. Thank you, Leila, for being here with us today and for moderating this conversation. I pass it to you.
- Thank you. Thank you so much, Basima, for the warm welcome and the introduction, and thank you all who are on this call today for taking time to be part of this conversation. It's an essential conversation, and so important in the context that we are in today. And so I'm thrilled to share this platform with the three panelists, Siouar Douss, who is a Tunisian human rights defender who currently works at the Global Fund for Women as the manager of their feminist crisis response. We have Wafa Ali Mustafa, who's a journalist and an advocate for people who have been forcibly disappeared and are missing in Syria and works on a range of women's rights issues. And then Yanar Muhammad, who is in Iraqi feminist activist and co-founder of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq. And so it's great to be part of this panel and to have the representation from North Africa as well as the Middle East or the SWANA regions, Southwest Asian and North Africa, on this call. So, I'd like to begin just with a question around kind of positionality and framing. We know that the personal is political, and so I'd like to ask each of you, starting with you, Siouar, can you describe your journey that led you to the current work that you're doing? What has your journey been in terms of engagement with the feminist and women's rights movement? Siouar, I'll pass it to you.
- Thank you so much, Leila, and welcome everyone. Very honored to be here, and just like, very happy to have these conversations as we know as how much important it is, particularly during these times. Well, my journey into global south, let's say, feminism, activism and practice was shaped really by the sense of contradiction, let's say. I grew up in Tunisia, I witnessed how women were both central to society, respected as knowledge holders, the ones who transferred traditions and wisdom, but at the same time systematically denied equal rights. Unlike the Western patriarchy, Arab patriarchy actually prioritizes male and elder rights, meaning that as women, as they age, they gain more authority and respect. However, this respect is often conditional. It exists within a structure that upholds male privilege limiting women's agency. So from a young age, I really found refuge in the works of our feminists like Nawal Saadawi. Like, she named what I had felt but could not yet articulate. I was too young to articulate what I was feeling, that the discrimination I witnessed and experienced was not personal, was not imagined, was systematic. And Nawal really confirmed to me repeatedly through her writing that I was not crazy, nor like, hysterical. I was just not blinded by patriarchy. She gave me language to trust my own reality. And from there, I never really stopped questioning, resisting, imagining alternatives. Very big event that really was a turning point for me personally was the Tunisian Revolution in 2011. It was more than political uprising. It was a collective reawakening, a question, decades of oppression, and allowed for spaces to reimagine what was possible, not only in governance, but in gender roles, power, justice. The streets really became places where Tunisian feminist ideas could be articulated in our own terms, rooted in culturally owned representations of womanhood, of autonomy, of dignity. Women and also socially gender non-conforming people flooded the streets not as separate voices from the revolution, but as an integral part of it. It wasn't just like an us versus them because, you know, I always struggled to hear this, as if like, it's a binary thinking, but it was a call for our community to unite and reclaiming dignity, rights and belonging, noting that as Arabs, community is everything for us. We cherish and rely on our community as a strong support system. So the revolution made it clear that social justice could not be achieved without gender justice. Yet, you know, as its political transition unfolded, it became equally clear that women's demands were being sidelined. And I think this is really not particular to Tunisia, but everywhere globally. Even those who had marched for change alongside us were quick to label feminist struggles as secondary, as something that could wait. So through my studies, I studied also gender, and I worked in feminist organizations both in Tunisia and also now I'm holding a global position. I came to see how feminist struggles in Tunisia and the broader Arab region are often misrepresented, but particularly in global discourse. Like, in recent, one of my research, I examined the movement against gender-based violence in Tunisia, which is commonly falsely portrayed as a byproduct by the global Me Too Movement. But in reality, Tunisian women and also other women, other Arab women, have been speaking out long before the Me Too Movement became mainstream. The feminist consciousness not emerged post-revolution was not an important idea. It was deeply rooted in local struggles from resisting the colonial French oppression to independence, challenging authoritarian regimes, to fighting gender-based violence in all its forms. So this realization of that women's resistance is often erased or co-opted, shaped by my commitment to my current role, working now on feminist crisis response at Global Fund for Women. Today, I work with movements across the MENA region, but also globally supporting women in moments of crisis, whether it's war displacement, political repression, climate crisis, or economic collapse. I tend to always view crisis as moments of transformational awakening or opportunities for transformational justice. That's how I keep doing the work that I'm doing. I also think that it's also about power, really, shifting power what's important. It's also disrupting system that sustain oppression and building collective strategies for collaboration. And also it's very important to know that dismantling the entire system that sustains inequality, it's the patriarchy, the state economy, the neo-colonial structures that dictate the conditions of our oppression. So for me, it's not really a theoretical exercise, it's a survival strategy. It's a survival strategy. It's a way of ensuring that women, particularly those most marginalized, do not remain invisible. It's about holding space for grief, anger, resistance, and a lot of joy, honestly. And it's also about never allowing those who benefit from our silence to make us doubt what we know for sure, what we know to be true.
- Thank you, Siouar. Thank you so much for that. And maybe we can share, Basima, some of like, Nawal El Saadawi, who hopefully many of you know, who is, was, unfortunately she's passed, but a prominent Egyptian writer, feminist, physician, who wrote some of the most groundbreaking work about the realities of Egyptian women's lives. And maybe what we can do is share some of, in the chat, some of the women and feminists, the names that have influenced us and who've also been translated into English for a US audience. So, thank you so much, Siouar. You've raised so many great points that we'll come back to later on in this conversation. And Wafa, I'd like to invite you to address this same question, please.
- Thank you so much, Leila, and of course, it's an honor to be here. I mean, I said this when we were preparing the event, I'm really, really flattered to be, you know, speaking today among such incredible activists and women. I think what I share with Siouar is the moment of the evolution. And I think this is something many, many women in the region share. The revolutions in our region were like, a moment, of course, it depends on how old we were, but I think for many of us who were, you know, old enough to take part in the revolution, all revolutions starting in 2011, that was a moment of, you know, as also Siouar said, like, awakening moment, for everything, you know, about everything about ourselves, about the meaning of, you know, about the meaning of existence and about the meaning of any action, or, you know, all actions we can or we're trying to do. And I think, you know, for me, I grew up in a household of like, you know, three sisters. And, you know, my family was, you know, for so long I grew up in a quiet, you know, open-minded, I would say, city in Syria, near the city of Hama. And my hometown is called Masyaf. It's a very diverse town, you know, on all levels. But, you know, for so long, I think I grew up thinking that that was the norm of, you know, everywhere in Syria, the way I was raised, the way I was empowered by my father and my mother. I thought that was the norm. And I think the evolution was also a moment of confronting the reality, the different realities in Syria, the realities of different women in different places and different backgrounds. And I think, you know, the revolution on all levels was the moment for me that, you know, that made me think of myself as a woman who can, you know, take action, that can, you know, contribute to changing the reality of all women and all people in the country. It was also the moment of, you know, me, I would say maybe like, redefining, you know, politics and political actions, and you know, the different roles, gender roles we had in Syria in different places. It was also a moment of, you know, a reality because, you know, as I said, Syria is a very, very diverse country, but we were for so long, you know, of dictatorship of the Assad regime. We were separated. We were forced to be separated, so we fear each other, so we don't know each other. So we, you know, everyone is just, you know, everyone is just like, our existence was just reduced to the daily basic survival. So, you know, not even thinking about any political action or any political meaning. But unfortunately also, you know, in 2013, two years after the start of the Syrian revolution, my father got kidnapped or arrested by the Assad regime from Damascus. And yeah, that was also another moment that, you know, changed my life, I would say, and changed I think the life of, you know, my whole family and my community. But it was also a moment of, you know, it was a huge shift to be honest, because a lot has to have, you know, had to happen afterwards. You know, my father got arrested, and we are a family of, you know, three sisters and my mother, and then I was the eldest and I had to take care of the family. I had to arrange, you know, us fleeing the country with, you know, my sister who was, you know, who was 13 at that point. And then I realized for the first time, for example, that women in Syria, mothers, were not allowed to leave the country with underage kids without the consent of the father. And, you know, in the case of, you know, the father being arrested by the authority, it was a huge, you know, challenge. It was, you know, something I didn't really know about before, and I had, you know, to learn about, and I had to confront and I had to take action about. So, we had to flee the country illegally. And then, you know, unfortunately, we fled to Turkey and then we had to, you know, we fled with nothing, like many, many other families of detainees who were, you know, big number of the detainees in Syria were men. So, that meant that, you know, those who were left behind were mainly women, women, mothers with kids, you know, and then women who had to take care of the kids who had to leave the country, mostly illegally, who had to leave to another, you know, to a new country with nothing and start from scratch, and you know, build a new life for the kids, but still at the same time live this parallel reality of, you know, having to search for your husband, or like, for your father, or for your brother, or, you know, for your relatives. And unfortunately it's been a very, very difficult journey, you know, being, you know, just a family of three women in a new country, of course exposes you to, you know, all kinds of, you know, exploitations and challenges and difficulties. I was 23 back then. I had to work, you know, for like 19 hours to support my family financially and still also pay money, unfortunately to, you know, war martians who were, you know, seeking, who were exploiting our suffering. You know, they would come to us asking for money in exchange of information that, of course, unfortunately were not to you, but we also had to pay for that because we could not just, you know, refuse it. So, I would say, you know, I think that that was, you know, that that stage after my father's disappearance shaped my vision and the lens I, you know, I used and I still use today to look at myself, to look at every action I do, to look at other women, and also to understand political change, you know, and understand maybe it changed not only in my own country, but you know, in the region, and in the south, in the global south. But also to understand my role as someone who comes from the global south and lives today in the global north for political reasons.
- Thank you so much, Wafa. That was so rich with so much information about your personal journey and what it means to stay in a country, what it means to leave a country, what it means to move to a third country, and what kind of infrastructure and support does or doesn't exist. So, much food for thought. Thank you so much for sharing at a very personal level. Yanar, I'll now come to you.
- Thank you, Leila, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with all of you. And I mean, it's a very long journey. It's not a day or two, and as you can tell, I am a bit older from the other women in this call. So, where to start from? I would like to also mention something that when we're speaking about Arab women, and I'm glad that Basima mentioned Arab-speaking women, because many of our countries have an ethnic and a beautiful racial mix, where we are Arab-speaking and the language gets us together. But many ethnicities, many races are mixed, and therefore comes the name Iraq. Iraq in Arabic is Iraq. It's not just one race, but many races combined together, and gives that richness to a people where, I don't wanna say go back to Mesopotamia, but, it was beautiful that we lived at a time when nobody asked anybody, "What's your religion or what's your ethnicity?" What we know by the language that we speak and by the cuisine that we have in our homes where we share everything. So, Arab-speaking woman, and from here, I go on to the other points. If I wanna remember the first steps of my journey, I would say as a young girl, the gender differences and the imbalance of treating kids in a family based on their gender bothered me since a very long time, since I was very young. I felt that the privileges were always for the males and that servitude and other designated descriptions are for the women. Like, if a girl or a woman is not pretty, or does not serve well at home, she's not worth much at home. So, some of us have more of that feminist chemistry in them since they are very young. And you believe that you can liberate yourself by studying, by establishing yourself, and therefore be independent. And Iraq as a country offered that independence more to women than I would say countries in the region. We were able to have economic independence and the education, but going back to the steps that got me to where I am, I would say it only takes one bad marriage to make you understand that you are supposed to be a less person in that social relationship, and that everybody expects you to accept the oppression because it's the norm, just like my colleague said. Having been introduced to revolutionary literature that describes the oppression of women and compares it to the oppression of working class upon the hands of the exploiters, I would say feminism was built basically, my feminism was built basically, on Nawal Saadawi but also got richer by learning revolutionary analysis of oppression. And I would jump here to the year 1995 when I had to leave Iraq because Saddam Hussein made life for us intolerable in Iraq, and I found myself in the West. And then the other moment was when the American bombs were bombing Baghdad, the carpet bombing all over. That's when your, not only your dignity as a woman, but as an Iraqi gets ruptured, that you feel that you have to do something. So, it only took one telephone call for a friend who suggested that a woman's organization is needed in Iraq. And I found myself flying there, founding a women's organization, and then trying to understand and also to visualize what the Iraqi, the Iraq that we deserve should look like. And in my imagination, I thought, women have to be equal to men. Women should not be suffering from oppression. But also occupation should not have happened in the first place. And at the time, they used to tell us, if not for the West coming and liberating Iraq, what would you have done? My answer is that the Arab Spring came and another Arab Spring will come, and here I am saying Arab, but maybe I should say Middle Eastern. So, other moments that really affected me, were after we set up, me and the other women on the organization set up shelters for women, I remember a girl who I like to call her Basima, that's not her real name, coming as a broken individual who the society took everything from her, left her with nothing. Cut hair, no dignity, she didn't weigh like anything at all, coming into our shelter. And then after six months, stepping out of the shelter looking like a Hollywood actress, that beautiful, that social transformation, when you build, when you turn a broken person into a strong and fierce feminist who can change the future for generations of females to come. And those fierce feminists who will not be told that they are the other, and that they do not belong to their society, those females can shape the future. I believe I'm in that moment to stay and I will keep on working on it until it becomes a reality in Iraq. Now, the occupation of Iraq divided us as a society, and they knew exactly how to divide us, based on religion, based on ethnicity, based on sectarianism, and turned us into small groups who are against at the throat of each other. But I believe feminists will be part of the solution and it might take many other years to come. So, there.
- Thank you. Thank you so much, Yanar, and thank you for reminding us how unfortunately the diversity of our region gets reduced often to Arab, to Islam, to certain realities that get surfaced in the US in particular since this is the audience we're addressing here, and that we need to really think about the diverse history and herstories of our region, the diverse realities of our regions, the incredible pluralism that exists and has existed over time. And I think it's important also to recognize where we've come from. So we've, many of you, Siouar and Wafa, we spoke about the revolutions. We know that the seeds for this revolution and that women's and feminist involvement have been part of the rich history of our region. And women have shown up as writers. In Morocco, the first university was created by a woman. Women were very deeply involved in the revolutionary struggles across the region. This isn't always known, but we know it, those of us who have studied the region. And so I'd like each of you to talk about a little bit the feminist herstories that we know about, what have feminists and women been involved in in terms of the history of activism in the different countries and regions that we're part of. And I'll start with you, Wafa, if you could begin.
- Sure.
- Thank you.
- I mean, let me start by saying, I think, and this is something we all agree on, it's difficult for me to speak about, like, any historical context that is, you know, related to any cause or any topic in Syria as if, you know, Syria has always been the country that we know of today. You know, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and other places, we were all like, you know, it was the same area, and then, you know, a British-French agreement by two men decided to, you know, divide us into what we know, or maybe what we identify as today, you know, as Syrians or Iraqis or Egyptians or whatever. So, but maybe I can, you know, after saying this, I can maybe just say a few information about, you know, at least in the region, in the area that is known today as Syria, you know, feminist movement started in the late 19th century during what we, you know, what is called the Arab Al-Nahda, the Arab Renaissance, which was like, a period of cultural revival. And you know, it did not, it was not only limited to Syria, but also, you know, Egypt and Lebanon and other places. And I think, you know, at that point, the main demands of this movement in Syria was, you know, for a cause for basic rights, like, you know, the right to education and the right to vote. I can just maybe mention, like, drop just two names we know of, Maryana Marrash, and she was, you know, one of the first Arab women to publish in newspapers advocating for women's emancipation and intellectual engagement. We also know of Marya Ajami and Adila Bayham, and they both, you know, worked in women cultural and social organizations. And in Syria as we know it today, women gained the right to vote in the year 1953. But unfortunately, you know, it all goes back to, you know, the moment of revolution when the Ba'ath Party came to Syria, and then the Assad, of course, and then after a series of military coupes, the Assad regime took over in the year 1970. And I mean, it's still unbelievable to say that, you know, this dictatorship has just ended a few months ago after 54 years of, you know, ruling and destroying the country. Of course, they, you know, throughout these years, the Assad regime, the father and then Assad, the son, they suppressed, co-opted, and of course controlled all feminists in any, you know, not only feminists, any woman activism, any women movements in Syria. Of course, for years the only allowed organization in Syria when it came to women and feminism was the The General Union of Syrian Women that, of course, was, you know, controlled by the Assad regime and it also functioned as a state-controlled, you know, entity promoting the government agenda and the government narrative. And it did not really, of course, it was not at all about women's right or any feminist values. And you know, while, you know, on the global level feminist movements in the 60s, you know, was busy and introducing gender discourse and examining social roles, unfortunately, not only Syrian, but many Arab, like many women in our region, were busy and controlled by, you know, dictatorships, and by, you know, corrupted powers in their own countries. But that did not, you know, prevent women like Hanan Nijme who was, you know, in the 80s still, you know, trying to work to push for legal reforms and better conditions for women and children. But let me also mention some, you know, a woman that I know personally, Fadwa Mahmoud, is today a mother and a wife of, you know, Abdulaziz Al Khair and Maher Tahan, who were unfortunately kidnapped by the Assad regime in the year 2012, a year after the start of the Syrian Revolution. Fadwa was one of the women who, you know, in the 80s was fighting against this dictatorship. She was arrested for years when she, you know, when she has her two kids waiting for her at home. She did not give up. She was still fighting against this regime. She was arrested, you know, many of her comrades were killed, were assassinated, but that did not stop her from fighting for her rights and for political change in the country. And Fadwa is, you know, someone who's still fighting till today. And this is, I mean, to me, this is mind-blowing. You know, she's still fighting despite all the challenges, all the difficulties and all the horrors she saw, she's still fighting. And Fadwa is just one woman I know of. But, you know, reaching the moment of the revolution in Syria, I mean, I think it will take me years to talk about, you know, what women, you know, have done, you know, after the revolution started in 2011. I would say Syrian women, of course, Syrian and also Palestinian women, because we also have like, you know, a huge diaspora of Palestinian women in Syria, have participated in every single level of the Syrian Revolution. You know, they were a part of everything. And I would also like to mention maybe someone like Razan Zaitouneh, she was a human rights lawyer, and Razan unfortunately, you know, she advocated and she fought for women rights and for, you know, everyone's rights in Syria for years, before she got kidnapped by, you know, a military group that was, you know, an opposition group in December 2013. And unfortunately, you know, fighting against the regime and choosing to go to a place that was under siege by the regime and, you know, Russia and Iran, did not protect someone like Razan from being kidnapped and targeted by other, you know, extremist groups in the area. I would also like to mention someone like Fadwa Souleimane. Fadwa Souleimane was also someone who, you know, was like, one of the most famous women chanters in Syria. She participated in many protests alongside other men chanters. She was very, very famous. She was targeted by the regime, and you know, she just, you know, moved from one city to another, one place to another, to be part of these protests. And she was challenging, you know, the sectarianism that the regime, you know, has used to, you know, to shape a narrative against the Syrian Revolution. And Fadwa was one of those women, you know, from a minority in Syria who just went to all Syrian cities, sang and danced and chanted with every single person regardless of their sect, of their, you know, background. And she challenged their regime, and unfortunately, we lost her to cancer a few years ago. And today, maybe just briefly to say, like, today we're, you know, it's a completely new phase, you know. The Assad regime has fell a few months ago. And now we have a government, a new government, that of course is formed, you know, by a military group, an extremist military group, that also, you know, had ruled some part of Syria for the past years, and had also of course committed, you know, huge violations not only against women, but against activists, you know, against all people in the area, and against even other military groups that were like, more moderate, I would say. And this is a very challenging, you know, phase for Syrian women, but I would say, just to make it brief, I can talk a lot about this, but to make it brief, of course, it's a new challenging, difficult phase, but Syrian women and other women who live in Syria, Kurdish women, Palestinian women, all women, you know, who are inside Syria and even those who were in exile for years decided again to not, you know, isolate themselves and to go to Syria, and maybe those who cannot go to Syria, to fight again and to not accept to be, you know, isolated and put aside. And so I would say, like, every woman I know today in Syria and outside Syria is fighting so hard despite all the difficulties and the suffering we've been through in the past years, to be part of the new future, to be part of a new Syria, and to not accept, you know, to give up on everything we gained in the past years. Of course, we lost a lot, but we also gained a lot.
- Thank you. Thank you so much for also remembering how important it is our collective memory, our collective calling out, and remembering the names of those women and feminists who have come before us, but recognizing all around us, as you said, Wafa, that everybody is mobilizing, that everybody has a stake in what happens in Syria's future, and that they're engaged in that because they know personally how much there is to lose. So, thank you so much for also calling out the names and hopefully we can share those either in the chat or as a follow-up with the participants. Yanar, I'll come to you now. If you could talk a little bit about the rich history of feminism and activism in Iraq.
- Yeah, thank you, Leila. Iraq was lucky for it's geographic location, which made it among many countries where the progressive movement was up and it affected the society. The progressives in Iraq had shaped our reality to take it from our grandmother's time, when they were living a very traditional life with not much rights for women, to a better life in our mother's times when the progressive vision, political parties, and the culture of the society really raised a woman's status in the society. And it also happened in the same time that the Iraqi oil was nationalized by the government. So, lots of oil, lots of resources, and a progressive movement, and women were encouraged to work where almost 40% of the workforce in Iraq was female. So, when you look at it in that sense, we had resources, women had their economic independence, and a strong progressive movement. And it also led, after the World War II, the personal status law was beginning to get drafted, and then it passed in 1959. This law gave women a very good threshold of women's rights in marriage, in divorce, in custody of their children. And a woman was treated as a, what do you call, as an individual in front of the court, not just as somebody who is a follower or belongs to a husband. And this was a major change in our reality in Iraq. So, the personal status law was that change-maker in women's rights in Iraq. And unfortunately, after a 2003 occupation that came in the name of democracy and rights for women, our reality was given over to the religious parties, to the sectarian parties, who have been at their attempts to take away our rights one year after the other. There was first an attempt in 2003 to switch us to Sharia law. And then there was another, Ja'fari law, and then trying to take away custody of women for their children if they get divorced. So, the attempts continued and they finally bore fruit this year in 2025, in January, when the Iraqi Parliament decided that the personal status law will not be applied for the half of the women's population under the Shia Muslim identity, because they will be dealing with their Sharia. So, after 22 years of occupation and so-called democracy, and after 65 years of having basic human rights for women in Iraq, we wake up three weeks ago, and the head of the parliament has given his order that the personal status law was undermined, totally undermined. So, our rich history here manifests itself. We in OWFI, besides five other organizations, got together and decided we will have a coalition that we call 188, because this personal status law is number 188. And we decided that we will defend our right to have a law that protects us in the face of the Iraqi Parliament that was imposed on us by this occupation, and still is being imposed on us. So Coalition 188 was put together last June, and currently has more than 400 organizations, and I would say more than 2,000 individuals. And we are challenging the government, that they cannot go on like this, that they were brought forward by the American occupation, and that they cannot take away women's rights. The rich history does manifest this itself in this way, but I mean, we still have a long struggle to follow. Thank you.
- Thank you, Yanar. And thank you for pointing out that one of the key areas of activism in Iraq, but also in other regions, has been around personal status laws, family codes that impact who women can marry, child custody, inheritance, and a range of other issues. And also highlighting the way that democracy has been used in ways that really have undermined the rights of men, women, and society at large. So, thank you for that, and pointing that out. Siouar, I'll come to you now.
- Thank you. There's of course a lot of similarities with some differences. I also relate to what Wafa was mentioning about the state feminism. I think that's something that we share as well in Tunisia. Well, just, I think the first thing that I always need people to understand is that the first feminist movement in Tunisia did not really begin with legal reforms. It began with resistance. Women fought against French colonial rule. So self-determination is a feminist issue, even though people would use the word feminist differently, but at least for people, for me, and for many feminists who come from Tunisia, self-determination is a feminist issue. And the first feminist movement in Tunisia actually started by fighting against the French rule, at first as fiercely as men, risking their bodies, their families, their futures, everything, they were, and you know, also, you know this as well in Algeria, of course, that's also the same. So, they were not just supporting, you know, the struggle, they were shaping and strategizing, leading, but of course, like, when the independence comes, and this is something that just happens a lot, is that when we're looking at history, how it's written, like, a lot of these amazing achievements and contributions are not written, like, adequately, at least to give like, you know, the sense. I would like to name some Tunisian feminist activists, like Dorra Mahfoudh, Ilhem Marzouki, Amel Mahfoudh, Sana Ben Achour, and other Tunisian feminist militants, activists, founders of feminist autonomous movement and researchers. They condemned the invisibility of the Tunisian human rights movement efforts. Historically, women have always been strongly involved in popular movements, and demand independence from colonial rule, and later fought for democracy and social economic rights. So, this is something that has always been part of the history of Tunisia. There's Shira Bimrad, a Tunisian women rights activist. She found and led the Muslim Union of Tunisian women from 1936 to 1956. Bimrad ensured that the mobilization of women to join the National Independence Movement and the creation of women's spaces to voice their issue under colonial rule. Which is also, for our Western audience to know, that this is a Muslim Union of Tunisian Women. And this is completely contrary to whatever stereotypes that would be thought about like Muslim women, but rather actually they were women Muslims and feminists, because the two words can coexist actually in the same phrase and coexist a lot. So, there's also a lot of women who at that time, like, they pursued education out like in France. We can also note like the and here I want to really say that abortion has been legal in Tunisia since 1973. So, abortion rights are legal, it's publicly accessible in Tunisia, which is sometimes when I mention this in Western or global north places, people are shocked. But actually there is the reality that continues to be. I also would like to say that, to finish, that in 2014 after the revolution, the feminist movement has ensured that even in the language in the constitution, it was in the beginning phrase as women are complimentary to men. Everything stopped, all the negotiations in the parliament, until we made sure that it's written in the constitution that women and men are equal. Yeah, that would be, I would end with that.
- Thank you, Siouar. And just to reinforce the point that you made, Tunisia liberalized its abortion law before Roe v. Wade, which has now been overturned, as you know. And so there's been a very, very dynamic mobilization around sexual and reproductive health rights injustice in the region, and notably in Tunisia, as well as all kinds of activism on women's rights issues more broadly defined. Siouar, I'd like to come back to you to talk about some of the work you're engaged in regionally. And Yanar, you mentioned, I think very well that our countries, or maybe it was Wafa, our countries, the way that they're constituted now are because of colonial rule and the ways that colonial powers divided our regions. And so our people are across regions and they're diverse, as we've all said, and there's incredible mobilization. Across the regional level, there's feminist schools, there's feminist networks, and I'd like you, Siouar, to talk a little bit about what those look like across the Magara, across North Africa, as well as on the regional level.
- Yeah, thank you so much. I think that now feminism in the region, or let's say some, I also would like to be very careful of that language, right? Because, you know, not everyone names themselves as a feminist, but doesn't mean that they are not. It's actually one of, the resistance is one of the most radical forms of feminism. But also because in language it could be seen as like it's a Western import, or like also very aligned with white feminism, which there's a lot of differences between global south and white feminism. But generally in the region, like, there is a lot of work that is like, on economic justice, actually. I would really want to emphasize this point that this is a global issue, this is not only for our region, when we talk about women working inside the houses and outside the houses, this is unpaid work. So, majority of women would work in informal jobs, agriculture, domestic work, factory labor, and they really employ large percentage of women in the region working in these sectors. But these jobs come with no protection, no constructs, no social security. And so like, there's also, I want to mention like, also pregnancy being as a financial risk. I think this is also in the US, so it's not really particular to our region, but like, you know, there's a lot of, the protection for that period of time of pregnancy and taking care of the kids, et cetera, it's also a challenge. But there is a lot of movements in the region who are really calling for, you know, economic justice for women, caring for children, that is still considered women's work, you know, but childcare services are either unaffordable or non-existent. But for our region we have, again, like a very strong community sense. So, we rely on each other in that sense for women to be able to at least, you know, rely on her mother, or her sister or like, so that's something that we have in our culture. We are also, economic justice is really a feminist issue. And I'm really happy that feminist movements around like, the region are demanding labor protection, access to affordable childcare and to pregnancy debt and discrimination. There's a lot of work on gender-based violence that is really notable. I want to mention that Tunisia have passed Law 58 in 2017. I really encourage people to look at that. This is a groundbreaking law that criminalizes all forms of gender-based violence, including domestic abuse, marriage rape, workplace harassment, and political violence against women. And this is actually seen as one of the most progressive laws in the whole world. Of course, law does not translate to, you know, implementation. So, there is like, if there's something that I learned throughout my work is that we do everything for the laws to be made, but we need to look at the lived experience of women and let them tell us what they are experiencing. I really enjoyed a lot, like in my work, there's a lot of work on, you know, it could be from funding shelters and long-term support for like, displaced, but also there's a lot of work on like, trying for government accountability to ensure that these laws are implemented. I would like also to mention that there's a lot of work on body autonomy that I'm really happy to witness. There's initiatives on sexual education that we never had before that's happening, in Arabic, to speak to not only women, but queer people, to feel that, and I wanna mention that, you know, for our audience is that we are all homo-sapiens and humans. So, queer people exist equally everywhere in this world. So, we do have queer people in our countries as they are everywhere. So, there is a lot of work, because sex education is not really in schools, for example, in Tunisia publicly, so there's a lot of work from civil society working on that. I also would like to mention like, arts as a great like, way of feminists evolving ideas. The revolutionaries, the feminists, the human rights defenders, the artists, the poets, they are like shooting stars and they are really ensuring that we are continuing to bring the joy in this revolutionary process. Revolutions and processes of change take history, takes years and years and years and years. And while working with activists, I know at least that these people who are working who are activists, they don't really even think about their lifetime, which is the most beautiful thing. They do things that they know that they will never even be, like, alive to witness, but they do their part. And I feel that I also have this responsibility of, I want to call it responsibility, but the heritage that I'm carrying from generations of generations of feminists before me who've done so much for me to go to school, for me to be able to wear whatever I want, for me to be as free as I can be. And so when I witness also the younger generation, and I am happy that you're mentioning feminist schools because we have one as well in Tunisia. And so when I see the feminist school and when I see the younger generation, I am so happy to see that, you know, the work that we're doing is really hard. It's a lot of pain, but it's also, we see the results, we see it literally in people next generations where like, few other things that took us forever to like, liberate ourselves from, they already have it. So, it's a joy to see things change honestly. So, but, no one should have to carry this fight alone. We should hold the fire together, everyone. And liberation is just not about tearing down what oppresses us. It's about imagining and creating something better. And I truly think that we are in a crisis of imagination. And so I feel like the more we imagine and we ping pong to each other ideas that are out of what we are like, programmed to think, the better as a collective we can raise our own liberation as a collective.
- Thank you so much, Siouar. So much interesting food for thought in terms of both how Tunisian, how we think about feminism, I think that first question, and what it means to work on women's rights issues but not necessarily identify as a feminist. And then the incredible groundbreaking work that Tunisian feminists and women's rights activists have done around redefining work, redefining collective care, the GBV law, if you could please share that in the chat, Siouar, so that we can share it with our audience. Those are all important, as well as the crisis of imagination. I think that's something that, if we have time, it would be really interesting for others to address as well. I'm going to come to you, Wafa, about how you also see, I mean, you've spoken so richly about the history, about different critical points in the Syrian history for women's groups and feminists. And now the current moment that you're in, if you could kind of lay a framework for what you see as some of the critical issues that women's rights groups are mobilizing around, specifically around women's rights as well as collectively the right of the disappeared and others. Thank you.
- Well, I mean, you know, first I just wanted maybe to say something as like, yeah, just to follow up on what Siouar was just, you know, talking about, because this conversation about mental health and healing and like, I think it's a very, very tough conversation on a personal level for me, but I also think for many, many women. And I was just reminded of, I think it's a book by Yara Sallam, she's an Egyptian feminist writer who wrote a book called, I think, "Even the Finest of Warriors." And it's a book about, I think she actually interviewed women activists from Egypt and from Tunisia. And it's about mental health and healing. And I think, you know, that's, you know, especially living in the West, and being an activist, you know, or being someone trying to do whatever for somewhere in the south makes this whole conversation about healing and mental health very, very difficult because, you know, there is something very, very, I would say, like, there is something to me very, you know, annoying about this conversation, having it at least in the north. And yeah, I think that's, you know, I was just reminded of that book and I think it's a difficult read for those who are, you know, struggling to, I don't know, heal. But this also takes me to the, you know, to your question about the challenges. I think to be honest, you know, after, you know, I mean of course Iraq has experienced this for decades, but like also, you know, after more than a decade of just continuous war, you know, of all levels of, you know, we've witnessed intersectional crimes of, you know, you have someone, you have a family member kidnapped or disappeared, and then you also have to flee the country. And then, you know, you also have to just establish a new life in a new country and all of that, and then still fight for the cause or for the country or for your loved ones. And it's very, very exhausting. And I think, you know, to be honest, you know, the moment the Assad, they announced that Assad has flipped the country, you know, for a second, for just a second, I thought that like, this is the moment for me to start a healing journey because, you know, the past few years have been very, very difficult. And then of course it took me a second to also remember that my father is somewhere between life and death in Assad's presence. And I just, now a new journey has to start, because I have to just go to Syria and find him. And fortunately, I went to Syria a week later. And I had to go through the journey of, you know, just scouting and exploring and wandering around prisons and detention centers and hospitals and morgues, looking at dead bodies to identify my father. And unfortunately, of course, I couldn't find any information. So, we're again, in the same, you know, like, for years we said that the Assad prisons are like a black hole. And yes, the black hole is open today, but it seems like now, you know, there is another level and another fight we have to go through. And I think that is one of the main challenges because, you know, yes, on the one side we have this whole fight for, you know, for women rights, for our rights in Syria, for shaping the country's constitution, for shaping the country's future. But at the same hand, you know, at least for me and for many, many other Syrian families, we still have to fight for a truth on daily basis. And you are fighting for a truth with a government, a new government that is not very, very, very dedicated and not very interested in finding the truth about a crime they themselves committed against other people. So, I would say at least, and I like, you know, I'm going to Syria in two, three days. And I would say that's, at least to me today, that's one of the main challenges, you know, where we're trying not to, again, isolate ourselves, but we're fighting for, you know, we're fighting, like few days ago there was the, you know, some sort of, you know, national conference that to many of us seemed like, you know, a theater play that was just, you know, supposed to happen. We were not really included. People were invited just the day before the conference. Women participation was just, you know, at it's minimum level. And all talks about, you know, forming committees to write the constitutional declaration or to, you know, to think of the future of the country seems to be very, very, you know, limited to certain figures with, you know, certain tendencies and political tendencies. And unfortunately women on a daily basis in Syria are still going to these places, fighting for their place, fighting for the margin that, you know, for years we fought for with the Assad regime, but we still have to fight for again today. And I would say, you know, just maybe one thing about, when it comes to the disappeared, I think, again, one of the main challenges today is that you have countless, like, I mean, you have thousands of families of only women because the men were arrested, killed, or maybe, you know, killed under torture, or in like, you know, in clashes or whatever. So, you have a huge number of women-only families, you know, just of woman, who today have to also struggle in a country that is, you know, that is devastated economically, politically, and socially. So I think, you know, that's a very, very, at least to me, I think that's one of the main challenges.
- Thank you so much, Wafa. So much, and our heart goes out to you. And we hope that when you go back to Syria, you will be able to find your father. And I think you raised a lot of important points about what happens when men have disappeared and what happens in women-only communities. What does healing look like? What does truth and reconciliation look like? How do we heal the wounds of these very real struggles and what that looks like in different contexts? And I think the piece on mental health and collective care and wellness is so important in healing. I wanted, Yanar, to ask you, and just to bring this conversation a bit linked to the Othering & Belonging's framing and institute, because in the check-in that we had, Yanar, you said it was so important to think about what it means to belong and how so many of us with hyphenated identities don't belong fully in either place we're in. If it's our countries of origin, if it's our countries of adoption, if our countries where we've immigrated, like my family. And I'd like you to address that question and then we'll come to some of the questions that were posed in the chat.
- I'd like to start with the idea that, as a feminist who's critical of the situation that surrounds her and her family, you are always othered. You are always silenced and told that, "Why are you not part of our community? Why are you subjecting to everything that we say?" And then you come to the West, when you say the same things, they tell you, "Why are you making us look bad in front of the Westerners?" Again, you are othered. And I went back home and set up this organization and I thought, okay, my goal is women's freedom. And it turned out that this concept was an atomic bomb by itself. When you sit among Arab communities and Middle Eastern communities and you speak about a woman's freedom, it is totally unaccepted. The Iraqi government until now does not accept that any woman leave her family home and come save herself within a shelter. So, they're not giving us legal status for the shelters. And on top of that, they have frozen our bank accounts because they say that this organization should not be. And today I was sent a video that shows me and other feminists in Iraq and calls us very bad names as if we are destroying the society. But going back to your question, Leila, the way that we have been othered is partly for being feminist. But also, if we think of the intersectionalities, especially when Iraq was invaded, the society was divided upon religious, sectarian, and ethnic lines. And we found that the bottom of the otherness is endless. For example, if you are a Shia Muslim woman, you are okay to be respected among your community. But if you are a Sunni woman, whose political block is not ruling in the parliament or not strong because the Americans chose to empower the Shia Muslim block, then you are less than the Muslim Shia woman. And then again, if you are a Christian, you should not be talking. Nobody wants to hear you. And the the intersectionalities here are endless. It reaches to a Yazidi women who was bought and sold very easily by ISIS, most of whom are Iraqis. I mean, the amount to which you can be othered and demeaned in the eyes of the society is unbelievable. And I have not spoken yet about the Black community in Iraq. If you are a Black Iraqi woman, usually in these current times you have no education, you will be illiterate, and nobody will offer you a job. And you are harassed wherever you are walking on the streets. So, the levels of demeaning women upon intersectionalities is unbelievable. So, as feminists, we believe that it is our task, as let's say, the protectors of the society, to protect the women who suffer from intersectionality oppression. But in the same time, within our communities, we do not acknowledge identity politics, because once you do that, that's a big trap. It opens up and it's endless because you have to give identities to everybody. And it turns out according to the text written or the norms that were put by your ruling political blocks, that some of us are better than others and at a higher status. So that, if I want to speak about divisions among the women that were imposed on us by the ruling intellect. But then again, if I speak about the networks of women that are around the country, and specifically in Iraq, because I know more about it, there are the networks that are trying to be feminist, although they are still analyzing some of the deep-seated discrimination that they have against other religions or ethnicities. And we found that out during when ISIS enslaved the Yazidi women, I was surprised to find out that many of the feminists that I really respected, they did not defend the Yazidi women. And they spoke very bad words against them in a way that made me feel ashamed for being an Iraqi. So, the networks come, some of them are on the, I would say on the more humane side, like the Network of Anti-Trafficking of Women in Iraq, which OWFI plays partly leadership of. And there are again, the state feminist networks that work with the government, like The 1325 Network. And there are those who consider themselves progressive, but they are very far behind on feminist issues. So, there are all kinds of feminism networks in Iraq. And here, my last point is about the government, Iraqi government that has shared it's information with other right-wing governments around the world. And they have started an anti-rights and anti-gender campaign, and they even do not allow us to say the word gender publicly anymore. And they brought forward legislation, where if you are not a man or a woman, you'll go to prison for 7 years or 10 years. And I'm afraid to say the words here because everything that I say goes through video clips and they make a campaign against you. So, the government, besides, I mean, the right-wing governments are holding their hands with each other and supporting each other to hit and to break the feminist movement and the freedom-loving movement. It reached to a point where we had to sit down and write a statement of solidarity with the American women and the American feminists who are suffering under Trump, whose organizations can be taken away from them at any point. So, a lot of feminist solidarity needs to be done around the world. Our region has some of the lessons, but we are still unable to work together as one single forum that is strong and that can stand against our governments. So, lot of work needed, and this is one of the forums where these solidarity forums can start. Thank you, Leila.
- Thank you. Thank you so much, Yanar. I think the point around solidarity both at the national, regional and global levels and how we advance that while recognizing that we have very diverse movements. And we're not going to agree on everything, but we can agree on showing up for each other and showing solidarity. So, there were multiple questions that came in the chat. I'm recognizing that we just have about eight minutes for the questions and then we'll be wrapping up the call. But I did want the panelists to be able to address some of the questions that are around, and you raised it, as well, you've all raised it in previous comments, but around intersectionality, like how we're building movements that truly are inclusive and intersectional and realize the diversity of our lived experience are identities in the work we do, how regional groups are supporting each other, and then there was a question around post-nationalism. So, any of those questions that this panel wants to take, you can see the others, as well. So if you want to address them, you can. But I'll give you each around two minutes to respond. I'll begin with you, Wafa.
- Sure, I think, to be honest, maybe I just want also to say something personal about intersectionality. I think that, you know, I've always talked about how, you know, I was named after a Palestinian news agency, so I was named Wafa because of that. And you know, I lived my first years in Al Yarmouk Camp, which is the biggest camp of Palestinians in Syria. And you know, I would stay, like my father took me to my first protest when I was 10, and that was around the second Palestinian Intifada. And then we also, you know, I like, you know, the invasion of a Iraq was also like, for me at least, I remember I was like 13. That was, you know, something that, you know, my family and the families around me lived on daily basis and like, people took to the streets every day to protest against that. And you know, so I've always said like, especially when I first arrived to Germany, you know, and then I heard all these talks about like, you know, by white activists about intersectionality and what it means and what it looks like. And I like, said once that it's so funny that everyone is so fascinated by these terms. And to be honest, I lived my intersectionality from the first day I was born. And I never knew that there is a term for it. I never used the term and I never knew that, you know, this is something that exists and that people just use to preach, you know, about how should things look like. So to me, intersectionality, now that I know the term, is a very, very, you know, I think is the main lens that I use to see everything I do. It's also, to be honest, is the practice that, you know, helped me survive the past few years. And to be honest, and by that, I mean that the fact that like, you know, at certain point I think the situation in Syria was very, very, very desperate. And you know, I, on a personal level, I like, tried every day everything I can to save my father. And I couldn't, you know? At some point, I really reached a point where I just, you know, my mental health was really, really bad. And I didn't, it was very difficult for me to, you know, to just be alive. Let me just put it this way. And I was really struggling with like, suicidal thoughts, and you know, but at the same time, you know, I had to work, I had to support the family, I had to fight for my father and all of that. And to be honest, what saved me from that was the mothers of Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli occupations prisons, and the mothers of, you know, Iraqi detainees who disappeared, who disappeared, like, you know, decades ago, the mothers of Egyptian prisoners who, you know, I looked at and I know that the context is very, very different. I could see the differences, but the similarities and the shared pain was what saved me from, you know, just this helplessness. And I owe it, to be honest, to like, you know, to Alaa Abd El-Fattah's family, to Wadad Halawani in Lebanon who's been fighting for 40 years for her husband, for, you know, the Palestinian mothers in all historic Palestine who've been for years, despite all the challenges, fighting for, you know, for their loved ones. And this is one form of this intersectionality that is not necessarily, you know, manifested through connections and, you know what I mean? Like, it's not that like they know of me, or I, they don't know I exist, but they literally saved my life. But then on the other hand, I would just want to say that also like, throughout the past years, I think especially for groups of women, family members, mainly women of the disappeared, we connected to mothers, you know, of Bosnia, Chile, Argentina, and of course mothers and women of the family of the disappeared in the region. And that was, you know, also like, a lot that gave us a lot of knowledge and a lot of strength.
- Thank you, Wafa. And thank you for talking about intersectionality as a practice. Siouar, can I come to you just in one minute if possible, to respond to any of the questions and then I'll conclude with you, Yanar.
- Yeah, I think I want to use this one minute just to like, as for us to reflect on something through, and thank you so much Wafa, for your sharing. I resonate so much what you were talking about intersectionality. Like the language, that it's a gatekeeper, as if like, you know, it's like we don't really need the language to be told to us for the concepts to exist. We've been existing and doing things and living, you know, without naming it and labeling it. But here we are. Just wanted to say that throughout my research, I was always like, you know, because my country went through a revolution, we're not gonna be like, brought up, you know, the democracy and the only democracy, and all of that language. So, I wanted just to say that through my research, I really found that democracy as it is right now, and as it was introduced to Tunisia, and it's introduced to all the, you know, the countries that had revolutions in 2011, it's really from the West and was never about values. It really focuses about procedures. So, for me it's like, it's really important for us to think that Western definitions of democracy have historically focused on the elections, political processes, rather than what democracy actually does for people. And democracy should not be just about voting every few years. It should be about justice, dignity, and collective wellbeing. And the feminist movements actually in Tunisia and in the Arab region is really challenging this very narrow version of democracy by pushing for real structural change beyond political representation. So, we might not really have answers of like, you know, what's happening and what would happen in Syria and Tunisia and whatever, because we are really, really creating our own model. And we would like to be respected to own our own future and our own land and own own culture and our own vision of how liberation is for us, because we do believe in community and our culture is really rooted in solidarity and a lot of love in our own way. So, just wanted to end by that.
- Thank you so much, Siouar. Love your definition of democracy and what it should be and who it should serve. Yanar, your final thoughts before we wrap up?
- Yeah, as long as we're talking about democracy, I always had a dilemma figuring out how we can have democracy when right next door there was a genocide of tens of thousands of people being killed, women losing their children, for no other reason than being Arab Palestinian, and for being blamed for the political conflict that they are not responsible of. And in the same time looking to the other side of the world where Afghani women lost all their rights, all their rights all together. They cannot even exist in the society, in the public forums, just because somebody decided to invade Afghanistan, then leave it up, wrap it up, and leave it for them. So, when you look at these two sides and then you look at the American women and how they feel sick to their stomach every time they turn on their news and they see their president and what he's doing, how he's aborting all American women's rights, I feel that the feminist struggle is a global struggle where we should be holding hands, we should be creating our forums, and build our strengths in a way that where, I will not say that we cannot overcome, we will overcome, but when we will overcome, that is the question. How to build these forums, how to build our strength, and how to bring the humane society around us to regain the realities that we deserve. I think it's our responsibility, Leila. It's feminists like us who should have the first say about our future.
- Yeah, thank you so much, Yanar, Siouar, Wafa. Thank you so much for your rich, rich contributions, your rich analysis, sharing from the heart, sharing from the mind, sharing from the soul. It was an incredible conversation. It's obvious that many more are needed, but just want to thank you all so much for the insights that you shared and for your contributions to this important conversation. Basima?
- Thank you so much, Leila. Thank you so much, Wafa, Siouar, Yanar, and again, Leila, for this incredibly rich conversation. You wrapped it up perfectly, Leila, in your closing comments. And I just deeply appreciate all of your words, your perspective, your experiences, and the work that you're doing in the world. And as you said, you know, this is a global struggle. It's not just an Arab woman struggle, it's not just an Arab feminist struggle, it's not just a US struggle, but it is a global struggle and we are all a part of it. So, thank you again. We're at time and in closing, I just want to make a brief announcement about some upcoming events that we have that are part of the Global South Lab. The next series, the next event in the series is on April 8th, same time, which is going to be focused on Arab women and feminists in knowledge production. So, focusing on the role of women and feminists in arts, cultural expression, education, in advancing social progress in the Arab region. We have another event on April 23rd, which is in recognition of the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference. And that's going to be a panel conversation with speakers from the global south. And the last webinar in this series will be on May 6th, focused on the critical role of Arab women and feminists in the struggle for climate justice, land rights, food justice, and sovereignty in the Arab region. And lastly, this recording will be available on the Othering & Belonging Institute's website as well as on the Global South Lab website that will be coming, will be publicly released in the coming weeks. So, you can look forward to all of that and you'll receive more information through emails if you're signed up to OBI's listserv. And we'll also continue to publicly announce the series and information for them. We hope you all enjoyed this conversation and that you'll join us for the next one. Thank you so much.
