. . WOMEN’S EQUALITY . .
Text from Facebook page of Guerrières de la Paix – Mouvement
This International Women’s Day has a special flavor. We know to what extent wars and conflicts can destroy struggles and weaken achievements.
We, The Warriors of Peace, are convinced that women, when they unite, form the most powerful shield against the destruction of the world. We are the resistance. We are the ones who hold on, who stay standing.
We, The Warriors of Peace, are a French pacifist and anti-racist movement bringing together Muslim, Jewish, Christian, atheist, practicing and unbelieving women of different origins and different cultures.
We are part of the pacifist movements of Palestinian and Israeli women.
They themselves had already been inspired by the movement founded by women in Liberia in 2003 to work towards an end to the civil war.
It is this chain of international solidarity of women that we wanted to extend when we organized the first edition, on March 8, 2023, of the Global Women’s Forum for Peace in Essaouira, Morocco. The event brought together activists from around the world, including Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2003, as well as Moroccan, Afghan, Syrian, Palestinian, Israeli, Uighur, Rwandan activists, etc.
On October 4, we participated in the “Mothers’ Call” march in Jerusalem alongside thousands of Palestinian and Israeli women, activists for peace and justice.
These women, beyond the walls erected to separate them and teach them to hate each other, gave the whole world a lesson in sisterhood, by walking together, hand in hand.
On October 7, 2023, the world turned upside down. Not our commitments. Nor our beliefs.
On October 7, the first images of the massacre were images of violence against women. The bodies of Israeli women exhibited, raped, mutilated and murdered were among the first images of horror to flood the Internet. Hamas terrorists boasted live about their feminicides. And, today, we dare not imagine what the women who are still hostages must endure on a daily basis.
Not condemning these crimes, not naming them is a moral fault. A lack of respect for our feminism.
From the start of the destructive bombardments by the Israeli army on the Gaza Strip, among the first images of horror, there were also defenseless women, mothers and children under the rubble. Women are at the heart of the humanitarian drama that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies are inflicting on Gaza.
We stand with our Palestinian sisters who are paying the heavy price of war crimes, mourning and destruction. We think of the pain inflicted on them by having to leave their homes, of seeing their children starving, of those mothers who bury their children with broken hearts, of those who had to give birth in terrible conditions amidst chaos and bombings.
We women cannot consent to the dehumanization of our sisters wherever they come from. The suffering of some in no way relativizes that of others and we must be able to recognize them all.
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Do women have a special role to play in the peace movement?
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It is important that we are also able to name all the crimes, and to be in solidarity with the horror experienced by our Israeli and Palestinian sisters. In times of war, women are on the front lines. Because they embody life, they are targets to be destroyed. It is therefore urgent that they take their full place at the negotiating table.
It is with this awareness that UN Resolution 1325 was adopted with the objective of increasing the participation of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, as well as in peacebuilding.
Women must be heard, recognized and involved. Moreover, when they are, peace comes more quickly and is more stable and more lasting.
Ensuring that women’s rights are respected everywhere is our all responsibility. If a woman is oppressed, wherever she is in the world, it is all of our rights that are violated.
Together we denounce femicide and violence against women, here and everywhere.
Our empathy, our indignation knows neither determinism nor assignment.
We denounce the inhumane treatment inflicted on our sisters in Afghanistan deprived of education, care and rights.
We stand alongside Iranian women who with incredible courage continue to challenge the power of the mullahs.
We stand alongside our Uyghur sisters who are victims of genocide and systematic rape committed in Chinese camps.
We think of our sisters who continue to live through terrible days in Congo, the scene of massacres of ethnic minorities, feminicides and mass rapes.
We think of our Armenian sisters, of the violence they suffered and of the exile which once again strikes them.
We think of our Ukrainian sisters, of the sexual violence that many of them endured, of their children kidnapped and deported to Russia.
We think of the Russian opponents forced to live in exile.
We think of the humanitarian chaos of which girls and women are the first victims in Sudan.
And unfortunately the list is still far too long.
We, the Warriors of Peace, will continue to stand, proud and determined, alongside all oppressed women, alongside all our persecuted sisters, everywhere in the world.
It is about our feminism. Of our duty as humanity.
Feminism is justice, equality and dignity for all. It is the refusal of assignment and division.
Feminism is peace.
JOIN US!
MARCH 8 – 6:30 p.m.
TOWN HOTEL SQUARE – PARIS
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