Category Archives: Women’s rights

Migration for Sex?

By Tania Kurd Mirza: If anyone wants to leave his own home due to unhappiness and, before his departure, reads the quote by Shams Tabrizi which says “However you go to the throne of God and sit on it, it is useless. what you need to do in the early stage is open your heart…

International Women’s Day Statement

By Peace in Kurdistan Campaign: ‘Women, reborn to freedom, will amount to general liberation, enlightenment and justice in all institutions of society…the 21th century “must” be the area of awakening, the era of the liberated, emancipated women’ – Abdullah Ocalan On International Women’s Day, 8 March 2016, Peace in Kurdistan campaign stands alongside all Kurdish women,…

AK Party’s Skirt!

By Tania Kurd Mirza: The Turkish ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) isn’t embarrassed by the deadly furnace that is fired up by Ankara towards a Kurdish combustion; they are embarrassed, however, by women’s short skirts.  The AKP sees women as essentially vile, wicked and dirty, not just in their minds and bodies; to the…

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women — Stop the IS-AKP Genocide and Feminicide in Kurdistan!

By the Women’s Commission of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK): On November 25, 2015, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the Women’s Commission of the Kurdistan National Congress calls on the international community— particularly the United Nations, the European Union, and the National Governments—to stop the IS genocide and feminicide in Kurdistan….

Allow Her Husband to Witness Her Giving Birth

By Tania Kurd Mirza: She is in childbirth, she is in so much pain, she feels like she is going to die…but the pain is joyful pain, she is giving birth to her child…yet why is her husband not allowed to be with her? In Kurdistan, hospital employees do not allow husbands to stay with their…

Roadmap of the Escalation: How Did the Turkish-Kurdish Conflict Upsurge Again?

By Kurdistan Women’s Community (KJK): Download the Background Information File in full (pdf) I. Political Evaluation by KJK The Turkish state has declared total war on the Kurdish people. The decision to undertake this strategy of total war was made at the meeting of Turkey’s National Security Council on 30 October 2014, when the resistance…

What Yezidi Sex Slaves Need: Money, Immigration, Revenge

By Dr. Amy L. Beam:  MONEY Many people want to help the Yezidi people who were viciously attacked, slaughtered, and kidnapped last August in Shingal, Iraq, but they do not know who to trust with a donation. I have sat in the tents and one-room container homes of many Yezidi women who have escaped from…

‘Girls Should Not Shout!’

By Tania Mirza: “I am dead but nobody is searching for my murderer” “Who and what do I defend … For this dead body?” These are some of the sentences from a Persian movie that I watched recently called ‘Shhhh Girls Should Not Shout’. This amazing movie reveals the enormity of the many hidden social…

When My Husband Died

By Tania Kurd Mirza:  When my husband died, we were in mourning. “She is honourable, she will wait on his grave,” my aunt said. My sister-in-law said, “She doesn’t need to remarry, she has children she can watch them grow”.  “He left enough money for them to survive. They do not need anybody.  There is no…

Solidarity with Protests against Sexual Assault on Women in the Kurdish City of Mahabad in Iran

By Dr Amir Sharifi: Kurdish Human Rights Advocacy Group and Kurdish Communities in Southern California In Solidarity with Protests against Sexual Assault on Women in the Kurdish City of Mahabad in Iran We members of the Kurdish Human Rights Advocacy Group and Kurdish Communities in Southern California express our solidarity with the protesters of the…

Women Gyn Doctors Urgently Needed by Yazidi Refugees

By Dr. Amy L. Beam: Over 400 Yazidi girls and women have  escaped from the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria and made their way to Dohuk in northern Iraq.  Some have been bought back for ransoms.  Since their kidnapping last August 2014 from their homes in Shingal, Iraq,…

Powerful, yet are they Useless?

Evin Cheikosman

By Evin Cheikosman: The revolutions throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have opened many doors that have been locked for centuries; and one of those doors leads into the topic of women’s rights.  If we take a moment to reflect on the uprisings that have taken place this past year and the numerous…

Women of Non-State Kurds: From Khanzad Sultan to Rojava Female Fighters   

By Vian Faraj: Part 1 The first division of Kurdistan was made between the Safavid Empire and Ottoman Empire, after the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 and was later formalized in the Zuhab treaty, 1639, according to which Yerevan, the wide area covering the Iranian part of Kurdistan, eastern Georgia, Dagestan, and Azerbaijan was taken…

Hmmm! Why be jealous?

By Hanar Marouf: Yes! It is the time again when you feel jealous about something! Well, do not worry, there are explanations for every problem. First of all, how many of you cannot stand the existence of some particular people in your lives? How many of you can never be proud of a specific person, no…

Kobani Guerrillas, a New Era of Feminism

By Vian Faraj: After numerous defensive activities by the YPJ (Womens Protection Units) in Kobani, evidently equality concepts are going to be reborn from under the sleeveless jackets of guerrillas in a small city-state located at the man-made border between two colonialists, Turkey and Syria. What the egalitarian Kurdish female fighters in Al-Jazira, Al-Hasakah, Afrin,…