08 Mar 24 | Colombia, Iran, Lebanon, Mexico, News and features, Opinion, Ruth's blog, Sudan, Sudan, Syria
Today is International Women’s Day. It’s a day that inspires huge optimism in me. A day that reminds me of the extraordinary ability of women to lead, to challenge and to win – in spite of the odds, which in some countries can seem insurmountable.
But is it also important that we recognise a stark reality on IWD – this day cannot be truly marked without acknowledging the suffering and sacrifice endured by female dissidents worldwide in their relentless pursuit of freedom of expression.
While International Women’s Day traditionally serves as a platform to honour the achievements and progress of women, there is a responsibility on us to shine a spotlight on those whose voices have been silenced, whose courage has been met with oppression, and whose sacrifices have been monumental in the fight for justice and equality.
The stories of these brave women, from every corner of the globe, are not just anecdotes – they are testaments to the enduring struggle for fundamental human rights.
In the past twelve months alone, we have witnessed a staggering number of brave women who dared to challenge the status quo, only to meet untimely and tragic ends. Their names may not echo through the halls of power, but their legacies will forever reverberate in the annals of history.
Halima Idris Salim, Mossamat Sahara, Farah Omar, Vivian Silver, Ángela León, Olga Nazarenko, Maria Bernadete Pacífico, Armita Geravand, Tinashe Chitsunge, Samantha Gómez Fonseca, Rose Mugarurirwe, Heba Suhaib Haj Arif, Ludivia Galindez, Bahjaa Abdelaa Abdelaa, Teresa Magueyal – these are not just names on a list. They are beacons of courage, symbols of resistance in the face of tyranny and oppression.
From Sudan to Bangladesh, Lebanon to Canada, these women hailed from different corners of the globe, united by a common cause: the pursuit of justice. Whether they were journalists, activists, or ordinary citizens, they refused to be silenced. They refused to cower in the face of adversity.
In authoritarian regimes, the price of dissent is often paid in blood. Every day, countless women are harassed, detained, and murdered for daring to speak out against injustice.
Their names may never make headlines, but their sacrifices will not be forgotten. On International Women’s Day, let us heed the theme of Inspire Inclusion and draw inspiration from these courageous women. Let us honour their memory by continuing their fight for a world where freedom of expression is not just a privilege, but a fundamental human right.
We need to remember that the courage and sacrifice of women dissidents cannot be relegated to a single day of recognition. Their stories must remain forefront in our minds every day. We must commit to amplifying their voices, advocating for their rights, and standing in solidarity with them against oppression. Their fight is ongoing, and it is our responsibility to ensure that they are never forgotten.
18 Dec 23 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Poland
The confirmation of Donald Tusk as Poland’s new prime minister, ending the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party’s eight year spell in power, offers cautious optimism that freedom of expression for the country’s minority groups will be better protected. Tusk’s appointment follows October’s parliamentary election, in which a broad coalition of opposition parties secured the majority of votes needed to form a government, which was officially voted in by MPs in December.
Throughout the eight years the PiS spent in power, freedom of expression in the country was continually eroded. Minority groups were targeted through strict legislation and judicial reform, while the party also tightened their grip on the media and encouraged far-right extremism.
One of the worst affected groups were LGBT+ people. In 2023, Poland was named as the worst country for LGBT+ rights in the EU in a report by watchdog ILGA-Europe for the third successive year. This is no surprise given the homophobic rhetoric pushed by the country’s leaders in recent years: PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński claimed that LGBT+ people “threaten the Polish state”; former education minister Przemysław Czarnek likened what he called “LGBT ideology” to Nazism; and in 2019, Krakow’s archbishop described LGBT+ rights as a “rainbow plague”.
Spokesperson for the Love Does Not Exclude Association, a national non-governmental organisation fighting for marriage equality in Poland, Hubert Sobecki told Index that the organisation views the new government with “a mixture of hope and anxiety”.
They are hoping that the new Tusk-led coalition will pass laws legalising same-sex marriage, a concept that Sobecki explained is still seen as “radical” in the state, as well as addressing other issues such as same-sex parenthood and rising hate crimes, although he accused the polish leader of “slaloming” around these issues in the past.
“I do expect some actual specific concrete changes being made, legislative changes,” Sobecki said. “The current prime minister, Mr Tusk, we know him, we have a history, let’s call it that. He was quite reluctant to be remotely close to an allied position.”
It is clear that change won’t happen overnight. Eight years of the PiS in power has seen anti-LGBT+ sentiment rise throughout the country, with pride parades being targeted by violent counter-protesters and some regional governments passing resolutions to effectively make areas of the state an ‘LGBT-free zone’.
Sobecki’s descriptions of life in Poland in recent years paint a shocking portrait of the lived reality of LGBT+ people, who faced near constant abuse and discrimination in the state. He told of the increasing wave of people within the LGBT+ community who are struggling with mental illness, and those who have even had to migrate as a result of their treatment. During one incident, Sobecki recalled activists being targeted by police during a peaceful protest in Warsaw. “They were basically attacked, they were dragged on the pavement. Some people needed medical attention, some of them were molested after they got arrested. It’s mind-numbing,” he said.
However, Sobecki suggested that while the situation is bad, such incidents have also served to show just how much things needed to change. “It created a huge wave of support from people who thought ‘it’s too much’”, he explained. “After several years of this hate campaign being run, they can’t really shut it out anymore, they can’t remain blind to it.”
When asked whether he believed legislation would be enough to secure equality for LGBT+ people, Sobecki agreed that changed attitudes were as important as changed laws.
“What you need on the social level is visibility, storytelling techniques, constant campaigning, presence, representation, from the micro level of having dinner with your grandparents to the macro level of securing proper coverage on the main news channels,” he said.
However, there was still confidence that the government would make a difference. “What they can do is stop the hate in the public media. That is going to be a huge game changer,” he said. “You have millions of people who only watch one or two channels, who are effectively brainwashed. This change will be massive if it happens.”
Sobecki also pointed to moments, such as the recent ruling made by the European Court of Human Rights that Poland’s lack of legal recognition and protection for same-sex marriages breaches the European Convention on Human Rights, as evidence that progress is being made, albeit slowly.
“It was something that we’ve been working on for eight years, because those guys do take their time!” he said. “We knew that this was a message for the new government because the courts are savvy like that. We managed to get some responses from members of the new government who said ‘yes, this is a clear sign that we need to make a change’”.
The election results are also likely to be welcomed by proponents of women’s rights. During their years in power the PiS clamped down on reproductive rights in Poland, ending state funding for IVF and enforcing a prescription requirement for emergency contraception. Most significantly, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, an institution which critics say is heavily politicised by the PiS, implemented a near-total ban on abortion in the country in 2021, with the only exceptions being instances of rape, incest or a threat to health. As a result of this ruling, doctors and others who help women terminate pregnancies may face up to three years in prison, rising to eight if it occurs after the point of viability. These actions, which the PiS say have been made in an attempt to boost fertility rates and promote Catholic values, have had a disturbing effect on women’s freedoms in the state. Just this year, Polish activist Justyna Wydrzyńska was sentenced to 8 months’ community service for helping a pregnant woman to access abortion pills in what Amnesty International described as a “depressing low in the repression of reproductive rights in Poland” which serves as a “chilling snapshot of the consequences of such restrictive laws”.
Sobecki spoke about the need for change across all areas of society, as he argued that the PiS “weaponised the state” against a variety of social groups. “They basically attacked women’s rights openly as part of their agenda,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure and expectation from the public for change, for something new, for something that is progressive.”
However, there are still concerns that even without PiS in power, the new Tusk-led government will not do enough to protect these rights. One feminist activist, Jana Shostak, was dropped by the opposition alliance after voicing support for wider abortion rights. She told the Guardian that her trust in Tusk to fight for women’s rights is “limited”.
There are concerns that the new government will resist calls for more progressive protections on rights and freedoms in an attempt to placate conservative voters. These worries extend beyond women and LGBT+ rights to immigration; Tusk warned of the “danger” of migrants and called for stricter border controls during a campaign speech which was denounced as racist and xenophobic by human rights NGOs.
The PiS being ousted from power sparked hope, but action from the new government to prevent women and minority groups from being silenced and threatened is much-needed. Sobecki vows to keep fighting: “At some point you just think it’s such a mess, what can you do? You just keep on doing what you’ve been doing, showing actual faces, actual people, telling their stories, trying to be hopeful that somehow it manages to get through.”
29 Nov 23 | Afghanistan, Asia and Pacific, News and features
It is accepted around the world that children and young people have a right to education. But for girls in Afghanistan, this is not the case.
In 2021, the Taliban seized power after launching a military offensive which lasted three and a half months. One of the first measures they imposed was a ban on girls over the age of 12 returning to school. A year later, they extended this ban to include universities, leaving millions of Afghan girls without any access to higher education at all.
Accessing education was already a struggle prior to the Taliban’s return to power due to the scarcity and inadequacy of learning facilities for girls. It is estimated that 30% of girls in the country have never even entered primary school. Now, in light of the current ban, receiving education beyond this will be close to impossible.
The Begum Academy has been launched in an attempt to combat this.
The Begum Academy is an online platform aimed at female students from seventh to twelfth grade, which offers the entire Afghan curriculum free of charge by subject based on the official school books from the Ministry of Education. The idea behind the initiative is that girls will be able to teach themselves the Afghan school curriculum from their own homes in order to improve their future prospects even if they aren’t allowed to physically attend school.
A spokesperson for the organisation, who preferred not to be named, spoke to Index about the importance of this movement for a country with the lowest ranking for women’s inclusion, justice and security in the world.
“If you take into account Covid and the Taliban in power at the moment, girls have been out of school for basically five years,” he explained.
“The idea is to give them hope. To be a girl in Afghanistan today is hell. There’s absolutely no future. The idea for us is to say okay, you’re forbidden to go to school, you’re not forbidden to learn.”
The platform contains more than 8,000 videos from a team of teachers and producers covering the entire school curriculum in Dari and Pashto, chapter by chapter, which took many months to put together.
“Recording videos, editing them, working the content. It’s an enormous task,” admitted the Begum Academy correspondent. “Everybody told us that it was crazy, that it was impossible. We decided to go for it.”
The group is also endeavouring to break down other barriers faced by those in Afghanistan who want to learn, such as the lack of internet access in a number of homes across the country. They note that this is an issue they are actively “working on” to try and ensure that as many girls as possible are able to access the resources provided.
This is a sizeable task. Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, internet connection in the state has been limited. Gallup’s 2022 World Poll found that just 15% of the Afghan population said they have access to the internet. This is potentially due to costs of Wi-Fi or electronics considering more than 90% of the country’s population is affected by poverty.
There is also a significant gender disparity when it comes to internet access, with only 6% of women having access compared to 25% of men. Those living in cities were also more likely to use the internet than those in rural areas.
Thankfully, the Taliban do not seem to have any plans to ban the internet completely. They even use the internet, which they previously rallied against due to their suspicions of what they deemed to be Western technology, to communicate with the world on social media.
According to a 2023 report by the Atlantic Council, the approximate $77 million in taxes collected by the Afghan government from internet and mobile phone operators since taking over is a crucial source of income. The Taliban have even announced plans to upgrade to 4G networks – a hopeful sign on the internet access front.
However, the Taliban have also been accused of limiting internet access for their own gain, allegedly suspending connectivity in Kabul and other areas on a regular basis in order to curb opposition, as well as blocking millions of websites for “immoral” content. There is therefore a fear that even if internet access is available, the militant group can restrict the content available on it.
Nonprofit group Access Now, who advocate for digital rights, warns that even those who can access Google in Afghanistan are restricted by the fear of surveillance due to the ability of the Taliban to monitor browser history. Debilitating internet speeds and frequent power cuts may also hinder proceedings.
Despite concerns about the accessibility of the platform in the long-term, the overall feeling regarding the Begum Academy’s launch is positive today.
“We still have a lot of things to do, but I think this project can genuinely help,” the platform’s spokesperson said. “Once the word has spread, and it’s started already on social media, we can expect something quite big.”
You can find the Begum Academy here: https://begum-academy.org/fa/
You can also access online materials on their YouTube channels:
https://www.youtube.com/@Begum.Academy1/playlists (Pashto)
https://www.youtube.com/@begum.academy/playlists (Dari)
11 Aug 23 | News and features, Nigeria
Nigeria’s elections have always been rooted in the socio-political marginalisation of women. Political positions have been largely given to men and the women who participate get bullied out. This was demonstrated during the elections this year and the aftermath was visible in the National Assembly (NASS). Out of 110 Senate seats, women currently occupy three, and out of 360 House of Representatives seats, women occupy 14. Women hold 17 seats out of 470 total seats in NASS, down from 21 at the last election. Political parties received several submitted nominations for various political offices from women but only backed a few to run in the general elections. This jarring disparity between men and women in parliament is why Nigerian women suffer greatly.
Section 42 of Nigeria’s legislation provides citizens the right to freedom from discrimination on the grounds of sex, but the rest of the constitution is ridden with prejudiced laws that belittle the voices of women. Too many of them support the violence and segregation meted out against women and their voices can barely be heard over the clampdown of popular misogynistic tenets. It seems like an intentional ploy to keep Nigerian women on a leash.
In the constitution, for example, spousal rape is deemed impossible and men can beat their wives as long as it doesn’t result in ‘grievous’ bodily harm.
Another example is the police act, which stipulates that female police officers must apply for permission to get married and must receive approval before they continue with the union. This doesn’t apply to men. In 2012, a judge declared this section unconstitutional and illegal and yet it’s still a part of the regulation.
“It’s always men making policies for women. Policies about our bodies, policies about our movements, policies about our lives,” Nimisire Etomimo, a gender equality advocate and writer who joined in a 2022 protest, told Index.
The situation reflects deep-seated traditional and religious beliefs. Nigerian women are exhausted. They need only look at what happened last year to understand that the new government will bring about little to no change.
On 1 March 2022 Nigeria’s male-dominated National Assembly met to vote separately on 68 bills that would contribute to the constitutional amendment process. Five of the bills were about passing legislation to ensure affirmative action in political parties and other elective positions for women and revisiting harmful laws about them.
NASS was crammed with members of both the Senate and members of the House of Representatives that day. In the large conference room, there were audible murmurs between the men who looked to be making meaningful conversations. But ultimately their facial expressions gave away that their minds were made up before they even entered the room.
The bills were raised and every time one was called a resounding “No!” followed. There were only a handful of women in the room to the hundreds of men. The bills had no chance of a fair hearing and judgment.
“The gender bills are continuously getting thrown out because there are not enough women in the House,” Oluwadamilola Akintewe, a lawyer and speaker for UNICEF Nigeria, told me. “The bigger problem is the issue of patriarchy though. It strongly antagonizes the fight for equality in Nigeria because men think we’re trying to make them lesser than us by calling for equal treatment.”
Nigerian women later took matters into their own hands. After the bills were voted down they started a protest that went on for over a week. Women across the country took to the streets. But like the bills that were dismissed, these protests went unheard and unresponded to.
“They simply do not care about us,” Etomimo said. “The parliament is dominated by men who feel like they can do nothing about the staggering contrast between how men and women are represented in society.”
Three bills were later reported to be partially rescinded by a lower House in what now seems like a ploy to suppress the protests. There have been no updates about them till now.
“The National Assembly has been consistent about rejecting any notion of equality,” Ayisha Osori, lawyer, politician, and author of Love Does Not Win Elections, said.
“Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajamiala, who is now Chief of Staff to the president, has been very vocal and clear in his position that any type of affirmative action for women is discriminatory against men,” she continued. “For him, women don’t need any level playing field. They just need to get their hands dirty.”
Passing the pro-equality bills into law would not completely relieve Nigerian women of their circumstances, but it would give women leverage over how matters regarding them are considered. In May, a bill seeking equal rights for men, women, and persons living with disabilities passed second reading at the Senate. There were oppositions to its framing as an equality bill and not an equity bill. Members of NASS said that it would need to be modified before it can be brought up again for passage.
“I think that supporting equality is not something that they [NASS] give a lot of thought. They don’t see the discrepancy or the discordance in saying they care about women’s rights. The excuse they give is religious and cultural,” Osori said.
