On 08 March, International Women’s Day, the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) celebrates the strength and the fierceness of women human rights defenders (WHRDs) in the Gulf region and neighbouring countries. We applaud WHRDs’ work, activism and endeavours towards equality, freedom and justice, despite the challenges and precarious struggles.
We recall the cheerful moments we had this past year celebrating the freedom of WHRDs who were released from prison, and the gratification we felt for those who were supported and protected against repression and oppression. While remembering our weakest moments of despair and helplessness when we lost many WHRDs last year.
Women’s rights in the region continue to be challenged by multiple actors and confronted with the COVID-19 pandemic and its lasting effects. The backlash remains severe, but only succeeds in fulling our defiance and determination towards working tirelessly to achieve women’s rights and equality.
We reject attempts to sugar-coat the injustice, inequality and violence facing women worldwide by giving minimal recognition of the challenges and celebrating this day with flowers and empty words. Instead, today, we, women activists, rights defenders, allies and supporters acknowledge the importance of calling on each other’s support, and cooperation towards transformative change.
We highlight the need to double the efforts and work to backfill the inequality gap that has been enlarged with the impacts of COVID-19 and regressed as a result of the international community’s inability to take decisive measures to protect women and ensure their equal rights, while holding perpetrators of violence to account. Domestic violence has skyrocketed worldwide and many more women than men have lost their jobs during the pandemic.
Women’s rights realities are totally different from the fictional world of denial expressed by governments in the region and attempts by the patriarchy to convince us to maintain the status quo. Women in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Gulf region are killed daily, harassed, detained, forcibly disappeared, and if they survive violence, face inequality and hate speech. This includes being smeared, cyberbullied, and challenged in any way possible to silence women.
“Despite all odds, women’s rights defenders and feminist movements in the region continue to strive and thrive to shake the patriarchal systems and agitate against authoritarianism in the region, so let’s celebrate our strength, power and collective assets of being women!” said GCHR’s WHRDs Programme Manager, Weaam Youssef.
