Interview with Aso Kamali, KJAR Diplomatic Member in Europe, about their participation in the 3rd World Women’s Conference held in Tunisia.

From September 3 to 10, the 3rd World Women’s Conference for Grassroots Women was held in Tunisia with the participation of more than thirty different nationalities, including women from the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Aso Kamali participated in this conference as a representative of KJAR. To discuss the details of the conference and the purpose of holding this conference, we interviewed Aso Kamali and she answered these questions.

What was the purpose of the conference? What were the themes that came up at the conference? You have also participated in this conference as a diplomatic member of KJAR. What is your assessment of this conference? What were the topics you discussed at this conference? What are the plans for this conference?

The purpose of the ‘World Women’s Conference for Grassroots Women’, was to bring together women from across the continents. To combine their different experiences, socio-political ideologies, and philosophies. This year, approximately thirty nations participated, with female delegations coming from across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. They were united in Tunisia for two days of seminars and workshops to network, increase awareness on issues about women’s rights, and, of course, learn from each other.

                KJAR (The Community of Free Women Rojhelat), led a two-day workshop alongside two representatives from both Afghanistan and Iran. We focused on the history of women’s struggles, not only within the society she was born into and raised in, but also on the courage women show in reversing the role that society expected of them. We explored the situations of domestic violence that women are exposed to. Here, we try to focus on the victims, such as Mona Heydari, who was murdered aged seventeen by her husband after suffering physical abuse from him; and the case of Fatemeh Rasouli, who was tied to her bed and set alight. After an ultrasound revealed she was pregnant with a girl. We then discussed the history of women in politics. For women, the fight to be included does not end when she enters politics; rather, it is a lifelong struggle.

Here, we explored the history of women’s roles in war and how the failures encouraged our ideas to evolve and develop. Until the foundation of PJAK (Party of Free Life Kurdistan) saw women granted the equivalent of legal protection within PJAK’s political constitution of KODAR and KJAR. We then discussed how Abdullah Ocalan’s concept of Democratic Confederalism and Jineolojî helped form the potential, before proceeding to explore and analyze why Democratic Confederalism has the potential to be so successful in the Middle East. Here, we move on to explore how the failure to recognize multiple ethnicities and intersectional gender leads to protests and uprisings. This then means the need to preserve the concept of the National State and capitalism leads to autocracy, theocracy, and other forms of dictatorship. The comparisons can be seen throughout Afghanistan and Iran; indeed, we then discussed examples of women who have been imprisoned for seeking basic rights, including (but not limited to) Zeynab Jalalian and Shireen Alamhuli.

The participants of each region were given a night each to show off their region’s diversity, culture, and, in particular, women’s resilience. On Tuesday, the MENA region was asked to put on a show of songs and dance. Here, KJAR joined the Kurdistan delegation in singing a song of female resistance, by Devrim Demir- ‘Tu Ki Yi’. It was with an enormous sense of pride that we Kurds could be united here, in a forum fighting for women’s rights. In a vibrant show of resistance, singing shoulder to shoulder with Yezidis, the women of Rojava, Rojhelat, Bakur, and Bashur.

The culmination of the conference saw the women participate in a further two days of speeches and debates on Wednesday the 7th and Thursday the 8th of September. Here, each participant (approximately 300) had five minutes to tell the entire assembly of women where they were from and the situation of women within that space. A pattern that was described often by the African delegation was the prominence of child marriages, female genital mutilation, and the lack of further education. In the western hemisphere, German women described how women were not treated as equal to men in the work environment, low wages, and a lack of maternity support. In the Middle East, including Turkey, women described the situation in war-torn areas, discrimination within the education and work system, and prisoners of war. By contrast, although North and East Syria were still in between a war and a recovery situation, the system of democratic confederalism provided a beacon of hope and light. They described the difficulty and contrast of changing social norms and values and the opportunities which Kongreya Star provided so that women had to seek agency over their role in society, including Jinwar, the many universities, etc.

It must also be mentioned, that despite not being planned, the women decided that each continent should create an individual group to coordinate international support. In a brief meeting, the participants of the MENA continent elected six women, one from each of the four countries present for internal work and a further two for external relations. This would not have been possible had there not been a conference of such diversity and size. It proves that events like these are integral to the progress of women’s rights. Finally, on Friday the 9th of September, the attendees all voted on a draft resolution outlining the intention of the World Women’s Conference for Grassroots Women to work together internationally in supporting each other in protests, lobbying, and other forms of activity that could support and further the female cause.