Features

“There’s snow everywhere in Gaziantep, where I now live after being displaced from Syria. I look out the window and feel the warmth enveloping my body, and I feel grateful to have finally arrived somewhere warm and safe where I will live with my newborn and small family, where I can set off on a new life with friends my husband and I just spent a nice evening with.”

The storm that recently hit proved that Lebanon is unable to withstand a typical winter storm, and that the most vulnerable groups—people living in poverty, women, and refugees—are the ones who suffer from the deteriorating infrastructure and the absence of frameworks for social and economic welfare.

At least a third of the journalists killed in the Strip by Israeli bombardment met their deaths at home, in many cases with their families. In recent days, prominent members of the Israeli government have toughened their criminalisation of Gaza's reporters, assimilating them to Hamas.

About 29,000 people have been internally displaced from southern Lebanon and elsewhere in the country since early October as violence and hostilities escalate on the Lebanese border. And just as women and children in Gaza are paying the highest price in the ongoing war on the Strip, this reality also applies to Lebanon in light of the lack of adequate and equipped shelters to host the increasing numbers of displaced people. Added to this are the already-existing difficulties imposed by the dire economic crisis that began in late 2019.

On the steps of the Théâtre municipal in Tunis, one of the oldest historical monuments in the city and one of the most important strongholds for gatherings in support of just causes, Tunisian feminists came together carrying Palestinian flags and candles in symbolic solidarity with the martyred souls who fell in the occupation army’s bombing of Gaza. They gathered to affirm feminists’ and human rights activists’ commitment to fighting colonialism and supporting the resistance.

It is no longer surprising that women associate delivery rooms with feelings of terror and fear, not only in relation to the process of childbirth but the potential for humiliation, offense, and mistreatment. Many women, and Tunisian women in particular, have complained about suffering multiple violations at the hands of medical and paramedical personnel, including midwives. They are also subjected to various types of violence and discrimination on the basis of race, class, and age, not to mention coercive medical procedures.

On the first Saturday of every month, groups of men kneel in the main squares of many cities across Croatia to “pray for women’s chastity” and a “strong masculine authority in family settings.” This ultraconservative Catholic masculinist movement began in Poland and was later imported into Croatia by influential Polish groups such as Ordo Iuris, which was among the mobilizing forces behind the 2021 total abortion ban in Poland. Pro-masculinist demonstrations in Croatia have been met with female resistance: for instance, the artist Arijana Lekić-Fridrih dedicated a performance to femicide victims, and Ženska mreža Hrvatske (Women’s Network Croatia) organized counterdemonstrations. “Look at Poland—it should not be ignored,” Lekić-Fridrih warned.

In light of the alarming numbers that confirm the rise in violence against women in Tunisia, especially domestic violence, a state of fear and caution has settled over the feminist community concerned about the entrenchment of patriarchal mentalities not only in society but in state institutions too, those not properly implementing Law No. 58 of 2017. This is a serious obstacle to women’s safety and turns their issues into marginal topics.

During the international conference “THE FOREST FACTOR: More nature to fight climate change,” held in Rome on June 6-7, Fiore Longo spoke about green colonialism and its consequences on women’s lives.

Shortly after the Army deported Laila’s husband to Syria, a specific person found out and started knocking at the door of her tent every night, claiming to want to help her. When he realized it wasn’t working, he resorted to threats: “If you don’t open the door today, I know you’ll do it tomorrow.”