Tag: Safe spaces

Since 2008, “Lucha y Siesta” has been a unique model of active citizenship and solidarity for the capital city. A space that is more than a mere building, or group that resists, but rather an irreversible process born from below. After years of precariousness, negotiations and threats, the Lazio region has finally won the battle for the property.

Violence against women in Palestine takes social and structural dimensions that are evident in the protection afforded by the Palestinian Authority to the tribal culture, to the extent that it has established the so-called ‘General Directorate of Tribal Affairs and Conciliation’, while overlooking for years the duty to provide full protection to women, including by offering adequate and safe shelters.

In this short interview, Sana Ben Achour, President of the Beity Association, answers one simple question: is the Tunisian government doing enough to protect women?

Fleeing the hell of trafficking and servitude, many African women find a home at “Beity”, a shelter in the medina, alongside single mothers, non-conforming women and victims of domestic violence.

In Spain, Law 12/2009* regulating asylum and subsidiary protection explicitly includes in the definition of a refugee, “persecution for reasons of gender or sexual orientation.” Rescate, an association supporting asylum seekers who have fled their countries for reasons related to gender, cared for them and hundreds of others who have endured gender-based violence, including sex trafficking.

Women in Turkey need more shelters so that those with-out financial means may find a way out of the violence they are exposed to. The violations against them by public officials are also increasing, and these are not unrelated to the government’s decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention.

Instead of receiving support, feminist groups must struggle against institutions to survive, as was the case of the “Casa Internazionale delle donne” and “Lucha y Siesta”. Threatened with eviction by the Municipality, these two symbolic places of the feminist movement celebrate together the end of a nightmare.

Legislators did not remain completely silent in the face of the constant struggle and activism of Algerian women, but the fair and equal legal arsenal today is either battling with regression or fighting for survival. Depriving divorced women who remarry of their right to their children’s custody is but one example of the injustice suffered by Algerian women.