Tag: Women and war

This dossier, encompassing the words, reports, and articles of Mediterranean feminist journalists who live either on the front lines of armed conflict or nearby, intends to give a face, a name, and flesh to all the women who fight to maintain their dignity in situations of extreme violence.

The documentary by Lebanese director Jocelyne Saab, screened at the 27/20 Festival in Tunis, shook the public. What do these images and voices, captured in 1973, tell us?

Dr. Alice Rothchild, a retired American obstetrician-gynecologist and committed feminist, has been a fervent supporter of the Palestinian cause for many years. Now a writer and filmmaker, her convictions are reflected in her many books. Her sensitivity and experience give her a certain finesse in bearing witness to the situation of women in the Gaza Strip.

For several years, Algerian feminists have been undertaking the effort to reclaim the histories of the women of their country. Because after independence in 1962, the official version of History only recorded a few iconic faces of the martyrs that fell in the war of liberation.

Women who cover conflicts are not a third gender: we are women, women who are treated as equals by potential aggressors during our work in controlled contexts. But when chaos breaks out and the mob favors anonymity and impunity, we are treated as what we are: women.

In an exclusive interview with Medfeminiswiya, Dr. Fethia Saidi, a sociologist at the University of Tunis and a feminist activist, discusses the sociological and gender contexts of women in war, highlighting their contributions to resistance and defending the right to self-determination. Dr. Saidi also emphasizes the heavy price women pay in war zones as victims of rape, assault, and murder. She explains how these practices are becoming an ever more brutal weapon in current wars.

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.”

In an environment governed by racist laws and practices dominated by the occupation, its policies, and by complex procedures on both sides, Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip find themselves completely silenced, persecuted for free speech, and limited within the countless restrictions to their freedom of expression, both in the field and online.

In order to preserve their reproductive rights, future Palestinian mothers use their husbands’ sperm hidden in makeshift test tubes. The Italian photographer Antonio Faccilongo told their stories in the “Habibi” project, winner of the World Press Photo of The Year 2021 and other important international awards.

The assassination of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh by Israeli forces in Jenin while covering an Israeli raid, has sparked an unparalleled wave of outrage, while an immeasurable crowd of Palestinians thronged to her funeral. From Tunis to Beirut, the journalists of Medfeminiswiya also tell of their emotion at learning the news.