In my work, I have the privilege of partnering with visionary activists who fight each and every day for the rights of women and their communities — and who often face retaliation for their activism.
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I first met Yanar Mohammed, a prominent Iraqi feminist, just months after she founded the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq in 2003. She had set up an organization that would not only provide shelter and care for women facing sexist violence but would also expose the roots of that violence: religious fundamentalists and their enablers, boosted to power by the US occupation.
After Yanar spoke out, she received death threats from extremists seeking to silence her. But for 15 years since, undeterred, she has continued to resist misogyny and advance the rights of women and girls in Iraq.
“Don’t take so many risks, some will say. Shrink yourself and your vision. Demand less. Live smaller lives. That’s what we tell women when we blame them for the retaliation against them.”Today in Iraq the climate of danger and fear persists. Recently, several high-profile women were murdered: women’s rights activist Suad al-Ali, model Tara al-Fares, beauticians Rasha al-Hassan and Rafifi al-Yasiri. They were targeted simply for living their lives in ways that defied strict gender conventions, such as by working professional jobs or advocating for their rights – capital offenses in the eyes of violent extremists.
In Latin America, women are similarly targeted: Last month, Juana Ramirez Santiago, a 57-year-old Indigenous human rights activist in Guatemala, was shot and killed after receiving multiple death threats. Her murder followed that of Juana Raymundo, a 25-year-old Indigenous Ixil nurse and a vocal women’s rights advocate.
In Colombia, Tulia Maris Valencia and Sara Quiñonez, an Afro-Colombian mother and daughter who are at the forefront of Colombia’s movements for environmental, racial and gender justice, have been imprisoned by the government for months, on baseless charges. Meanwhile, Colombia is the deadliest place on the planet for human rights defenders, with one activist killed every three days, on average. The government should be protecting them, not jailing them.
In the Philippines, the government has escalated a campaign of violence against human rights defenders and Indigenous Peoples. It’s a tactic to eliminate people standing in the way of exploitative agendas – like Indigenous Peoples trying to block environmental threats including logging and mining on their lands. When advocates like Victoria Tauli Corpuz, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, have spoken out against these abuses, the government retaliated by officially designating them as “terrorists.”
What do all of these stories have in common? These women all have tried to remake the world, in ways big and small. They all saw an unjust status quo – one that threatens and constrains the lives of women, girls and other marginalized people – and acted in defiance. And powerful forces reacted by trying to silence them, to end their activism and to preserve that status quo.
