(Video) PIK Ecology Event on Ecocide and Kurdish Women’s Movement

Ecocide and the Kurdish Women’s Movement was the seventh Peace in Kurdistan Ecology Network webinar. The discussion ranges from the early emergence of the movement for women’s liberation at the heart of the Kurdish political struggle, up to the present-day uprisings in Iran and especially in Rojhelat (East Kurdistan).

Kurdish political journalist Meral Çiçek analyses efforts to resolve tensions relating to class and gender into productive advances in the movement’s prevailing ideas. This is in keeping with Abdullah Ocalan’s belief and hope that women’s liberation would be at the centre of 21st century movements. The development of strong autonomous women’s organisations reflects such aspirations, and is signalled, for example, by the prominent slogan “Jin Jiyan, Azadi!” (women, life, and freedom!) in the protests against the killing of Mahsa Amini.

Sonia Karmini, of the Community of Free women in Rojhelat [KJAR] continues the discussion with a presentation called “Exploring Rojhelat through Eco-feminism.” Sonia shares perspectives on the Iranian state’s imposition of an extreme form of patriarchy that denies women’s full legal being and the connections between sexism and speciesism in a legal system which has no laws against animal cruelty.

Pinar Dinc facilitated the question and answer session that followed, covering topics including eco-villages, the response to and role of men within the dynamics of shifting social relations, women’s liberation and ecology in the academies, comparative views of the legal rights of nature in Colombia, links to the dominance of the oil industry, conflict, and wider geopolitics.