More than a year ago I heard one of India’s most powerful activist poets, K Satchidanandan, recite a poem he had written for Indian activist Irom Sharmila. Sharmila has been on hunger strike for the last fourteen years in protest against the brutal Armed Forces Special Powers Laws. Similar to you -and others like you, in Palestine, […]
by Fatma Emam In my country, we are witnessing the backlash of an incomplete revolution. We are suffering at the hands of a military junta and the Islamists who stole our dreams. In spite of this, we go on in the heat of solidarity and the power of our passion. I want to confess […]
Sometimes, the women who fight for us, need other women to fight for them. I wondered what it must be like to be buying water to quench your thirst and your entire world changed. The news articles stated that you were buying water when you were arrested. I wondered what made you step out […]
Monday, 17th November 2014 Cambridge You were there in Kampala Dear Yara My name is Njoki Wamai, an African feminist from Kenya and a scholar activist who is currently a student at the University of Cambridge. I first heard about you in Kampala at the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) sponsored non-fiction writer’s workshop which […]
by Jessica Horn I Mtu ni watu. A person is people. Or maybe a person is not a person without other people. By defending other people you become a person. But what if that person is a woman who speaks luminous truths to dictatorial power? What if she is a woman that breathes the words […]
By Patrice Juah For so long, we were torn apart Our voices were buried in the cold dark earth, Our songs were cries and our rain, tears. We were silenced and banned from speaking our truths. Hate towards each other burdened us, as fear crippled us. We were blinded by lies that tore our efforts […]
Messages, Poems & Prayers of Solidarity with Women Human Rights Defenders, from Southern African feminists and activists Just Associates Southern Africa (JASS SNA) & friends of JASS came together to express our solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Egypt as well as women human rights defenders standing for rights across the African continent and […]
by Hope Chigudu As we think about our sisters; women rights activists; Yara Sallam and Sanaa Seif as well as 21 others, unjustly imprisoned in Egypt, and other women human rights defenders from across the continent, not forgetting our little ones captured by Boko Haram, and those battling merciless Ebola, we pause to gather our […]