This appeal was drawn up by the Middle East Coordinators in the name of the World Coordinators
On March 8, 2024, the International Women’s Day of Struggle, we will take to the streets against the exploitation and oppression of women worldwide, against patriarchy, fascism, racism, capitalism and imperialism. The streets of the world will echo with our calls on this day, which we have declared a day of common struggle. As always, we will take to the streets against sexual, national and class oppression.
Together we will take up the fight and break all reactionary traditional norms. We will fight for our freedom. Against imperialism, the capitalism that feeds patriarchy, we will strengthen the international struggle of women. Together with the peoples of the world, we will be part of the international struggle against imperialism. By standing together with the peoples of the world against imperialist wars, we will be the most important force in the international anti-war struggle. With the strength we give each other, we will throw fascism and religious fundamentalism on the dustbin of history and we will surely win.
With this awareness, we say on March 8, 2024:
“We revolt against exploitation, oppression, war, violence and poverty”.
The whole world is a theater of war. Perhaps one of the most brutal and destructive of these wars is taking place in the Palestinian territories today. We know that none of these wars is our war. The painful consequences of the wars waged by a few imperialist systems in the world to protect their power and increase their capital for the whole of humanity, but especially for the female half, are obvious.
The current wars, especially the war waged by Russia and the other imperialist superpowers, the USA and NATO, in Ukraine carry the danger of a third world war, a nuclear catastrophe.
We do not decide on the wars that take place in the world, but we as women pay the greatest costs of wars. In the Zionist occupation of Palestine, as in all wars, women are the ones who are most affected by war, whose bodies are seen as the battlefield, who are subjected to immeasurable oppression and who are ultimately seen as the spoils of war.
While the war in Palestine is in full swing, the attacks on all the gains of the revolution in Rojava, in which Kurdish women were actively involved, continue to increase. Forced displacement is a direct consequence of the war. Words are not enough to describe what women and children have to go through on the migration routes.
It is time to take the cry of Palestinian and Kurdish women and all women affected by wars, by particular exploitation and oppression, for freedom and the liberation of all women from exploitation and oppression to the squares of March 8!
In wars, “sexual violence” and “rape as a weapon of war” are used as a means of genocide. As in the past, sexual violence as a weapon of war is on the agenda today.
Sexual violence and mass rape in wars today have taken on a new quality in the strategy and tactics of warfare. It is the unscrupulousness in the inhuman warfare of extremists.
Women are waging major battles against these crimes for the prosecution of those responsible. To be against war is also to be against the assault on our bodies.
Now is the time to raise the voices of women fighting against rape as a weapon of war on March 8!
We women, now know how to liberate ourselves and we are learning from each other. Our freedom is very close. As long as we do not stop fighting together against imperialism, capitalism, fascism, religious reaction and patriarchy.
We continue to say: “We were, we are, we will be”!