Committee for Democratic Relations and Alliances of the Kurdistan Women’s Communities (Komalên Jinên Kurdistan-KJK) has issued a statement to mark International Women’s Day. “We call all progressive, revolutionary, and freedom-seeking women’s movements and groups to collectively build World Democratic Women’s Confederalism with us and our organized sisters from all around the world,” the KJK says in the statement.

News Center- Committee for Democratic Relations and Alliances of the Kurdistan Women’s Communities (Komalên Jinên Kurdistan-KJK) has issued a statement to mark International Women’s Day. Commemorating all women that lost their lives in the struggle for freedom and equality, the KJK calls all women to collectively build World Democratic Women’s Confederalism.

The statement issued by the KJK is as follows:

“Let’s build up World Democratic Women’s Confederalism!

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, we commemorate all women that lost their lives in the struggle for freedom and equality. The memory of women like Sakine Cansız, Rosa Luxemburg, Meena Kewshwar, Berta Caceres, Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, Maita Gomez, Emily Davison, and many, many more continue to light our path of resistance. On March 8, 2022, as the Kurdistan Women’s Movement, we send our revolutionary greetings to all freedom-seeking women and recommit to transforming our century into the age of women’s liberation.

If we look at the past year we can see both gains like in India or Colombia as well as setbacks like in Afghanistan and Poland. This is not unusual. Quite the contrary, in this period of women’s history gains and losses go hand in hand. Because while on the one hand women’s pursuit for freedom and equality is rising, the patriarchal system tries to counter this most dynamic struggle of our age by organizing and mobilizing misogyny and sexism. The systematic attack by fundamentalist forces on women’s rights under the mask of religion or moralism, the targeted killing of female community leaders, increased sexual and physical violence are expressions of this patriarchal aggressive war, which aims to prevent the women’s revolution from happening.

The opportunities, conditions, and urgency to realize this revolution have never been higher. The reasons for this historical chance lie in a) women’s powerful quest for freedom, b) the structural crises of the patriarchal capitalist hegemony, and c) the strategic role of women’s liberation in the 21st century. Once again we see how right our leader Abdullah Öcalan was at the end of the last century when predicting that “The 21st century will be the age of women’s liberation”. Women’s struggle for freedom, equality, justice, dignity, and peace is the most inclusive social movement today, embracing and including people’s struggles for democracy, against fascism and racism, for the protection of nature, and the right of self-determination. This makes her the most strategic force in the thousands of years old struggle against power and exploitation.

As women’s movements that struggle for the realization of freedom and equality, we need to take these historical conditions and the responsibility they put on our shoulders into consideration when organizing our resistance. We need to collectively analyze the historical situation in which we find ourselves, evaluate risks, challenges, and opportunities, clarify our goals and develop our strategic roadmaps. Our gatherings should serve these needs and result in a stronger autonomous organization of the transnational women’s movement. Moreover, we need to find forms and structures that allow us to struggle commonly based on an optimal balance between the local and the universal. As the Kurdish Women’s Liberation Movement we call our suggestion World Democratic Women’s Confederalism. Based on our own practical and theoretical experiences we believe that Democratic Confederalism could be the form needed to organize the women’s revolution and by doing so transform our century into the age of women’s and society’s liberation.

For this, we also need more ground for theoretical and ideological discourses on the roots of patriarchy as well as free life. Freedom is nothing to be postponed to an unknown date in the far future. It is essential that we do not separate our life from our struggle but live what we stand for and demand by now. Revolution is not a certain date marked in the calendar but a constantly continuing process, which already started. Therefore, we need to liberate our relations, partnerships, friendships, and families, and fill our living spaces with a culture based on freedom, communalism, democracy, and ecology.

We need to be very aware of the counterrevolutionary attacks of the patriarchal system, especially those that seem to be invisible. In particular, do we need to deepen our awareness of liberalism ideology, the main instrument of capitalist modernity to integrate women’s movements into the ruling system. The appointment of women for posts within the capitalist state order under the pretext of ‘gender equality' should be seen critically, as often they aim to undermine the women’s movement’s demands. The same applies to attempts to divide the women’s movement by creating artificial hostilities. Ideological discourses are essential for the development of the feminist movement but should not end in fighting each other, which only serves the patriarchal system. We should not allow the tactic of ‘divide and rule’ to infiltrate in our struggles and must answer to these attempts by strengthening our unity.

World Democratic Women’s Confederalism might act as the ground for strengthening this unity through building up the world women’s autonomous system. The more we organize ourselves autonomously the more we’ll be able to change. Only organized we’ll be able to liberate ourselves and life. In this sense, on the occasion of March 8, we call all women, in Kurdistan and around the world, to take their part in the women’s revolution through organizing. We call all progressive, revolutionary, and freedom-seeking women’s movements and groups to collectively build World Democratic Women’s Confederalism with us and our organized sisters from all around the world.

Jin Jiyan Azadî (Women, Life, Freedom)

Kurdistan Women’s Communities (KJK) - Committee for Democratic Relations and Alliances.”