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 | |
| Founded | July 2007 Norway |
|---|---|
| Type | Non-profit NGO |
| Location |
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| Services | Lobbying, awareness raising, research, human rights campaigns, peace-building |
| Fields | Defending human rights, diplomacy, peace, justice |
Co-Founder | Widad Akreyi |
| Website | www.defendinternational.org |
Defend International (commonly known as DI) is a non-governmental organization focused on promoting and protecting human rights in the Middle East and North Africa. [1] DI was founded in 2007 in Norway.
DI operates internationally, and is made up of a network of volunteers, representatives, and civic organisations working at national, regional, and sub-regional levels. [2]
Defend International is a partner of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an initiative led by the United Nations Foundation, [3] [4] and a member of the Peace One Day NGO Coalition [5] and Peace Now. [6]
Since its establishment, DI has collaborated with many civic and humanitarian organisations as well as various governmental agencies. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]
DI's mission does not target any particular demographic within its geographic area of focus, but its work often concerns minority groups like the Yazidi and Middle Eastern Christians.
In collaboration with its partners, DI has advocated for and worked towards various humanitarian goals such as:
DI expressed that it has identified strategies to address violence against women and child marriages. [37]
DI has called for an end to female genital mutilation [38] and the elimination of all forms of violence and discrimination against women and girls. [39] In 2015, DI called on UN negotiators of the Arms Trade Treaty to include a legally-binding provision to prevent armed gender-based violence. [40]
Defend International has endorsed the Every Woman Treaty on violence against women and girls worldwide and is a member of the Everywoman Everywhere Coalition. [41]
In a partnership with artists like Edison band, Claude Arfaras, Jane Adams and Daniel Dalopo, Defend International launched a worldwide campaign in September 2014 to raise awareness about the Yazidis, Kobanî and the Christians [42] [43] [44] and also called for the international community to intensify the efforts aimed at rescuing women and children enslaved by ISIL. [45]
Co-founder of Defend International Widad Akreyi stated that ISIL uses slavery and rape as weapons of war against Yazidis and Christians. [46]
Barham Salih is an Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as the eighth president of Iraq from 2018 to 2022.
Akre or Aqrah is a city in the Duhok Governorate, Kurdistan Region in Iraq. Akre is known for its celebrations of Newroz.
A humanitarian crisis is defined as a singular event or a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or well-being of a community or large group of people. It may be an internal or external conflict and usually occurs throughout a large land area. Local, national and international responses are necessary in such events.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (S/RES/1325), on women, peace, and security, was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council on 31 October 2000, after recalling resolutions 1261 (1999), 1265 (1999), 1296 (2000), and 1314 (2000). The resolution acknowledged the disproportionate and unique impact of armed conflict on women and girls. It calls for the adoption of a gender perspective to consider the special needs of women and girls during conflict, repatriation and resettlement, rehabilitation, reintegration, and post-conflict reconstruction.
Widad Akreyi is a Kurdish health expert and human rights activist. She has co-founded the human rights organization Defend International and is the author of several books about both health issues and human rights.
Association Najdeh (AN) is a NGO involved with development and educational projects in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. It operates more exactly in and around the refugee camps. It defends the Palestinian refugee women who are often victims of discriminations and also participates in different campaigns, in coalitions of local and international organizations, for the right to work in Lebanon and the right of return to Palestine.
Bahzani, literally from the Syriac words meaning "house of treasure," is a town located in the Al-Hamdaniya District of the Ninawa Governorate in northern Iraq.
The Kurdish National Council is a Syrian Kurdish political party. While the KNC had initially more international support than the ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD) during the early years of the Syrian civil war and a strong supporter basis among some Syrian Kurdish refugees, the overwhelming popular support the PYD enjoys has eroded support for the KNC in Syrian Kurdistan, losing almost all popular support.
The Sinjar massacre marked the beginning of the genocide of Yazidis by ISIL, the killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidi men, women and children. It took place in August 2014 in Sinjar city and Sinjar District in Iraq's Nineveh Governorate and was perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The massacre began with ISIL attacking and capturing Sinjar and neighboring towns on 3 August, during its Northern Iraq offensive.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has employed sexual violence against women and men in a terroristic manner. Sexual violence, as defined by The World Health Organization includes “any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work.” ISIL has used sexual violence to undermine a sense of security within communities, and to raise funds through the sale of captives into sexual slavery.
Kobanî, officially Ayn al-Arab, is a Kurdish-majority city in northern Syria, lying immediately south of the Syria–Turkey border. As a consequence of the Syrian civil war, the city came under the control of the Kurdish-majority People's Protection Units (YPG) militia in 2012 and became the administrative center of the Kobani Canton, later transformed into Euphrates Region of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.
Nadia Murad Basee Taha is an Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist who lives in Germany. In 2014, she was kidnapped from her hometown Kocho and held by the Islamic State for three months.
Khanim Rahim Latif ,(born in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq) is a liberal human and women’s rights activist in Iraqi Kurdistan who seeks to defend equality and offer women a refuge from gender-based violence.
A genocide of Yazidis by the Islamic State was carried out in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq in the mid-2010s. The genocide led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by ISIL, and thousands of Yazidi men were killed. About 5,000 Yazidi civilians were killed during what has been called a "forced conversion campaign" carried out by ISIL in Northern Iraq. The genocide began after the withdrawal of Iraqi forces and Peshmerga, which left the Yazidis defenseless.
Yazda: Global Yazidi Organization, is a United States-based global Yazidi nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO) advocacy, aid, and relief organization. Yazda was established to support the Yazidi, especially in northern Iraq, specifically Sinjar and Nineveh Plain, and northeastern Syria, where the Yazidi community has, as part of a deliberate "military, economic, and political strategy," been the focus of a genocidal campaign by ISIL that included mass murder, the separation of families, forced religious conversions, forced marriages, sexual assault, physical assault, torture, kidnapping, and slavery.
Jacqueline Isaac is a Coptic Egyptian-American attorney and human rights activist, focusing primarily on the rights of women and minorities in the Middle East.
The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad "for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict," according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee announcement on 5 October 2018 in Oslo, Norway. "Both laureates have made a crucial contribution to focusing attention on, and combating, such war crimes," according to the award citation. After reading the citation, Committee Chair Berit Reiss-Andersen told reporters that the impact of this year's award is to highlight sexual abuse with the goal that every level of governance take responsibility to end such crimes and impunities.
The persecution of Yazidis has been ongoing since at least 637 CE. Yazidis are an endogamous and mostly Kurmanji-speaking minority, indigenous to Kurdistan. The Yazidi religion is regarded as "devil-worship" by Muslims and Islamists. Yazidis have been persecuted by the surrounding Muslims since the medieval ages, most notably by Safavids, Ottomans, neighbouring Muslim Arab and Kurdish tribes and principalities. After the 2014 Sinjar massacre of thousands of Yazidis by ISIL, which started the ethnic, cultural, and religious genocide of the Yazidis in Iraq, Yazidis still face discrimination from the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government.