Lanja Khawe | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | January 1993 Sulaymaniah |
| Nationality | Kurdish |
| Occupation(s) | Lawyer, writer, activist |
Lanja Khawe (born 1993) is a Kurdish lawyer, writer and feminist. She is the founder of the Sofia Association and the social media campaign #KurdistanWomenPower, also founder of Pana community to prevent and reduce suffering of homelessness without any gender based discrimination.
Khawe was born in January 1993 in Sulaymaniah, South Kurdistan within the political borders of Iraq. [1] A lawyer and human rights activist, Khawe has worked with Kurdish women who are survivors of sex trafficking and domestic violence. [2] She founded the Sofia Association in 2016 to provide a book delivery service by bicycle for women and girls who are unable to buy them. [3] [4] According to Khawe, the project encourages literacy and access to knowledge, so that women can understand the rights they have more fully. [5] [1] It is not just the supply of books that is a feminist act for the organisation - even using bicycles as transport makes a feminist statement, since women riding them is still seen as shameful. [5] Since its beginnings in Sulaymaniah, the project has spread to other cities, including Erbil, Kirkuk and Halabja. [1]
In 2017 Khawe founded the social media campaign #KurdishWomenPower which encouraged women to share photos of themselves on social media, challenging the idea that photographs online of women are inherently shameful. [6] [2] In 2019 Khawe and the Sofia Association organised a conference on sexual violence in Sulaymaniah, which was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani. [7] She is a contributor to the anthology, Kurdish Women's Stories, edited by Houzan Mahmoud. [8]
The Anfal campaign was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988 during the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rural Kurds because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate. The Iraqis committed atrocities on the local Kurdish population, mostly civilians.
In Iraq, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) individuals are subject to widespread discrimination. Openly gay men are not permitted to serve in the military and same-sex marriage or civil unions are illegal. LGBT people do not have any legal protections against discrimination and are frequently victims of vigilante justice and honor killings.
Gendercide is the systematic killing of members of a specific gender. The term is related to the general concepts of assault and murder against victims due to their gender, with violence against women and men being problems dealt with by human rights efforts. Gendercide shares similarities with the term 'genocide' in inflicting mass murders; however, gendercide targets solely one gender, being men or women. Politico-military frameworks have historically inflicted militant-governed divisions between femicide and androcide; gender-selective policies increase violence on gendered populations due to their socioeconomic significance. Certain cultural and religious sentiments have also contributed to multiple instances of gendercide across the globe.
Kurdistan Region is an autonomous administrative entity within the Republic of Iraq. It comprises four Kurdish-majority divisions of Arab-majority Iraq: the Erbil Governorate, the Sulaymaniyah Governorate, the Duhok Governorate, and Halabja Governorate. The KRI is bordered by Iran to the east, by Turkey to the north, and by Syria to the west. It does not govern all of Iraqi Kurdistan, and lays claim to the disputed territories of northern Iraq; these territories have a predominantly non-Arab population and were subject to the Ba'athist Arabization campaigns throughout the late 20th century. Though the KRI's autonomy was realized in 1992, one year after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, these northern territories remain contested between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Government of Iraq to the present day. In light of the dispute, the KRI's constitution declares the city of Kirkuk as the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. However, the KRI does not control Kirkuk, and the Kurdistan Region Parliament is based in Erbil. In 2014, when the Syria-based Islamic State began their Northern Iraq offensive and invaded the country, the Iraqi Armed Forces retreated from most of the disputed territories. The KRI's Peshmerga then entered and took control of them for the duration of the War in Iraq (2013–2017). In October 2017, following the defeat of the Islamic State, the Iraqi Armed Forces attacked the Peshmerga and reasserted control over the disputed territories.
Kurdish women have traditionally played important roles in Kurdish society and politics. In general, Kurdish women's rights and equality have improved dramatically in the 21st century due to progressive movements within Kurdish society. However, despite the progress, Kurdish and international women's rights organizations still report problems related to gender inequality, forced marriages, honor killings, and in Iraqi Kurdistan, female genital mutilation (FGM).
Nazand Begikhani is a contemporary Kurdish/British writer, poet and leading academic researcher into gender based violence, and an active advocate of human rights. She is an honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, Centre for Gender and Violence Research and has been awarded the Vincent Wright Chair 2019/2020 and works as a visiting professor at Sciences Po School for International Affairs, Paris.
Kurdish nationalism is a nationalist political movement which asserts that Kurds are a nation and espouses the creation of an independent Kurdistan from Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Houzan Mahmoud is a Kurdish feminist, writer and anti-war activist born in South Kurdistan. She was one of the speakers at the anti-war rally in March 2003 in London and is the co-founder of the Culture Project, a platform for Kurdish feminists, writers and activists.
Kurds in the United Kingdom or British Kurds refers to people of Kurdish origin born in or residing in the United Kingdom.
Dashni Morad is a Kurdish singer, songwriter, television presenter, human rights & environmental activist. Born in Kurdistan, she moved to Holland as a refugee with her family in 1997. She rose to prominence in 2005 through her television show, "Bê Kontrol", which was the first of its kind in the Kurdistan Region to explore pop culture and related aspects of contemporary Western culture candidly. Many people in the Kurdistan Region, particularly the youth, consider Dashni to have broken down cultural and traditional barriers for young women.
The status of women in Iraq at the beginning of the 21st century is affected by many factors: wars, sectarian religious debates concerning Islamic law and Iraq's Constitution, cultural traditions, and modern secularism. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women are widowed as a result of a series of wars and internal conflicts. Women's rights organizations struggle against harassment and intimidation, while they work to promote improvements to women's status in the law, in education, the workplace, and many other spheres of Iraqi life, and to curtail abusive traditional practices such as honor killings and forced marriages.
Human rights in Iraqi Kurdistan refer to the human rights issue in the autonomous area of Kurdistan Region.
Asuda for Combating Violence against Women is a women's rights NGO operating in Iraqi Kurdistan. The term Asuda means: "providing comfort".
The Women's Protection Units or Women's Defense Units is an all-female militia involved in the Syrian civil war. The YPJ is part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the armed forces of Rojava, and is closely affiliated with the male-led YPG. While the YPJ is mainly made up of Kurds, it also includes women from other ethnic groups in Northern Syria.
Six Days: Three Activists, Three Wars, One Dream is a documentary film by director Nikolina Gillgren, which follows three human rights activists in Liberia, Iraq and Georgia over six days. It provides insight into the everyday struggle of making women's lives better, worldwide.
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.
Sara Omar is a Danish-Kurdish author, human rights activist and poet. She is the first internationally recognized female novelist from Kurdistan Region of Iraq. She started out as a poet and has published several critical articles in the Middle Eastern media.
Rasan was a Kurdish non-governmental human rights organization that was established in 2004 in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Region, Iraq. Rasan focused on LGBT rights and women's rights. The organization ran projects that focused on coexistence and social cohesion through the use of arts, social awareness, focus groups, livelihood projects, seminars, workshops, training, and action plans. Rasan engaged community leaders from different sectors in community forums on gender identity, equality and coexistence.
Amna Suraka is a museum in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Women in the Iran–Iraq War were active in a number of roles.
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