From Afghanistan under Taliban domination to France where the right to abortion is included in the Constitution, via the Democratic Republic of Congo where the first wish is peace, International Women’s Rights Day mobilized Friday, under various forms.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of “a step backwards” for women’s rights, “in both developing and developed countries,” at a ceremony in New York .
“My body, my choices, my rights”: thousands of people, mostly women, parade on Friday in Paris and in several cities in France, festive demonstrations but punctuated in Paris by jostling between pro-Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists. Israel.
“Abortion, PMA, it’s my body, it’s my choice”, chanted demonstrators who met at the beginning of the afternoon in Paris at Place Gambetta, shortly after the ceremony inscribing the freedom to resort to abortion. voluntary termination of pregnancy in the Constitution, organized at Place Vendôme in the presence of President Emmanuel Macron and many figures of feminism.
Afghan women demonstrated discreetly and as best they could, the repression of the Taliban authorities against them preventing them from going out into the streets. In several provinces, they gathered in small numbers to demand that the restrictions on their rights, such as their exclusion from secondary education and universities, be lifted.
In Takhar province (north-east), images published by feminist activists show seven women holding papers in front of their faces, with the inscription “Rights, Justice, Freedom”. In Balkh (north), several women posed in front of a banner with the words “Save the women of Afghanistan”.
Government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid responded that the Taliban, which returned to power in 2021, respected women’s rights within the framework of Islam.
Hundreds of women demonstrated in major cities across the country, a mobilization criticized by conservative religious groups who accuse it of importing Western values.
“We face all kinds of violence: physical, sexual, cultural where women are exchanged to settle disputes, child marriages, rape, harassment at work, on the streets,” said organizer Farzana Bari main event in Islamabad, where hundreds of women gathered to dance, sing and listen to speeches.
For this usually festive and colorful day, thousands of Congolese women dressed in black, as a sign of mourning for the deaths of the conflicts in the east of the country.
“We, the women of Congo, refuse war, rape and the pillaging of our resources,” proclaimed the banners and banners brandished by several thousand of them who marched in the streets of Bukavu, the capital of South Congo. Kivu, one of the eastern provinces ravaged by decades of armed violence.
Nearly 200 women and activists marched at the call of the South African Jewish Council under the banner “Me Too except for the Jews”, to denounce rapes and abuses committed by Hamas on Israeli hostages in Gaza.
“We are deeply saddened by the horrors and atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists,” said one of the organizers, Gabriella Farber Cohen, denouncing the silence of President Cyril Ramaphosa.
In Moscow and occupied Ukrainian regions, members of the armed forces distributed flowers to passers-by. President Vladimir Putin praised the women participating in the offensive in Ukraine. In his speech, he said he paid special tribute to those “who carry out combat missions.”
According to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, more than 300,000 women “serve and work in the armed forces” of Russia. In a video message, he thanked the mothers of soldiers fighting in Ukraine: “You have raised true patriots and valiant defenders of the homeland.”
In recent weeks, wives of mobilized soldiers had organized demonstrations in front of the Kremlin to demand that their husbands be brought back from the front.
Hundreds of women began to gather at the end of the day in a street leading to Istanbul’s Taksim Square, which as in previous years is closed to access. Police officers formed cordons in the neighborhood to prevent any gatherings on or in the immediate vicinity of Taksim Square, journalists from Agence France-Presse noted.
A march is also planned in the capital, Ankara, on an artery where demonstrations have also been banned for several years.
Thousands of people took to the streets in Rome and Milan for demonstrations calling in particular for an end to violence against women, after several highly publicized cases of femicide.
At least 10,000 people gathered in the capital in the Circo Massimo, an ancient Roman arena, according to police. There were about a thousand of them in Milan, where a sign read “Girls just want to have basic human rights.”
Others voiced their opposition to far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Merloni, who describes herself as a “Christian mother” and is opposed to abortion.
