1st Middle East Women's Conference Final Declaration

The Final Declaration that aims joint struggle and international solidarity among the women from the Middle East, North Africa and Arab Countries has an historical importance in terms of its function for being a road map for the upcoming years. We are the 250 women from 26 countries who are in opposition to repression, colonialist regimes, occupations, neo-liberal politics and racism came together and shared our experiences with the occasion of the 1st Middle East Women's Conference between 31 May - 2 June 2013 in Amed.  We have discussed recent political developments as well as women's struggle for equity and freedom.

As the conference delegation we thanks to Democratic Free Women Movement for bring us together. We salute the Union of Free Women of Kurdistan which provides opportunity for revolutionary change for the freedom struggle of Women. We perceive this conference as a result of Kurdish Women' struggle.

We are going through a historic and important process. The Middle East and North Africa are living a conversion and restructuring process. This critical process means an opportunity and risk as well as for women. We believe that organized and effectual participation to the conversion and restructuring process lay a historical burden on women for our freedom. Therefore, we think that this conference should serve to the involving mechanisms in order to attend to this critic and historic process. We as participants of the conference, we declare that similar summits will be traditional and we will follow up the conference decisions and its aims. Therefore as decisions of the conference;

- We are going to constitute a communication network that covers all the participators of the conference.

- We are going to constitute a coordination group by ..... women in order to providing opportunity for stronger co-operation, communication among the delegates and political solidarity until the second conference.

- We are going to build up a monitoring group for women in the refugee camps who escape from the war in Syria.

The changing in the Middle East and the North Africa affects Women too. Women are actively involved to the struggle. However, while new powers becomes the government, women's' rights have been restricted, violence on women and rape are continuing, excluded from decision making mechanisms and public field in order to confine the women to houses by the cooperation with the male-dominant system. Our historical conscious and experiences shows that; fundamentalism is one of the basic threats against women's' freedom. Our basic struggle point is converting the evolution to the revolution by rising the struggle against fundamentalism that refuses and denies woman. Any ideology, religion and belief cannot be used as a pressure against women. Women cannot be discriminated due to their life style or dressing. Therefore, they shouldn't incapacitated from their social, political, education and working rights.

We as women announce the struggle against rape, stone to death, female circumcision, woman killings and violence against women by the male and the state; neo-liberal politics that causes flexible and unsecured working to women. We remarks that we will realize joint activities in order to struggle against inhuman implementations, tortures and execution of women.

We underline our opposition to all forms of discrimination based on ethnic, ideological, religious belief, sexual identity and sexual orientation. We should also defend the rights of non-religious people.  We are saying that every people have right to protect their mother tongue and education and living in mother tongue are also women's' demand.   

We are refuses every kind of occupation and external interventions and believe that national-social struggle and struggle for women's' right are inseparable.

We refuse the unitary nation-state model and suggest the democratic pluralist people model. We take in consider peoples' sisterhood against to the imperialist politics. Rising the struggle against to the fascism and every kind of dictatorship is our principal attitude.

We express that all the participant women who represents the conference delegation from different countries will continue to struggle for political, judicial and democratic fields until freedom of all the women political prisoners. We call the governments to release all the women political prisoners.

The January 9 which is the date of assassination of three Kurdish Women politicians, Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyşa Şaylemez; We declare that the January 9 will be the joint activity day among the conference representatives' regions against political murders.

We, women, reckon that, without ensuring the equal representation of women, a real peace-building process is impossible. In this respect, we invite all the women to raise the struggle to ensure the women representation in the peace talks. We support the peace talks and negotiations between Kurdish People's Leader Mr. Abdullah Öcalan and the government of Turkey. We demand freedom of Mr. Abdullah Öcalan and declare that we will make an effort for a result which covers the Kurdish People's freedom demands from this negotiations.

We support the ongoing freedom and concession struggle in Kurdistan that colonized by the 4 states in the early part of 20. Century.

We the women, perceive Kurdish and Palestinian Peoples' freedom issue as the basic two questions in the Middle East. We underline one more time that a deep-scaled peace can not be realize without the freedom of the two people. We support all the peoples' freedom strugles in particularly Palestine and Kurdish Peoples. We remind one more time the right of self-determination.

We declare that, we support Palestinian People, right to coming back to the Palestinian refugees and their struggle against Zionism. We say that releasing is required for Kurdish woman arrestee, Zeynep Celaliyan, Tunusian woman activist who arrested due to her speech on "my body is mine", Palestinian leader Ahmat Saadat, Marwan Barguti and human rights defender from Bahrein, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja.

Regarding to the women rights and their freedom, we as the women that refuse political, ideological and ethnic oriented discriminative approaches. Express that we will struggle together according to the woman entity without discrimination on politic view and ideological approach.

Therefore, we announce a joint and concurrent campaigns against the violence by the states and male in order to creating an awareness to the violence on women in public and special area in the Middle East and North Africa. We pay attention to 25th November as a symbolic date for women against discrimination and violence.

We will be in opposition to demolition of cultural history and save the damaged nature which fall into war and the occupation.

Our conference is a new political ground for women and promises hope to international struggle against tyrants, dictators and male-dominant system. The sustainability and to strengthen the ground is up to us. We as women trust ourselves and say that the peace will come to these lands by the women.