Thousands of women will take to the streets this Wednesday to denounce a global offensive against their rights and claim the end of discrimination and femicidesbooming in countries like Mexico and Colombia.
on the occasion of International Women’s Daythere will be events and marches in numerous cities, including Madridwhich usually gathers a gigantic purple tide.
The reasons for mobilization are numerous: the discriminations imposed in Afghanistan since the return to power of the Taliban, the repression of protests in Iran for the death of Mahsa Aminithe questioning of the right to abortion in the United States or the consequences of the war in Ukraine on women.
“The gains made in decades are evaporating before our eyes”, warned the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, on Monday.
“At the current rate, UN Women estimates that it will take 300 years” to achieve equality between men and women, she added, after recalling the situation in Afghanistan, where women and girls have been “erased from public life” since the return to the power of the Taliban in August 2021.
Afghan universities reopened on Monday after the winter holidays, but only men were allowed to attend their classrooms.
The European Union (EU) adopted on Tuesday, the eve of March 8, sanctions against the Taliban Minister of Higher Education, Neda Mohammed Nadeem, “responsible for the widespread violation of women’s right to education.”
Other individuals or entities responsible for violations of women’s rights in Iran, Russia, South Sudan, Burma or Syria were also targeted.
forbidden marches
Women’s marches were banned in various places, such as in Pakistanwhere the authorities alleged the “controversial posters” that protesters usually carry with claims about divorce or against sexual harassment.
Neither did the independent feminist organizations of Cubawhich they called in response to a “virtual march” on social networks to raise awareness about gender violence and femicides.
Another central theme of the marches will be the defense of right to abortion, weakened in the United States by the decision of the Supreme Court to revoke in June the sentence of 1973 that guaranteed it at the federal level.
In Europe, that right was also weakened in Hungary and Poland.
“We fight against a patriarchy (…) that disputes to the point of exhaustion those rights of ours -such as abortion- that we have achieved by fighting,” claims the manifesto of the march that will start in Madrid at 18 GMT.
In France marches were called for “equality at work and in life”. The country is convulsed by strikes and protests against the pension reform promoted by the liberal government of Emmanuel Macron, which critics say will have harmful effects on women.
Mexico and Colombia against femicide
Under the slogans “Not one more assassinated!” and “Against violence against women and precarious work!”, feminist groups called for marches in the main cities of Mexicowhere in 2022 they were registered 969 femicidesaccording to official figures.
Also in Colombia women’s organizations have called for demonstrations in Bogota, Medellin, Cali and other cities to demand action against the increase in femicides, which they went from 182 in 2020 to 614 last year.
In Brazil will be denounced, with a “great feminist batucada” in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the “cuts in women’s protection policies” and the “vertiginous growth of machismo and misogyny” during the term of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), said Junéia Batista, from the Single Central of Workers (CUT).
The current left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will participate in Brasilia in launching programs aimed at women and in the creation of the Marielle Franco National Day against political violence, in homage to the councilwoman assassinated in 2018.
In Venezuelaunions and federations called for a march in Caracas to demand guarantees of their rights, violated by low wages, abuses and the “growing feminization of poverty”.
(With information from AFP)
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Source-www.infobae.com