he Islamic Republic of Iran has never been shy about using live ammunition and weaponized sexual violence against those challenging their authority. To raise your voice and call for change in Iran is to put your life on the line. It is hard to fathom the relentless courage with which Iranian protesters have stood and marched since 1979 and since September this year.
Repeatedly laying your life on the line and getting nowhere is demoralizing. We see that repeatedly across the world in countries where freedom is an inaccessible luxury rather than a right and women often suffer more oppression than men. With the close of 2022 we should reflect on whether we can make 2023 any different.
The last four months have been excruciating for Iranians everywhere. We have anxiously watched what seems like a civil war between the people of Iran and a brutal military dictatorship. Chants and screams of the ‘Woman. Life. Freedom’ movement, led by women and supported by people throughout Iran, have sent shocks across the world. This chaos was triggered by the murder of Zhina ‘Mahsa’ Amini, but multiple crises have shaped the ongoing movement and social problems in Iran run deep.
Gender inequality stands at the fore. Women are systematically subjugated and oppressed by laws to which clerics and their families do not adhere themselves. The mistreatment of women starts at an early age. The tragedy of child marriage in Iran is only getting worse. The legal age of marriage for young girls is 13 years old, but since March 2021 the Department of Registry of Sistan and Baluchestan Province in Iran reports that 18 marriages of girls between five and nine years old have been registered. In Ahvaz, the capital of the Khuzestan province, between one and three girls under the age of 15 are married every day.
Child marriage is a disaster that both creates poverty and is compounded by it. In Iran, poverty is rife. Nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line and about nine million are illiterate. Amid corruption, inept leadership, mismanagement, and economic sanctions the pandemic pushed three quarters of the nation’s population below the absolute poverty line, creating enduring barriers to employment and opportunity.
This explains Iran’s crippling brain drain. Huge swathes of the intellectual class have migrated or been imprisoned, widespread reliance on religious upbringing has been established, and education curricula are increasingly ‘Islamized.’ This together with the dominating presence of theocratic seminaries and strict censorship regulations erodes Iran’s cultural heritage creating a “deep cultural poverty in society."
This creates a landscape in which dissenters have nowhere to go but the streets. There have been reports of older Iranians observing ‘the fear has evaporated’ from the movement’s youthful leaders. Perhaps there is nothing to fear because there is nothing to lose. This is hardly cause for celebration, and yet the revolution’s fearlessness is growing from fertile grounds. The movement does not have a single or individual leader so it cannot be decapitated; it’s feminist in nature but it transcends gender, class, religion, and ethnicity; those who have left Iran have been fiercely determined to amplify Iranian voices inside the country… Although we don’t know what shape it may take, it’s hard not to hope regime change might be on the horizon.
Beyond Iran
Is change visible on horizons beyond Iran, too? Looking back on the year through a global lens, it is easy to despair about the future of the safety, dignity, and freedom of women and girls elsewhere. At the end of last year, the Taliban banned women from attending university and working in NGOs, only the most recent step in an alarming rollback on women’s rights in Afghanistan. Earlier in 2022, Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul Convention on Gender-Based Violence. Sexual violence grew in Ethiopia’s conflict, access to sexual health is under assault in the U.S., and we are getting a better understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic’s lasting impact on women’s entitlements more broadly.
The future is also frightening. As the climate crisis deepens, women and girls in developing countries struggle with the responsibility of securing food, water, and fuel for their families while suffering decreased access to education all while facing higher rates of gender-based violence (including trafficking, exploitation and child marriage).
In Ukraine, ongoing armed conflict has led to the increased militarization of everyday life. This shift impacts women and girls acutely, exacerbating existing inequalities. Resources get redirected to meet military needs. Conflict-based disruptions restrict access to basic services, endangering the wellbeing and safety of women and girls. Over the last few years, Amnesty International has documented the rates at which militarization in conflict-affected areas of Ukraine increase rates of gender-based violence. Now these challenges are set to spread across the nation in its entirety.
Embracing Hope in 2023
Our prospects feel dim, but I still believe we are lucky to be alive at this moment in time. For many people in many places, 2022 has been the best period in the history of civilization to be a woman. The long struggle against oppressive systems has borne fruit. We continue to fight for our freedoms and for our future generations, just as our ancestors fought for us.
For those of us who admire the work of human rights defenders on the frontlines of resistance and stand with activists all over the world, we can learn from Iran’s movement. Rather than falling to the government’s ‘divide and conquer’ campaign, the movement continues to present a unified front despite how costly resistance has become.
As we begin a new year, we should stand in solidarity with the global community so that in our shared protest, hope may be the first of many shared victories in 2023.
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Make Shared Hope the First Global Victory of 2023
Photo by Craig Melville via Unsplash.
January 4, 2023
In Iran and beyond, the movement for women’s rights have sent shocks across the world. As we begin a new year, we should stand in solidarity with the global community so that in our shared protest, hope may be the first of many shared victories in 2023, writes Sage Foundation CEO Naza Alakija.
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he Islamic Republic of Iran has never been shy about using live ammunition and weaponized sexual violence against those challenging their authority. To raise your voice and call for change in Iran is to put your life on the line. It is hard to fathom the relentless courage with which Iranian protesters have stood and marched since 1979 and since September this year.
Repeatedly laying your life on the line and getting nowhere is demoralizing. We see that repeatedly across the world in countries where freedom is an inaccessible luxury rather than a right and women often suffer more oppression than men. With the close of 2022 we should reflect on whether we can make 2023 any different.
The last four months have been excruciating for Iranians everywhere. We have anxiously watched what seems like a civil war between the people of Iran and a brutal military dictatorship. Chants and screams of the ‘Woman. Life. Freedom’ movement, led by women and supported by people throughout Iran, have sent shocks across the world. This chaos was triggered by the murder of Zhina ‘Mahsa’ Amini, but multiple crises have shaped the ongoing movement and social problems in Iran run deep.
Gender inequality stands at the fore. Women are systematically subjugated and oppressed by laws to which clerics and their families do not adhere themselves. The mistreatment of women starts at an early age. The tragedy of child marriage in Iran is only getting worse. The legal age of marriage for young girls is 13 years old, but since March 2021 the Department of Registry of Sistan and Baluchestan Province in Iran reports that 18 marriages of girls between five and nine years old have been registered. In Ahvaz, the capital of the Khuzestan province, between one and three girls under the age of 15 are married every day.
Child marriage is a disaster that both creates poverty and is compounded by it. In Iran, poverty is rife. Nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line and about nine million are illiterate. Amid corruption, inept leadership, mismanagement, and economic sanctions the pandemic pushed three quarters of the nation’s population below the absolute poverty line, creating enduring barriers to employment and opportunity.
This explains Iran’s crippling brain drain. Huge swathes of the intellectual class have migrated or been imprisoned, widespread reliance on religious upbringing has been established, and education curricula are increasingly ‘Islamized.’ This together with the dominating presence of theocratic seminaries and strict censorship regulations erodes Iran’s cultural heritage creating a “deep cultural poverty in society."
This creates a landscape in which dissenters have nowhere to go but the streets. There have been reports of older Iranians observing ‘the fear has evaporated’ from the movement’s youthful leaders. Perhaps there is nothing to fear because there is nothing to lose. This is hardly cause for celebration, and yet the revolution’s fearlessness is growing from fertile grounds. The movement does not have a single or individual leader so it cannot be decapitated; it’s feminist in nature but it transcends gender, class, religion, and ethnicity; those who have left Iran have been fiercely determined to amplify Iranian voices inside the country… Although we don’t know what shape it may take, it’s hard not to hope regime change might be on the horizon.
Beyond Iran
Is change visible on horizons beyond Iran, too? Looking back on the year through a global lens, it is easy to despair about the future of the safety, dignity, and freedom of women and girls elsewhere. At the end of last year, the Taliban banned women from attending university and working in NGOs, only the most recent step in an alarming rollback on women’s rights in Afghanistan. Earlier in 2022, Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul Convention on Gender-Based Violence. Sexual violence grew in Ethiopia’s conflict, access to sexual health is under assault in the U.S., and we are getting a better understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic’s lasting impact on women’s entitlements more broadly.
The future is also frightening. As the climate crisis deepens, women and girls in developing countries struggle with the responsibility of securing food, water, and fuel for their families while suffering decreased access to education all while facing higher rates of gender-based violence (including trafficking, exploitation and child marriage).
In Ukraine, ongoing armed conflict has led to the increased militarization of everyday life. This shift impacts women and girls acutely, exacerbating existing inequalities. Resources get redirected to meet military needs. Conflict-based disruptions restrict access to basic services, endangering the wellbeing and safety of women and girls. Over the last few years, Amnesty International has documented the rates at which militarization in conflict-affected areas of Ukraine increase rates of gender-based violence. Now these challenges are set to spread across the nation in its entirety.
Embracing Hope in 2023
Our prospects feel dim, but I still believe we are lucky to be alive at this moment in time. For many people in many places, 2022 has been the best period in the history of civilization to be a woman. The long struggle against oppressive systems has borne fruit. We continue to fight for our freedoms and for our future generations, just as our ancestors fought for us.
For those of us who admire the work of human rights defenders on the frontlines of resistance and stand with activists all over the world, we can learn from Iran’s movement. Rather than falling to the government’s ‘divide and conquer’ campaign, the movement continues to present a unified front despite how costly resistance has become.
As we begin a new year, we should stand in solidarity with the global community so that in our shared protest, hope may be the first of many shared victories in 2023.
