Women from all continents mobilized yesterday Wednesday to defend their rights in decline in countries like Afghanistan or under pressure in others like the United States, where the right to abortion is questioned, and to denounce the femicides that are multiplying in Latin America.
In conservative and patriarchal Pakistan, thousands of women took to the streets despite attempts by authorities in several cities to prevent marches called for International Women’s Day.
“We are no longer going to remain silent. It is our day, it is our moment,” said Rabail Akhtar, a teacher who joined the 2,000 participants at an event in Lahore.
afghan recoil
In Afghanistan, about twenty women demonstrated in Kabul. Since the return to power of the Taliban in August 2021, Afghan women and girls have been “erased from public life,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres lamented on Monday.
In general, Guterres warned that “the advances made in decades are evaporating” in the world.
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed in Abu Dhabi that “women and children are the main victims of conflicts and climate change” and that “nowhere (…) shows this to us more dramatically than Ukraine” , which has resisted the Russian invasion for more than a year.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the women who “sacrificed their lives” in the war. On the other side, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, extolled women who “fulfill their duty” at the service of the nation.
The European Union (EU) on Tuesday adopted sanctions against nine officials and three official entities from six countries, including Afghanistan, Russia and South Sudan, for cases of sexual violence and abuse against women.
The United Kingdom on Wednesday froze assets and prohibited the entry into the country of individuals and entities responsible for attacks against women in Iran, Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.
freedoms
In Spain, a crowd dressed and dyed purple swept through the center of Madrid.
This demonstration “gives me a lot of strength, a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of energy to continue fighting for equal rights for all,” said Mariam Ferradas, a 52-year-old kitchen helper, who recalled that her grandmothers “fought” for “certain freedoms that now They want to cut us down again.”
The government led by the socialist Pedro Sánchez, in coalition with the radical left party Podemos, is currently suffering from a fracture due to the reform of a law on sexual assaults.
In France, massive marches criticized the pension reform promoted by President Emmanuel Macron, which seeks to bring the legal minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 years. “Women are the big losers from this reform as their careers are often discontinuous,” said Odile Deverne, a .