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WE WILL FIGHT TO PRESERVE OUR RIGHTS!
During the last session of United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) held in Geneva from 6-9 July, a declaration where "reproductive health together with access to methods of family planning" was proposed to limit the high maternal mortality in the world often caused by complications of unsafe or unsanitary illegal abortions. All member countries have opted for the text, only Poland, supported by Ireland and Malta, voted against and vetoed the declaration.
Even if a UN declaration has no legal force in the Member States, Poland confirmed once more its official policy against sexual and reproductive rights in contradiction with the EU position. According the Polish Government’s Spokesman, Poland could accept the common position of EU in the field of reproductive health, provided the exclusion of abortion issues under other conditions than those authorized by the Polish law (threat to life or health of the mother, serious damage to the foetus, pregnancy as a result of criminal act).
Polish Catholic fundamentalism strives clearly to develop its anti-abortion crusade outside of Poland, when we know that international standards of reproductive health can save millions of women’s lives in the world. The mission to reinforce the ”Christian values” is used to fight the fundamental values of democracy, the full right for women to dispose of their own body and to have access to reproductive health and sexual education.
In Poland, but also in Ireland, Cyprus, Malta, Andorra and now in Lithuania and Slovakia women are facing same restrictions or are forbidden these rights. In many other countries, like Italy, Spain, Croatia or Macedonia these rights are endangered by the raise of religious fundamentalisms and the pressure of the conservative lobbies.
European Feminist Initiative, a democratic movement defending universal rights, is fully supporting the protest of the Polish Feminists and calls for mobilisation of feminists across Europe against the vote of the Polish government. For the past thirty years, Polish feminists have been fighting against a misogynist regime that considers women minor human beings. The weight of the Catholic rule has imprisoned the women as well as the whole Polish society. Neither Poland nor any country can achieve democracy, as long as the church interferes in State affairs. Creating a State in which religion is separated from the public sphere is a necessary condition for women’s equality, freedom and dignity.
European Feminist Initiative voices the demands of feminists in Europe for the recognition of the fundamental right of all women in all the countries to have control over their own bodies; the right to information; contraception and free and safe abortion. We refuse the increasing intrusion of the religious structures in women’s lives. We ask for secular States!
European Feminist Initiative together with other feminist organisations has called for a coordinated European campaign to gather one million signatures which will make it possible to directly influence changes in the European policies.
(To join this appeal on line: http://www.lapetition.com/sign1.cfm?numero=1682)
European Feminist Initiative demands harmonisation of legislation concerning women’s rights on the most advanced level and appeals to the feminists and all women and men of all European countries to organize around this demand and to express their protest against the Polish vote.
The European feminist movement represents a social force for change, working to build a truly democratic, secular and peaceful Europe. In full solidarity with the EFI Poland and all the Polish feminists, with their action for freedom and equality, European Feminist Initiative says:
NO TO REGRESSION OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN EUROPE!
European Coordination, July 21st 09 |
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June 2009
European Feminist Initiative in Solidarity with Brave Women of Iran
We, as the whole world are following with excitement and concern your just and brave protests in Iran. Women’s liberation in Iran has always been a source of inspiration and pride for us. For the past thirty years, you have fought a difficult and dangerous fight against a very brutal and misogynist regime that considers women as half human beings. Forceful imposition of Islamic veil and gender apartheid in Iran has created a large cage for the women and indeed the whole society. These reactionary measures have angered all freedom-loving people and the feminist movement in the world ...
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June 2009
European Elections results 2009
The record voter low turnout in the EP elections is 43.39 percent. It is lower even than that the record low 45.47 percent in 2004. This shows the rejection and the doubt of millions of women and men living in European countries who are facing the lack of union of progressive forces for a real political alternative ...
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June 2009
IFE - EFI Statement mr Obama and cultural relativism
For many years European Feminist Initiative (IFE-EFI) has been denouncing the intrusion of religions in the public sphere. For many years IFE-EFI has been striving to disclose and uncover the link between patriarchal politics of fundamentalist regimes, whether based on religion or on dominant culture, and the more subtle patriarchate of western democracies ...
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June 2009
Open Letter to the Candidates for the EP Elections
The European democracy suffers from the lack of a real implementation of the fundamental principles stated in the Union’s founding texts: equal rights for all citizens which means equal rights between women and men ...
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March 2009
IFE-EFI Position Paper
Elections to the European Parliament are due to take place in June 2009 throughout the twenty seven countries in the European Union. European Union is said to be a peace project where democracy and human rights are the leading values. Is this the reality? How to analyse the European policies and their consequences for the lives of the 250 millions of women living in the EU countries ? Which Europe do we want? What politicians do we want to see in the EU parliament and what policies? Can we build a fair and egalitarian society without breaking with the present capitalist and patriarchal choices made by EU that produced world crisis, precariousness, unemployment, increasing of religious fundamentalisms and militarism and that penalize first women ...
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March 2009
THE EUROPE WE WANT
Elections to the European Parliament are due to take place in June 2009 throughout the twenty seven countries in the European Union. European Union is said to be a peace project where democracy and human rights are the leading values. Is this the reality? How to analyse the European policies and their consequences for the lives of the 250 millions of women living in the EU countries ? Which Europe do we want? What Politicians do we want to see in the EU parliament and what policies? Can we build a fair and egalitarian society without breaking with the present capitalist and patriarchal choices made by EU that produced world crisis, precariousness, unemployment, increasing of religious fundamentalisms and militarism and that penalize first women ...
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March 2009
NATO is 60 years old: a sad birthday for peace. 61 years, No thank you!
We, feminists from Europe fully support the International Appeal of Stuttgart for a more just and secure world. IFE-EFI will participate at the International Demonstration: « NO TO WAR – NO TO NATO ! » on the 4th of April 2009 in STRASBOURG-KEHL and will contribute to its success.
During the NATO summit of State leaders of the 26 member countries, transport will be organised to help and bring together those who are acting for a world in which the 1500 milliards of euros budgeted each year for death will be allocated to address the basic needs of Humanity ...
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24 Jan 2009
IFE-EFI Poland Polish feminist organizations protest
Polish feminist organizations are planning a protest on 24th of January in front of Polish Parliament over a draft of an in vitro fertilization act - dubbed "Gowin's project". The project takes its name from the name of the Polish MP charged with drafting of the law by the Civic Platform, the "enlightened" pro-European right-wing party. According to the draft, only married couples where wife is less than forty years old would be granted the right to take advantage of the in vitro fertilization. The law would ban creation of any surplus embryos and their cryopreservation (the law would not authorize implantation of more than two embryos), rendering the in vitro fertilization methode completely inefficient ...
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24 Jan 2009
Demonstration of the Polish feminist organisations 24/01/09 EFI statement
You are planning a protest on 24th of January in front of Polish Parliament over a draft of an in vitro fertilization Act. According to this draft, only married couples where wife is less than forty years old would be granted the right to take advantage of the in vitro fertilization. The law would ban creation of any surplus embryos and their cryopreservation rendering the in vitro fertilization method completely inefficient ...
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Jan 2009
GAZA - ACT NOW
European Feminist Initiative IFE-EFI, a feminist network whose actions go beyond geographical and ethnic borders issued on December 29th 2008 across Europe, USA, Middle East and Mediterranean region an urgent statement ENOUGH! with which we demand that the military actions in Gaza be immediately stopped, the blockade of Gaza immediately lifted and a long term disarmament and demilitarisation processes urgently initiated globally by the USA and European Union governments. Processes that will create political and social framework and space for different and effective peace process in The Middle East to take place, where civilians, peace and feminist activists, women’s human rights and human rights organisations, secular and liberal thinkers and intellectuals together with other progressive forces and politicians will create own opportunities to participate and effectively influence the shaping of their societies; in the light of the respect of The United Nation resolutions, including UNSCR1325 and respect of the international law ...
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Jan 2009
FEMINIST EUROPEAN APPEAL
To voice the demand of feminists in Europe for the recognition of the fundamental right of all women in all the countries to have control over their own bodies, the right to information, contraception and free and safe abortion ...
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29 Dec 2008
The bloodiest day in Gaza in 40 years, since the six days war
”The bloodiest day in Gaza in 40 years, since the six days war.” Almost 300 dead and 700 injured already and it is only a beginning according to the Israeli leaders. Today civilians in Gaza are left in the middle of a massive destruction, without food, without electricity, without medicines, without connection to the world, in a disastrous and inhuman situation. More than one and half million Palestinians are being collectively punished and have been deprived of the basic livelihood for more than a year ...
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28 Dec 2008
Acid Thrown at a Labour Union leader in Greece
Konstantina Kouneva, the general secretary of the Attica Union of Cleaners and Domestic Workers (AUCDW) in Greece, was brutally attacked on 22 December, at midnight by her home in Athens. According to the brief news released, unknown persons threw acid at her face, head and shoulder ...
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20 Dec 2008
Women in Politics: A Space for Social Changes
European Feminist Initiative, EFI-IFE was invited to participate and share experiences at the seminar “Women in Politics: A Space for Social Changes” organized on Dec 14th -15th, 2008 by the Swedish Institute in Alexandria and the Swedish Foundation Kvinna till Kvinna ...
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20 Dec 2008
A Communist Women’s Right Activist Beheaded in Iraqi Kurdistan
Nahla Hussain, a women’s rights activist and the leader of the women's league of the Kurdish Communist Party and mother of two children, was beheaded at her house in Kirkuk, in north of Iraq. She was alone in the house at the time of her death. According to the police some unidentified men have entered her house on Thursday night, but the circumstances that led to the attack are unknown ...
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12 Oct 2008
Malmö ESF Forum : a feminist evaluation.
Some History : The feminist organisations are present in the European social forums since the beginning of their history (Florence 2002) In Paris the women assembly showed brilliantly the strength of the feminist movement by gathering more than 3500 women – In Athens then in London, the evaluation was more “mixed”, but globally very positive , since the assembly is one of our ways of presence and expression in the social forums, : we have also our own seminars and we participate to others seminars and assemblies.. Facing the present stakes of the Forums, we are rejecting – as we always did - political alliances made to the prejudice of women which set the fight for women’s rights at a second rank after the fight against racism and against war. We consider that it leads to divide the anti-conservative forces and to weaken the altermondialist movement ...
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01 June 2008
Conference « Feminists for a secular Europe » Casa Internazionale delle donne Roma 31/5 - 1/6 2008.
European Feminist Initiative organised its conference « Feminists for a secular Europe” in Rome, on May31st - June 1st in spite of persistent political obstacles and financial difficulties. This meeting gathered, in the immediate proximity of the Vatican, more than one hundred feminist activists for secularism and women’s rights, coming from 20 European and Middle East countries. This is in itself a great success against obscurantism, a powerful challenge to all fundamentalisms, an achievement of the solidarity of feminist movements and a proof of their vitality and determination. Through speeches of high quality , the convergence of the analyses and the conviction of the participants, in a warm climate of sisterhood and mutual respect, the conference showed brilliantly that the feminist movement is a necessary force in the common effort to counter the neo liberal orientation of Europe and to build a truly democratic Europe ...
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June 2007
European Feminist Initiative for another Europe say NO to the « European Simplified Treaty »
All attempts to make this text adopted by force and in non-transparency are anti-democratic and non legitimate! The orientation of the text is the one to which the people of France and Netherlands have overwhelmingly said NO by rejecting the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 ...
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