HRS members, joined London’s impactful Women’s March, advocating for education rights and highlighting global struggles against gender-based violence and injustice. Human Rights Solidarity (HRS) marked International Women’s Day on March 8 with its annual demonstration, joining forces with the Million Women Rise collective in London’s Great March. This year, the HRS Women’s Rights Committee spotlighted the critical issue of education access while amplifying the voices of women globally enduring violence and injustice particularly Afghan girls barred from schooling. Asiye Betul, a representative of the committee, delivered a stirring poetic address at Trafalgar Square, articulating the systemic oppression faced by women in regions worldwide.

Renowned as one of the largest and most impactful women’s rights gatherings globally, London’s annual march is a women-led initiative backed by diverse organizations and individuals nationwide. Participants from varied cultural, religious, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds united to condemn gender-based violence and inequality. Chants, banners, and songs echoed calls for justice, weaving a tapestry of resistance and solidarity.

This year’s demonstration kicked off at Oxford Street, London’s bustling shopping hub, and culminated at Trafalgar Square. Thousands marched for two hours along the 3-kilometer route, blending drumbeats, slogans, and a festive yet resolute atmosphere. Protestors demanded safer public spaces free from harassment, homes liberated from violence, and workplaces grounded in equity and dignity.

The HRS Women’s Rights Committee contributed a striking visual protest to the march. A delegation of 20 members staged a symbolic act highlighting Afghanistan’s education ban and the universal right to learning. Volunteers carried a 120×60 cm chained book model emblazoned with “Education” and “Women’s Rights,” while others wore miniature chained books as pendants. Their chants advocating education as freedom resonated alongside messages of global solidarity against gender-based oppression.

At the Trafalgar Square rally, speakers shed light on struggles faced by women in conflict zones like Gaza, Sudan, Syria, Iran, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Representing HRS, Asiye Betul recited an original poem decrying injustices from Turkey to global fronts. In a powerful climax, the chains binding the oversized book model were shattered, unveiling a hidden proclamation: “Denying education is denying freedom” a bold reminder of liberation’s inseparable tie to knowledge.

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NOTE: Here is the poem written and read by Asiye Betul:

What does my liberation look like?
Does it look like your laws, your wars, your rules?
Does it look like my body dissected by your schools?
Does it wear my face, does it speak my name?
Or is it just another mask for more of the same?

You look at me,
The barbarian other, veiled in ignorance,
beneath your supremacy, Veiled beneath your pity,
Telling me I need saving, while your hands are busy
Writing rules for my oppression, and laws that push me,
Across your borders, across humanity.

But? Here in Britain, who cleans your homes? Who raises your child?
Who wipes the tables where your rich sit and smile?
Migrant women in kitchens, in hospitals, in care,
The most invisible labour, lowest paid hours.
You say “go back,” but where do they go?
To the wreckage your empire left long ago?
Does your liberation reach asylum hotels, Home Office flats?
Where the right to belong is always too late?

What about Gaza? Where mothers dig graves,
Newborns breathe gas instead of air,
Women give birth in rubble, where life is death
You mourn your wars, count your dead,
While my sisters’ bodies are just headlines instead.
Where is your liberation without Palestinian women?

I am a Turkish woman,
and If it were up to me,
I would not know the name of the women murdered,
on the streets, in homes, in silent hours,
I would not know the names of those drowned crossing rivers,
If it were up to me, I would not have known exile nor borders,
nor so many women locked behind iron doors.
But I know Gulten Sayin and the pain of a son’s death,
I grew up seeing the face of Ozgecan on the internet,
I know the names of a thousand others,
Women buried in silence, in cells, in water.
My aunts, my sisters, my grandmothers.
May oppressors burn in their indifference.
My liberation without theirs is nothing but betrayal.

We’re here to speak about Afghan women,
So let me get started,
Because liberation without Afghan sisters is liberation denied.
Women doctors, women judges,
Women teachers, women scholars,
Now women locked, women silenced,
Women erased– for once I’d like to say women and not violence
Your armies came, your armies left,
And with them, their futures. That’s theft!
Knowledge is power, and women’s power you fear,
A girl with a book is a threat too near.
A girl writing is a threat,
A girl reading,
walking,
breathing
is a threat.
Crumble in your fear,

To hell with your instructions.
Tell me what to do with my ovaries.
Tell me how to democratise.
Tell me why covering my body is oppression,
But bombing mine is not.
Tell me how to speak, how to look, how to walk,
Is my accent just right? Am I dressed unprovocative enough?
Tell me what my freedom looks like,
How else will you humanise me?
Draw me a map to my own liberation,
Then burn it before I arrive.
Because your freedom was never for me,
It was never for the women in cages,
The Women suffering from your own wars,
The women in rubble, the women in exile,
women in schools turned to graves,
women across borders, women crossing channels
women who fix, wash, and clean your flannels.
And if your liberation is not for them,
Then it was never liberation at all.

War zones expose children to daily dangers, denying them safety, education, food, and basic rights, necessitating urgent global humanitarian action. This year on International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression we remember the children of Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, Turkiye, Syria, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti and Nigeria.

Children residing in war zones around the world witness unimaginable horrors on a daily basis. It is unsafe for them to play outside, sleep at home, attend school, or go to hospitals for medical attention.

Children around the globe endure unspeakable horrors even adults find unbearable and they are innocently caught in the midst of warring parties. They are being subjected to sexual violence, and abduction and are being forced to join armed groups, all while being deprived of essential humanitarian aid.

UN Reports, in Gaza the number of children killed is higher than from four years of world conflict. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said “This war is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future” [1]. More than 14,000 children have been reportedly killed and thousands have been injured. If not injured or killed children are deprived of essential needs, displaced and don’t have access to water, food and medicine. UNICEF had initially reported that “Rafah is now a city of children, who have nowhere safe to go in Gaza”. On the 26th of May 2024, the tents and shelters in Rafah have now been bombed which leaves no safe place for the children of Gaza. UNICEF reports that even wars have rules and no child should be cut off from essential services in accordance with international humanitarian law [2] reflecting that this is not a war but a genocide[3].

There is a silent war and famine going on in Sudan affecting innocent children. Human Rights Watch reports a gruesome incident where RSF Forces first shot the parents in front of their children and then piled up the children and shot them. They later threw their bodies into the river and their belongings after them[4].

To mark a year of brutality against Sudanese children, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) issued a media statement highlighting the violations resulting in 24 million children in Sudan being at risk of generational catastrophe. Among these children, 14 million are in dire need of humanitarian support, 19 million are out of school, and 4 million are displaced, according to UNICEF, making Sudan now the largest child displacement crisis in the world[5].

Since the military coup in 2021, the armed conflict, and the suffering and cruelty continue in Myanmar. Innocent children who are too young to comprehend the chaos around them, are caught in the midst of the conflict, malnourished and deprived of essential needs. UNICEF reports that 6,000,000 children are in need of humanitarian assistance [6].

A year after the deadliest earthquakes in Turkiye and Syria, children are still feeling the effects of the tragedy. Almost 7.5 million children in Syria still require humanitarian aid. 3.2 million children in Turkiye still need essential services as families are homeless and without access to essential services, including safe water, education, and medical care [7].

The human rights violations continue in Turkiye not only affecting innocent adults but affecting innocent children. Thousands of children are growing up in prison with their parents who are only detained due to Erdogan’s dictator regime in Turkiye. The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is dismantling human rights protections and democratic norms in Turkiye on a scale unprecedented in the 18 years he has been in office, said Human Rights Watch [8]. Recently, several girls under 18 were detained and subjected to psychological torture due to non-implementation of the Constitutional Court and ECHR rulings.

Ethiopia is facing multiple crises due to climate crises (flood and drought), armed conflicts, diseases and economic shocks. Floods have affected the education sector in the Somali region with the disruption of the schooling of over 66,000 children (32.3 percent girls) and damage/destruction to school infrastructure (56 out of 146 flood-affected schools). The scale of damage to the schools and the reported sheltering of IDPs on school grounds will prevent thousands of children from returning to school [9].

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the decades-long armed conflict continued to cause grave violations against civilians and children. The M23 committed more unlawful killings, rapes, other apparent war crimes and crimes against humanity in areas under their control [10]. Save the Children has reported that 78,000 children have been forced to flee their homes due to the escalating violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)[11]. As armed conflict is a daily reality for the children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, these children are facing poverty, sexual violence, being abducted, deprived of food and water and even being trained as child soldiers [12]. UNICEF’s Director of Child Protection said “I met children who survived the horrors of recruitment and use by armed groups and the unspeakable trauma of sexual violence – atrocities that no one should experience, let alone children” [13].

On 8 May 2024, Save the Children reported that children in Haiti are being forced into armed gangs due to extreme hunger. According to the UN, between 30% to 50% of armed groups in Haiti currently have children within their ranks. Save the Children’s Food and Livelihood Advisor in Haiti said “The hunger situation is so desperate our staff are hearing stories of children joining deadly gangs just so they can get food to eat” [14].

OCHA reports that in Nigeria children are at risk of forced recruitment into armed groups when unaccompanied and separated from families, especially children of those considered to be formerly associated or affiliated with armed groups. Protection concerns continue more so for women and girls, who run a higher risk of being subject to violence, abduction, rape, gender-based violence, forced and child marriage, and other violations of their rights. Children in Nigeria face malnutrition on an incomprehensible scale, 1.53 million children under five years old are expected to face acute malnutrition and about 511,800 children are expected to face severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition. [15]

On this international day of innocent children victims of aggression we remember all the innocent children who, instead of crying over lost toys, are crying due to fear, destruction, and violence. These children, born into a cruel world, deserve a childhood filled with love and safety, not suffering.

BY CEYDA KEMANCI

Sources: