COVID-19 Impact on Women - Remarks to An-Najah University

Last week Karama’s founder and CEO Hibaaq Osman took part in the COVID-19 Impact on Women - MENA region focus webinar, held by An-Najah University.

Hibaaq’s contribution noted the particular impact that the health crisis has had on women’s activism, and is reproduced below.

Thank you, and thank you to our hosts An-Najah University. 

It’s a great pleasure to be here with you today, even if it is just virtually. Over recent months, we have had to become used to not being in the same room, to not being around the table.

As women, this has always been the situation we have been struggling against.

Women have not been at the Cabinet tables, at the peace tables, around the committee tables at which decisions are taken.

And the result of this has been the continued marginalization and exclusion of the women’s agenda from political decision making.

At the beginning of this crisis, it was common to hear that COVID was indiscriminate. That we all faced the same risk.

But that was clearly untrue.

In an unequal, prejudicial, unjust society, nothing is indiscriminate. 

COVID has exposed and worsened all the existing inequalities in our society. 

If you are poor and have no ability to earn your living from home, you have had no choice but to expose yourself to greater risk. 

If you live in a society in which your access to healthcare is limited, you do not face the same risks as someone who has easy access.

If you have been excluded from political participation and representation, then the problems you face through the crisis will not be considered and addressed.

The response and the post-crisis future will deepen your exclusion and marginalization.

The effects of the crisis, and lockdowns in particular, have been extremely demoralizing for many women, who have literally been sent back to the home.

It is my great privilege to work with so many inspiring women in the Karama network. The great strength of women activists has always been mobilization. Building consensus, building constituencies, building change from the ground up.

That strength and ability has been lost through the crisis.

Through our network, activists have been able to share knowledge, share the lessons of their work, seek advice from others, to mentor the next generation. 

Women from Palestine have been able to discuss their experience of working to develop one of the region’s very first National Action Plans for 1325 on women, peace and security. Activists in Tunisia could discuss how they made the women’s agenda the president’s agenda. Activists from Lebanon and Jordan could discuss the lessons of the campaigns they ran to abolish outdated rape laws. 

Each organization, each country, faces very particular circumstances, problems, opportunities. But the support, strength and solidarity to be gained through coming together has extraordinary power.

We have tried, done our best to organize, regroup online, but there are limits to what can be achieved.

Access to technology, access to the internet, these are still not universal. More importantly, it is very clear that they are gender issues. Just as access to education continues to be a gender issue. 

There are further problems.

Zoom, Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok - these are not public spaces. They are spaces that are profoundly compromised by global politics and economics. 

While we may consider them as useful tools, let us remember Audre Lorde’s words that “the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house”.

Our organizing needs to be built on stronger foundations.

It feels especially important that this discussion today is being hosted by an incredible Palestinian institution - An-Najah University. 

When we consider the importance of political participation and representation, what decisions that affect Palestinians are taken by Palestinians?

What decisions affecting Palestinian women are made with the involvement of Palestinian women?

For many of us, the world seemed to stop at the start of this crisis, but for Palestine and for Palestinian women, politics never stops.

The gross threats of annexation, the backroom deals, these have only grown during the crisis. 

Reactionary movements are apt to take advantage of uncertainty and fear. That has always been the experience in our region, where hard-won gains must be defended with the same energy as they were originally fought for.

Political, economic, health crises, states of emergency, extraordinary powers - these have all been used to turn the clock back for women.

Coronavirus has become the oasis of dictators and occupiers. 

Women’s movements across the region have been fighting for accountability. The crisis has made it ever harder to achieve, but I take inspiration in the resilience of women in Palestine and across the region, in the ingenuity, intelligence and determination of young women.

I take inspiration from the Black Lives Matter movement. 

The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor showed us that racism and injustice did not take a break during the global crisis. 

Black Lives Matter showed that you can mobilize millions and build majority support for your positions even during these extraordinary times. 

Let that be a lesson for us all as we face not only the novel threat of Coronavirus, but the many injustices and inequalities we face as women in the Arab region.