Archived: A statement and a letter to freeze the membership in the Women’s Initiative for Peace and Democracy

 Syrian Women’s Network announces the suspension of its membership in the Syrian Women’s Initiative for Peace and Democracy, to protest against what is stated in the statement and press conference for the Female Consultative Council which involves the initiative.

Reasons can be classified as follows:

Firstly, members of the initiative exceeded its constituent documents without consulting the Public Authority. if we considered the initiative as compromising and does not constitute organized or unified view of the organization, this doesn’t give any representative member the right to exceed documents that have been agreed upon. This last sentence was clear and agreed upon during consensus discussions, while the members are entitled to act according to their own views when working individually outside the initiative.

Secondly, the word (Syrian civilian democratic state) was dropped to be replaced by (safe Syria). We consider this as a swap of democracy with safety, which the regime completely wants and this is rejected by the Syrian Rebellions who reaffirmed their rejection by peaceful demonstrations that have returned with ceasefire.

Thirdly, the consultative council asked for lifting the sanctions, which violates the initiative documents which declare: (Participants agree on lifting economic sanctions on the Syrian people immediately after the signing of agreement among all parties and the start of transitional process). This article does not include penalties for (individuals and private institutions) and we in the Syrian Women’s Network, depending on our awareness of Syrian people’s economic suffering, are afraid that the money freed up by the regime would be used in the renewal of war out of the regime’s urgent need for it.

We also believe that people’s suffering is not only a result of sanctions but also of the ongoing war, the lack of jobs, the war prevailing economy and, more importantly, the siege imposed by the belligerents, particularly the regime, on civilians and  using the hunger policy. We do not believe that the lifting of sanctions will reflect positively on our people in the besieged areas.

 Fourthly: It was stated in the  initiative document  working to lift the siege and bringing  humanitarian and medical aids,  while the statement issued by the consultative council was limited to a request to facilitate the entry of aids without talking about the lifting of siege, sparing civilians and not using them as instruments of war.

Finally: prompting for the release of detainees, and we, of course, call on all parties to release the detainees and abductees, but it was worth noting that the biggest number of detainees is with the Syrian regime. Added to the fact that the systematic torture by the regime has led many of them to die, the leaked images by Caesar that are still roaming the world are witness to this crime.

The network believes that the press conference held by the Council demolished long pursuant by Syrian women to reach an important consensus in the initiative which reflect  the suffering of Syrian women and struggling for authentic feminist existence in future democratic Syria, the state of full citizenship for all its citizens.

Out of our eagerness toward this long term effort, the Syrian Women’s Network chose a conditional freeze of its membership in the initiative.

This decision could have been withdrawn in case the initiative had taken a clear position about what happened, and emphasized not adopting all the statement’s content at the press conference.

The initiative is not represented by the consultative council and participants in the Council expressed their own personal opinions but not the initiative’s attitude. They have to back down and return to the consensus.

25/3/2016

Syrian Women’s Network