1. Introduction

On International Women's Day on 8 March 2003, the IFWF will enter its third year. We would like to take the occasion to draw a resume of our projects and activities over the last year and introduce the projects we have planned for 2004.
The 8th of March has been a symbol of the international struggle of women for their rights, for peace and for liberty over decades. In our opinion, it is not only important to commemorate the heritage expressed in this date, but also to further the active social commitment of women. There continues to be a need for practical solidarity, for international discussions on the development of an independent female point of view and for alternative ways of life. Nothing could more impressingly reassure us of the necessity of our work than the threats of war determining the international agenda these days. Yet, even in "times of peace", domestic violence in the Netherlands alone claims about 80 women's lives each year. But we do know that women and children will be the primary victims of war, displacement and flight.

Another startling tendency is addressed in a report published by the UNO in New York in August 2002, issuing a strong warning concerning the global increase in xenophobia and racism. Ever since the attacks on 11 September 2001 have people of Islamic faith and/or of Middle Eastern background been increasingly stigmatized and discriminated against. At the same time, ever stricter asylum and immigration laws continue to have an adverse effect on living conditions and educational opportunities for a large number of people in Europe. Girls and women from migrant or refugee families are both confronted with racist discrimination and the obstacles posed by patriarchal family and societal structures in their difficult attempts to gain access to and equally participate in social life in Europe.

The IFWF has realised a number of projects and meetings with a view on creating a counterweight to the climate of violence and social cold and encouraging women and girls to express their ideas, get involved and take over the responsibility for both their own individual lives and for common social life at large. We would like to present some of them in this annual report. The work of the IFWF aims, among others, at creating solidarity and cooperation in order to offer opportunities for women to realise themselves in a free, multifaceted and self-determined way. Thus, one of our focal points for the year 2002 was on educational work, international cooperation and networking.

In the field of educational work, we have offered educational courses for the board members and voluntary activists of the IFWF, a course aiming at fostering the participation of women in the executive of associations and non-government organisations, a summer camp for young Kurdish girls and a seminar on the effects of violence on the personal development of women. We have not only participated in regional platforms of organisations of civil society, in the European Social Form in Florence and in international women's conferences dealing with the gender-specific aspects of globalisation, but have put concentrated efforts in two projects in the field of international cooperation: 

1)  Continuation of the solidarity campaign for the self-administered Women's Centre at the Maxmur Refugee Camp in Northern Iraq.
2)   A series of meetings to galvanize support for the Istanbul- based KATAGI (Initiative for the Advancement of a Women’s Point of View)

The positive feedback we have received with much of our work has encouraged us to take these activities as a point of departure in our efforts to steadily widen the scope of our activities in the year 2003.

International Free Women's Foundation
Board Committee
Amsterdam, March 1^st, 2003

2. Educational work aiming at girls and women 

Education is one of our basic tasks. We think that the problems we mean to tackle can only be understood and solved to the extent that girls and women can enjoy an education that allows them to become aware of and voice their own will and their collective power. Education is undoubtedly the most important means in any attempt to generate enlightenment, the lack of it being one of the foremost problems woman has to confront all over the world. In order to gain awareness of her own situation, her problems and wider chains of events, in order to position herself vis à vis positive or negative developments on the social, political, cultural, economic or environmental plane, education is imperative for any woman. We have focused our educational work on Kurdish women and girls due to the fact that they have been deprived of educational facilities due to the pressure exerted on them by the government of their country of origin, their family or their social environment. Women and girls who came to Europe either as political refugees or as labour migrants face the two-pronged hardships resulting from the fact that that they are considered as strangers or foreigners in the place they live, while they are neither able to emancipate themselves from the structures imposed upon them in their isolated communities nor to benefit from the facilities such communities would afford to men. They are thus often unaware of or unable to benefit from existing facilities and opportunities and find it very difficult to realise themselves. Apart from the language problem, a lack of awareness of their own rights and seclusion or exclusion from society are among the major challenges they face. The IFWF has the responsibility to create facilities and opportunities that will help the process of awareness-building in women and girls so that they can emancipate themselves from this situation. It is for this end that we organized various educational programmes aiming at our own activists, at young girls and at women involved in associations and NGOs.

• Summer Camp for Young Girls

Although young people are indisputably the most dynamic part of societal structures, the youth are not sufficiently esteemed and cherished by society. Especially migrant children are often doubly estranged from society, besieged by a sense of loneliness and exclusion. They are part of two different social structures but often unable to fully adapt to either of them. This dilemma can cause identity crises or depressions and even amount to heavy psychological problems and traumatisation if the young people originally come from a society confronted with heavy suppression of its cultural identity and language and if they experienced humiliation, discrimination, fears, isolation or violence related to the non-acknowledgement of their culture. We organized a summer camp with the intention to help young Kurdish girls cope with their feelings of estrangement, solitude and exclusion. One of our aims was to help the young girls' integration to the society they live in, create opportunities for them to meet peers and overcome their loneliness. We favored an approach that would allow the girls to mutually contribute to each others' development.

The summer camp was held from 12 to 22 August 2002 in the town of Ede in the Netherlands with the participation of 17 girls from different towns all over the Netherlands. One of the items on the camp's agenda were Kurdish lessons with a view on presenting the girls facilities to learn their mother tongue in accordance with Article 30 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The main focus of the camp, though, was on seminars and discussions concerning questions related to the problems the participants voiced - mainly concerning the social environment in which they live. The participants were encouraged to propose and develop strategies for tackling their problems. Additionally, sessions were held under the supervision of an expert pedagogues with a view on understanding how the problems the participants face constitute impediments to their personal development and negatively affect their psychological constitution. On the other hand, different sportive and cultural activities were organized and handicraft courses offered to allow the girls to be creative and develop their manual skills. The participants were taught how to make necklaces, wristbands and earrings or paper flowers. Excursions into nature were made to contribute to a notion of environment.
At the end of the discussions, the participants gained own views on what it means to be a stranger in a given society and how to deal with identity and personality problems caused by the constant vacillation between two different cultures. The participants stated that it was necessary to have similar activities regularly and make an effort to incorporate more young girls. But another result of the discussions was that the participants emphasized that it was very important to overcome the lack of awareness concerning the issues discussed in their own families and provide sufficient information to parents and others. Many of the girls voiced the demand for frequent gatherings and asked us to design specific educational programmes for their mothers and fathers.

• Seminar on the Effects of Violence against Women

On 2 February 2003, we held a seminar in our central office on violence against women. The approach we took was twofold: The seminar dealt with the psychological and physical harm afflicted on women by the culture of violence to which woman is subjected under a patriarchal system on the one hand, and with restrictions, obligations and similar forms of force woman is confronted with in her general social relations. This approach also aimed at sparking off a discussion on the origins of violence and its impact on everyday life. Moreover, the participants were briefed on institutions that women suffering violence can apply to in the Netherlands. It was intended that the participants thus become multipliers among refugee and migrant communities of an awareness of the existence of such institutions and of how they can help.

The topics discussed on the seminar were firstly the various forms of violence perpetrated by state, society and family against women and the effects they have on the individual woman, and secondly the aid and counselling/treatment facilities offered by relevant institutions in the Netherlands. The 18 participants were presented talks by psychiatrist Dr Isik Iscanli of the Bavo RNO and psychiatrist Serpil Dogan of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation. There was plenty room for questions and debate and the overall outcome was very positive. Participants especially discussed the differences between physical and mental violence and the different methods of treating their effects - a topic which broad segments of the population in the Netherlands are acquainted with while refugees are often unaware of its implications. Given that in the Netherlands, the quality and availability of the relevant services is above the overall EU standard, there are different ways of catering for the different therapeutic needs of refugees, migrant workers and 3rd generation youth.

Post-traumatic disorders are frequently observed in individuals who are forced to leave their homelands and live an isolated life in the country they seek shelter. People from countries like Turkey show a high level of resistance against trauma treatment. Among the many reasons for that is the fact that there traditionally is a strong social bias against psychological treatment since people receiving it would be perceived as insane etc. Although the notion that women find it particularly difficult to talk about the torture or other forms of violence they have experienced can basically be confirmed, a similar phenomenon is also frequently observed in men. Although a variety of reasons is accountable here, we might especially mention that the gender role concepts of feudal societies - irrespectively of the social status and level of education of a given individual - make it impermissible for both genders to admit to and share traumatic experience. Sexualised violence and rape are tabooized, and while women are often unable to talk about it, men, too, will mostly refuse to relate their experience of rape since they have the idea that only women can be subjected to sexualised violence. Accordingly, there are considerable difficulties in counselling such individuals, and even if treatment is accepted its success is painstakingly slow and limited. In our seminar, two women who suffered torture and other forms of violence respectively shared their experience with the other participants. Towards the end of the seminar, the general discussion on how to grapple with trauma and where to apply for help and therapy showed that many a participant had gained a positive perspective.

·         Educational Seminar for IFWF board members and volunteers 

Our Foundation has been active for two years now, offering a range of activities which all have in common that they develop the skills and the personality of the women involved in them and strengthen exchange and solidarity among women. It is imperative that the Foundation improve its own infrastructure in order to live up to the challenges of such activities. With a view on our objective of responding to the needs and interests of the women of the world, starting with those living in the Netherlands, and particularly because we wanted to enhance our work with the ideas of some activists who have joined us more recently and improve communication between the newcomers and the founding members, we held a seminar from 13 to 15 December 2002 during which we reviewed all the activities of the International Free Women's Foundation from its inauguration to the day of the seminar against the background of the stated aims and objectives of the foundation. The seminar thus consisted of an account of the different activities as well as a discussion on how the work can be furthered, deepened and rendered more efficient in the future.
In the second part of the seminar, an expert in the field, Özden Kutluer, gave us lectures on guidelines for an improvement of the internal structures and the public relations work of the Foundation. The seminar both helped us strengthening the interpersonal relations and communication among ourselves and was an important step in the process of generating new ideas, new plans and new projects.

3. International Cooperation

While the term "globalisation" and inventions in the realm of information and communication technology such as the internet may often lead us to believe that our world has "shrunk", with virtually no limits to the exchange of information and opportunities, we are still a far cry from a world where all people can benefit from such innovations. Disparities between the rich and the poor as well as gaping regional and political circumstances do still have a decisive impact here. Women in particular are still often disadvantaged when it comes to the distribution of resources or the access to educational facilities and knowledge, are often completely excluded from health care and social sustenance. In many places, it is therefore twice as hard for women to emancipate themselves from dependence and patronization. And yet women in many places in this world have started to build up initiatives and projects in which they support each other - only relying on their own power, and under the most adverse conditions. There are many examples of women exploring ways out of poverty, oppression and isolation which we hardly know of.
The IFWF has supported two projects over the last year with a view both on making information on the social and individual living conditions of these women and their attempts to find a life in dignity accessible to a larger audience, and of course with the intention to contribute to the perpetuation and dissemination of their activities by financially and ideally supporting them.
It is within this framework that we seek to contest growing loneli- ness, profit-oriented thinking and disparity of opportunities by establishing links of mutual international solidarity that will help us to work out common, practicable solutions to the problems we face.

• Support for the Women’s Centre in the Kurdish Refugee Camp Maxmur

In summer 2001, the Women’s Centre of the refugee camp of Maxmur addressed the International Free Women’s Foundation with an application for financial and professional support for their activities. Since then the IFWF has made efforts to bring the situation of the Kurdish refugees in Iraq and especially the initiative of the women of Maxmur to the public. A campaign to collect donations was started with the participation of several groups and individuals, in order to ensure the necessary financial support. In this framework there emerged the idea to send a women’s delegation to the refugee camp to hand over the collected donations to the Women’s Center and to discuss the prospective of long term cooperation with the refugee women themselves.

In autumn 2002 due to the political tensions following the announcement of the government of the USA to launch a military campaign against Iraq, the delegation was confronted with delays and technical obstacles. Therefore the delegation arrived in Maxmur on 13 September 2002 only and had to cut the scheduled stay down from 14 to 3 days. During the time of the stay, the delegation tried to obtain an overview of the living conditions of the refugees and to collect information about the projects and institutions of the refugees. The members of the delegation visited the Women’s Centre, the health care centre, the camp council, the relief organization for relatives of war victims and a tailoring workshop.   In spite of the changing circumstances the visit of the delegation was an important step towards establishing a cooperation between the initiatives of the refugees and the world outside and towards collecting impressions of the current situation of the refugees. The most important impression was that the refugees are involved in manifold activities, do not accept their destiny and work on organizing their life in the camp and improving their living conditions, even though they all have the strong desire to go back to their home villages as soon as possible. The members of the delegation collected important information, impressions and facts about the refugee camp Maxmur. With this material it will be possible to provide the necessary information to the public as well as to interested professionals and organizations. Thus the stay of the delegation and the direct contact with the refugee women marks the first step towards a continuous collaboration and a development of the health care and education facilities in the camp.

During the year 2002 the IFWF has organized several public meetings in order to inform the public in different European cities about the situation of the refugees. Participants of the delegation have been invited as speakers to multicultural events and seminars by different organizations such as the FORUM in Utrecht (NL), CASA in Haarlem (NL) and the Students Union of the University of Bielefeld (Germany). In order to appeal to the UNHCR to take precautions for the lives of the refugees during the time of a war against Iraq, an open letter campaign has been started and supported by over 1.000 petitioners so far. These activities and a campaign for urgent action will be continued throughout the year 2003.

• Solidarity Campaign for the Women's Initiative KATAGI from Turkey

„Let us come together to get rid of the shackles that have bound our bodies and souls for thousands of years. Let us spread solidarity, so that we can live more happily.“  This was the motto of a series of events the IFWF organized in January 2003 in order to make the activities of the women's initiative KATAGI (Initiative for the Advancement of a Women’s Point of View) from Turkey known in Europe.
KATAGI was founded in 2001 as an independent women's initiative for improving the social, political and cultural situation of women in Turkey. Women from different national, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, of different creeds, age groups and social environments from different regions of Turkey are involved in KATAGI's activities. They are united in their aim to break the spirit of patriarchal dominance and thus catalyse the democratisation of state and society. With their campaign "I am not free!" they incited women to reflect on their own lives and their idea of freedom vis a vis a society increasingly conditioned by TV commercials. In summer 2002, women walking the villages and towns of different regions of Turkey as messengers carried together the opinions, thoughts and biographies of thousands of women to present them at a meeting in Konya and draft a manifesto on the basis of these letters entrusted to them. At present, KATAGI has focused on campaigning against militarism, e.g. by organizing all-female rallies of peace activists at the border between Turkey and Iraq and in Cyprus.
The initiative has made valuable contributions to intercommunity relations and strengthened the role of women in the process of democratisation in Turkey. The IFWF sought to support this engagement and inform the European public about the cultural, social and political developments in the EU-membership candidate Turkey from the point of view of women when it organized a series of events in cooperation with local women's initiatives in Zaandam, Amsterdam, Rotterdam (NL), Frankfurt, Berlin (FRG), Zurich and St. Gallen (CH) in which KATAGI activists Berivan Kum and Yesim Basaran participated. The cultural events and discussions were well covered by the media and visited by more than 1.200 women altogether.

• Participation to International Conferences

The participation in regional and international platforms and conferences of organizations of civil society is an important aspect of our activities in the field of international cooperation. It is here that board members and voluntary activists of the IFWF can exchange experience and information and discuss their own point of view. Long-term cooperation with the involved organizations is always envisaged, and the IFWF is keen on contributing to the quest for possible solutions to current social issues. The conferences we attended to highlighted the issues impact of globalisation on the lives of women and social justice and peace. In this respect, we participated, among others, in the following congregations in 2002:
-          6th International Conference of the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association (AWSA) “Arab Women and Global Change”, 3 - 5 January 2002, Cairo/Egypt
-         10th Annual Conference of the Association of Women of the Mediterranean Region on “The Impact of Globalisation on the Mediterranean Countries”,  July 12-14 2002, Marrakech/ Morocco
-         European Social Forum, 6-10 November 2002, Florence/Italy
-       Platform for Peace, Amsterdam

Gratitude