• The IFWF widely educates and encourages women to gain the possibility to become owners of their own labour, and to prepare and carry out projects within this framework.  

• The IFWF defends the rights of children and struggles to ensure that, especially under war conditions, the forms of violence used against children by the system, society and the family are brought to an end.  

• The IFWF guarantees and supports the natural and wide ranging development of children.  

In spite of long lasting endeavours for emancipation, discrimination against and disadvantages met by women are still a reality within all societies. The negative influences of unequal opportunities become not only obvious in the spheres of the labour market and the professional life, but also through the continuing domestic violence against women.

The report of the United Nations World’s Women 2000: Trends and Statistics states: “Two thirds of the world's 876 million illiterates are women, and the number of illiterates is not expected to decrease significantly in the next twenty years. (…) Self-employment and part-time and home-based work have expanded opportunities for women's participation in the labour force but are characterized by lack of security, lack of benefits, and low income. Women remain at the lower end of a segregated labour market and continue to be concentrated in a few occupations, to hold positions of little or no authority and to receive less pay than men. (…) Physical and sexual abuse affect millions of girls and women world-wide - yet are known to be seriously under- reported.“ 

Especially under the circumstances of warfare there are no rights for women. In addition to the general destruction caused by war, special methods of torture and crime are used by warring armies to destroy women physically and mentally. Although forms and methods are changing in developing countries as well as in the fully industrialized countries, women are still seen as second-class citizens.    

Within the societies of Europe the conditions for immigrant and refugee women are even harder. Along with the difficulties they face in dominant Western societies as a result of restrictive foreign legislation, racist and sexist discrimination, they are confronted with an internal conflict due to their reality of living in or in between two or even more cultures. Escaping from life threatening conditions of war, torture and suppression, a violent up-rooting often traumatises refugee women. This often leads to an isolated life within traditional family structures, evokes psychological and physical problems. Therefore, there exists an urgent need for special support, consciousness raising and a social dialogue. Due to the long lasting war and suppression, the denial of their national identity, cultural expressions and the prohibition of their language by the State authorities in their homeland, Kurdish women are facing even harder problems under exile conditions.  

• Summer Camp for Mothers and Children

From August 5th to 15th, 2001 the IFWF carried out an education camp for women and children of different origins in the Netherlands. As the 83 participants of the camp were mainly Kurdish women and children, we tried to concentrate our program on their specific needs and requests.

• 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.

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