The cfd and many of its partner organizations are currently experiencing a gender backlash as well as attacks on their work. While this phenomenon was already becoming apparent during the pandemic, it has worsened in recent times. What impact are these attacks having on organizations’ specific work and within project environments? And how should they be classified?
Gender-based violence is closely linked to a society’s level of militarization: This is a reality that cfd partner organizations in Israel and Palestine are facing on a daily basis. The Palestinian people are facing a surge in state violence due to Israeli occupation policy, as well as a growing number of attacks from radical settlers. In a society that is already strongly patriarchal, the omnipresence of militarized violence has had a heavy impact on family dynamics, compounding the issue of gender-based violence. Alongside the rise of right-wing Israeli parties, we are witnessing a drastic decline in the scope of civil society that are available to Palestinian organizations campaigning to ensure the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people are upheld. In 2021, the Israeli authorities defamed and closed down six reputable NGOs in the West Bank on spurious grounds. These included one women’s rights organization. (Politically motivated) bureaucratic hurdles jeopardized one Israel-based Palestinian cfd partner organization’s license to operate and obstructed its human rights work. Moreover, the shift to the right happening in Israel has increased the influence of Salafi movements within Palestine. Groups from these circles have attacked women’s rights organizations – including cfd partner organizations – by means of an aggressive campaign to delegitimize them. They have been claiming that these organizations – through their commitment to implementing the United Nation’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) within the area – have been promoting a legal instrument of the Global North and attacking the values of the Palestinian community. However, the attackers have failed to take into account that feminists and social movements from the Global South are also fighting for the implementation of the CEDAW and that these individuals and movements often take on a leading role in anti-patriarchal resistance.
In Bosnia Herzegovina, feminist organizations are witnessing escalating political tensions that have been exacerbated primarily by Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine and by open Serbian support for Russia. The political leaders of Republika Srpska are increasingly threatening to break away from Bosnia Herzegovina and attempting to fuel Serbian nationalism among the population. These nationalist forces believe feminist claims to be anti-nationalist, anti-patriotic, and anti-traditional. They see these claims as a means of undermining the “unity of ethnic groups” and destabilizing society since they question both myths from (past) wars and common patriarchal ideas of masculinity. One Bosnian cfd partner organization, which advocates for reinforcing LGBTQI+ rights, reported that the consequences of this narrative – which has been gaining strength for 30 years – reached a new peak last March. For instance, the police in Banja Luka – the capital of Republika Srpska – banned a queer activist demonstration at short notice. As these activists left their premises the night before the canceled event, they were intercepted, chased, and violently attacked by a group of men. Representatives from another Bosnian cfd partner organization also found that project participants in rural areas were being insulted, harassed, and spat upon if they did not belong to the dominant political party.
In Switzerland, feminist and women’s rights organizations have been campaigning on a legislative level for greater victim protection in the long overdue revision of the Criminal Law Relating to Sexual Offenses. However, we are also seeing setbacks in terms of gender equality within the framework of the cfd project for promoting the economic participation of migrant women, for example. The situation of the project participants, already difficult to begin with, is getting worse. This is due partly to changes to the Swiss Foreign Nationals and Integration Act and to the social and economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The number of women seeking support from project management due to domestic violence is increasing, while cases of discrimination in both public and private domains reported by racialized project participants have also risen. One of them, for example, was refused a job based on the blatant racist justification that she was not white. Another participant was told by social services that it would only fund a German language course for her husband and not for her, based on the logic that, as the “traditional breadwinner,” it was the husband who would have to enter the job market. Despite the current shortage of skilled labor, structural barriers are still preventing project participants from accessing jobs. This has further exacerbated their socio-economic precarity and has had many serious consequences, ranging from downgrading their right of residence to expulsion. In public discourse too, campaigns for equality are coming up against a strong political headwind. While feminist collectives and women’s rights organizations were able to help shape social discourse following the strike that took place on 14 July 2019, conservative and right-wing forces are now tending to dominate. These groups describe anti-racist activism as “wokeness gone mad,” the fight against global warming as “climate hysteria,” and (queer) feminist claims as “gender terror.” Using such language allows them to distort societal relations of violence and to alter the way they are presented. Finally, since the outbreak of the Russian war in Ukraine, we have noticed a reinforced militarized and, in particular, nationalist understanding of peace and security in Switzerland too.
Within all the cfd program contexts described here, conservative and right-wing forces seem to be gaining power. Feminist efforts are experiencing both direct opposition and a kind of status loss in favor of other, supposedly more important issues. While the feminist and women’s rights groups that have been affected are largely in agreement that alliances and collective strategies are needed to counter these developments, there is not always a consensus as to exactly what form this cooperation should take. To come up with collectively and sustainably negotiated resistance strategies, there is a need for resources, which, due to structural and cultural violence, remain unevenly distributed across the world.