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Stop Pretending You Care About Women and Children, You’re Just Pushing Your Agenda!
We are FUMING ‼️
Today 10 September, as you are reading these very lines, a debate is happening in the European Parliament in Strasbourg with the title “After 10 years, time to end mass migration now — protect our women and children” — yes, you’ve read that correctly.
The debate still went ahead despite a joint letter led by END FGM EU in which IGLYO and over 20 international civil society organisations called on the European Parliament President Roberta Metsola to cancel it as it violates the European Parliament’s code of conduct and disregards the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Our joint letter notably reminded that “women’s rights are increasingly being instrumentalised to feed ideological hatred and political polarisation based on racism, xenophobia, islamophobia, etc.” This type of framing is not only extremely racist, xenophobic, and harmful to migrants and asylum seekers, it is also a blatant manipulation of reality that shamelessly paternalises women and children and weaponises their rights.
As our joint letter mentioned, “Instead of instrumentalising and exploiting women’s rights to justify racist and anti-migrant agendas, the European Parliament should urgently address the actual threats women continue to face within the EU from gender-based violence, to systemic discrimination and inequalities, intersecting discriminations, and other attacks on the rights of all women in their diversity that remain far from resolved.”
We cannot let these harmful narratives become the norm in our institutions. We cannot stay silent in the face of racism and misogyny. We stand with migrants and asylum seekers who are victims of structural racism, just like we stand with women and children whose existence is used as an apology of hate in such a disgraceful way.
Don’t let this happen again, share this information as widely as possible!
You can read the joint letter at this link.