The year 2024 has been a year of striking contrasts, where women's struggles have intensified, carrying powerful voices of resistance but where, at the same time, forces of regression have seemed intent on engulfing all that has been hard won.
It has been the scene of relentless violence: wars devastating peoples, and hopes and rights regressing. Every day, we have seen a worrying democratic retreat. At the same time, women have continued to wage battles, not only for their rights but for those of all humanity: they have embodied resistance. They have made their voices heard, often at the cost of their safety, demanding equality, freedom and peace. This year has once again revealed the greatness of those who, through their struggles, redefine the meaning of freedom and dignity. It has also brought us face to face with the urgent need to protect democratic gains, to defend justice.
For the Mediterranean Women's Fund, above all, it marked a symbolic milestone in its history: we passed the threshold of 1,000 grants awarded since our creation. This is not just a figure, but the concrete reflection of a long-term commitment to the region's feminist movements. A thousand stories of struggle, hope and resistance, in 21 countries around the Mediterranean. And we laid the foundations for the first change in management in the life of the organization, with the year-long training of the new co-direction.
We continued our networking work by bringing together women involved in the feminist movement in Turkey and on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. And, even more than in previous years, we visited our partners in several countries: Morocco, Greece, Cyprus,
France, Spain, Algeria and Turkey. These encounters are essential to anchor our action in local realities, to listen and build together.
It was also the urgency of the situation that prompted us to step up our advocacy efforts with public and private donors, in order to mobilize more resources for women's organizations, to address the urgent situation in which our partners in Palestine and Lebanon find themselves, and, more generally, the urgency of the cuts in budgets allocated to gender equality.
We also innovated: by adapting our feminist training in collective intelligence to the needs of Croatian feminist activists of all generations, by facilitating the presentation of the Susan Treadwell Memorial Awards to 16 European feminists for their unwavering commitment and by sending six of us to the big AWID Forum, to give them a better understanding of the strength of the international feminist movement.
Another source of pride: all these initiatives were carried out with a budget that increased by more than a third compared to the previous year! Beyond the figures and data, it is a shared culture that drives us one of inclusive, rooted, and solidarity-based feminism. And this year more than ever, we assert with conviction that supporting feminist movements is essential to building a more united, just, free, and equal Mediterranean.
Amina Izarouken, Caroline Brac de la Perrière, Marion Duquesne
Thanks to Samia Allalou, Christelle Assaf, Fawzia Baba Aissa, Lamia Batata, Amy Elshaarawy, Noémie Friedli for their contribution to the writing of this report.
