When the crowd gathered for the Women’s Day demonstration on March 8, 2020 at 10am in front of Cinema Riff at Grand Socco in Tangier, Moroccan feminists, Sub-Saharan women for freedom of movement, single mothers, and a few Europeans came together. The women of our local Alarm Phone team, all from Sub-Saharan Africa, would sit together afterwards with some of their friends from Europe and start to write down their experiences for this report.
At the same time, on the Greek island of Lesvos women from Alarm Phone teams interviewed women in and around the hot-spot of Moria, who spoke out about the suffering they had gone through on the most Eastern flight route towards Europe. They reported how on 30 January a crowd started moving from the overcrowded hot-spot Moria towards the city of Mytilene, which is still on Lesvos. „All women against Moria“, „Women in solidarity“, „Moria is a women’s hell“ and „Stop all violence against women“ was written on some of the many signs while the crowd chanted „Azadi“ (farsi: freedom) with raised fists.
Shortly afterwards an Alarm Phone activist met with a young woman from Somalia, who had made the crossing from Libya to Italy last September and who wants to encourage the rescue groups to continue their amazing work.
Another woman sat down and wrote a beautiful solidarity letter to one of the women active in Search and Rescue: “When I hear her voice on the phone, saying ‘my boat will head to the target with full speed,’ I picture her behind the wheel of this massive boat carrying 400 people, flying above the sea as if it was weightless.”
There are some who write in a brave way about the suffering women had to go through: The pain they feel and the suffering that the simple fact of having to pee means for women in Moria. Or the struggles with the Boumla (Wolof for police) deporting them within Morocco towards the deserts, exposing them to greater dangers. Or the death of a young Moroccon student.
There are others who decided not to remember the suffering in detail, but to point out their strategies, their struggles and the thankfulness about the solidarity created among us.
In this report we tried to write about the manifold experiences of women and LGBTQII+, who cross the sea to reach a place of safety or who are stuck in transit, and about the experiences of women active in Search and Rescue who are trying to support these struggles.
Content
Introduction
Daily struggles of women on the move in the Western Mediterranean. Alarm Phone activists report
March 8, 2020 in Tangier
Stories of Struggles with the Boumla
Aurore Boréale, based in Rabat: Only by fighting together can we can have real progress
With your courage you can do this work – Interview with Leonie
Hayat, killed at the border by the Moroccan Navy in September 2017
Central Mediterranean: Women on the move
The invisible struggles
Women on the phone
Trapped by the UNHCR – Interview with Daniella, Tunisia
Intercepted to Tunisia – Interview with Abeni, Tunsia
We felt welcome – Kobra’s testimony, rescued by the Ocean Viking in September 2019
SAR Solidarity- Letter from an Alarm Phone activist to an amazing woman of the SAR world in January 2020
From the crossing of the Aegean Sea to the struggle for women rights. Women on Lesvos
All women against Moria
Experiences of crossings and life in Moria
Your whole life is waiting in line
Self-organisation and a daily life strategy
LGBTQI+ people on the move
Lesvos LGBTQI+ refugee solidarity