Written by Dr Yiota Demetriou
Multidisciplinary Artist, Writer, and Educator
This year, on International Women’s Day #IWD2024, they tell us to find peace within. “Make peace with all the women inside you” they say. But the women inside me? They’re furious. Generations of them, burning with rage. Your call for peace, for celebration of “how far we’ve come”? It’s such a hollow plea. A balm for the unbothered.
Peace for who? The grandmothers, mothers, sisters, aunties in Gaza, their lungs choked with poisoned air, their hands raw and bloody as they dig through the rubble, prayers a constant hum on their lips, searching for a lost heartbeat beneath the dust?
Peace? Not for the girls and women gasping for breath, fighting for a single morsel to eat, a handful of flour, a drop of water, while bombs sing their horrific lullaby. What peace can there be for those giving birth under a sky raining terror? Where cries of life turn into desperate pleas for survival, where grieving a pregnancy is a luxury for those who aren’t dodging the next falling sky.
My peace is CEASEFIRE. Until the guns fall silent, until empires crumble, there can be no peace. No peace until a woman’s body is no longer a battlefield. No peace until the butcher’s knife is blunted. No peace until the tools of oppression are dismantled– the silencing voices, the denial of education and healthcare as basic human rights.
Peace? There is no peace where girls are stolen into marriage before their bodies are even formed, where they’re mutilated and trafficked like cattle. There is no peace where women and girls are taken hostage and arrested, tortured and killed for shouting for their fundamental rights. There is no peace built on the graves of our rights, no peace in the shadow of violence – bombs, blades, or the shame that stalks a woman’s very form.
Peace? They talk of peace while our bodies are policed, our natural cycles treated like a disease and ignored. We walk the streets we call home, yet fear lurks in every shadow. Abuse festers behind closed doors, an open secret shrouded in silence. This is not peace.
Peace? A distance mirage until the displaced, the weary, the refugee, are met with open arms, respect, and dignity not suspicion. Peace? Not until all women stand tall, their voices drowning out the cacophony of hate.
We will not make peace with a world that shatters the very foundation of our existence. We will dismantle the walls of inequality, brick by brick, until equality rings clear across the world.
