Elham Ahmed: Marginalizing women role contributed to prolonging Syrian crisis

The work of the second conference of the Syrian Women’s Council, which is now being held in the city of Aleppo, continues with speeches and discussions and an assessment of the political and organizational situation. Among the speeches is a speech by the co-chair of the Department of Foreign Relations in the North and East Syria region, Elham Ahmed.

Elham Ahmed’s speech came during an assessment of the political situation, where she indicated at the beginning of her speech that she was eager to hear the discussions and opinions of the participating delegates from all regions and components, about the political and societal situation.

The parties that participated in the exclusion bear responsibility

Elham Ahmed said that there are important stations that Syria has gone through since the beginning of the crisis. One must stop at these stations in order to understand what will happen in the future, the first of which is the crisis, one of the causes of which was the policies that were practiced internally and led to a lack of openness to a solution, and a failure to accept others and different opinions, including the use of violent methods in the face of attempts that called for peaceful democratic change in Syria.

She pointed out that with the absence of a democratic thesis or the lack of certainty that there is a broad horizon within the concept of democracy, this is a responsibility that she carried to inspire all Syrian parties that caused the prolonged crisis in the country.

The Syrians were not decision-makers on international paths

Elham Ahmed stated that during the past years, many paths and solutions were proposed, such as the “Geneva Talks and the Constitutional Committee,” in addition to many conferences that led to failure. According to Elham Ahmed, one of the main reasons she mentioned is the participation of international parties that take the role of the main player in it hinders ending the crisis while marginalizing the Syrian role. “In all the conferences held, the Syrians were not the decision-makers.”

She attributed the other reason for the failure to reach a solution to end the crisis to the marginalization of the role of Syrian women and their exclusion from these paths by both the Damascus government and what is known as the “opposition.”

Empowering the role of women is crucial to resolving the crisis

She also said: “There is a cultural, social, economic and political crisis, and the security situation is still controlling in Syria, so removing women from decision-making centers results in such a situation, so I say that the presence of women in these centers is very important and fateful.”

She also noted that women must work with all their efforts to restore their decision-making and participation in decision-making centers, and said: “If we are truly seeking to change the Syrian situation, we must play our strong role. Over the past years, many women have become active in civil society, and this does not mean separation from politics, on the contrary, empowers the role of women in all fields.

T/ Satt.

ANHA