Tech & Rights

​From Women to Women: Re/Building Kobane After ISIS

The House of Women was one of the first buildings in Kobane to be destroyed by ISIS after it captured the city. Now the organization Ponte Donna is rebuilding it.

by Federica Brioschi
The first construction work on the House of Women.
Ponte Donna is an organization based in Rome. Its primary mission is to fight violence against women in all its manifestations. The women who work for the organization are mainly lawyers, cultural mediators, social assistants, psychologists and anthropologists.

When ISIS captured Kobane, one of the first buildings to be destroyed was the House of Women. This is the reason why Ponte Donna is dedicating its energies to rebuild it: so that it can become a symbol, a meeting point for all the women in the world.

The idea

After the liberation of Kobane from ISIS, some representatives of Ponte Donna travelled to the Middle East and met the "Yekitiya," the women of Kobane who ran the House of Women before its destruction.

Their meeting gave life to "Re/Build Kobane – The House of Women," a project to rebuild the house that had facilitated the dialogue between different cultures and religions of the area and where women could find help to confront difficult situations.

The House of Women will host the International Academy of Women.

The bigger context

The project is inscribed in and adheres to the reconstruction plan decided at the 2015 Conference “Reconstructing Kobane,” which took place in Dyarbakir, Turkey. The conference created a committee for the reconstruction of Kobane that will manage the whole plan to rebuild the city.

The main committee consists of two different bodies: the Local Committee, and the European Committee. The two committees are meant to bring expertise, competences and knowledge, so that the projects to rebuild the city will be really responding to the needs of the city and of the citizens, and that all construction will be sustainable.

The project

The building will be have three floors: an underground floor, a ground floor and a second floor. The whole building will be accessible to people with disabilities. The building materials can be easily found in the area of construction: for example, bricks can be made out of ecological material and are perfect to isolate the building from the very high temperatures during the summer and the very low temperatures during the winter.

The construction workers have been hired from among the local population, thereby giving many people the possibility escape to the spiral of unemployment and build their own expertise for the future, when they could find more work rebuilding the rest of the city.

The building will host a crèche for those women who wish to participate in the courses of the academy while taking care of their children, an auditorium for conferences, a library, training classrooms, a tailor’s shop, a medicine storage room, some guest rooms for visitors participating in the courses or conferences, an area dedicated to the health needs of women and children, and a counseling space to receive juridical, sanitary or psychological help.

The project was made possible thanks to the support of Otto per mille Valdese.

Press conference

The project will be presented on December 1 in the Press Room at the Chamber of Deputees in Via Missione 4, Rome. Khalid Chaouki from the Partito Democratico, Eugenio Bernardini from Tavola Valdese, Ozlem Tanrikulu, responsible for the Information Office of Kurdistan in Italia (UIKI) and Carla Centioni, president of the organization Ponte Donna, will take part in the press conference. The moderator will be Claudio Paravatti, director of Confronti.

In order to participate, it is necessary to sign up by sending an email to accrediti@confronti.net.

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