FFmed, a Fund for all women in the Mediterranean region
Since it was created, ten years ago, the FFmed works to promote the development of women’s rights in the Mediterranean region. This network offers feminist activists a space where they can pause and reflect together. The “strategic meetings,” a high point for the network, testify to a broader vision of the Mediterranean perimeter with participants from Libya, Bosnia, Croatia, Palestine, Egypt, as well as North Africa and Europe.
Women’s emancipation supports democratic momentum. That is the strong belief of the Mediterranean Women’s Fund countries, created ten years ago.
FFMed works towards developing the rights of women in Mediterranean countries. To stimulate solidarity and sorority, the network offers feminists, especially young women, a space where they can take a moment and reflect together. “At these meetings, each participant reports back on women’s issues in their country. We then focus on convergence points, of which there are many. For example, combating domestic violence is a matter of urgency that we share, whatever the country,” says Caroline Sakina Brac de la Perrière, founder and director of FFmed.
About ten meetings have been held since the fund’s creation. At the end of the discussion sessions, a practical joint project is decided and quickly made operational. The most recent one consists in creating a network of feminist information whose mission is to forge relationships and bring together women journalists from various countries in the region.
“Everywhere, women are called on to speak. They will create change”
The success of FFmed, supported two years running by Fondation de France is due to a broad vision that encompasses the entirety of the Mediterranean perimeter. In this way, activists from Libya, Bosnia, Croatia, Palestine, Egypt, as well as North Africa and Europe have been invited to come and sit around the same table. “No more North and South! An open, transversal Mediterranean instead,” notes Caroline Sakina Brac de la Perrière
“Recently, a Tunisian participant told me she had hesitated to join the movement. She was used to inter-Mediterranean meetings and thought she was going to once again come across that invisible line, one that is often felt, that North-South divide that shapes representation. But three days later, she was delighted to have joined a meeting, on a basis of equality for the first time. With women from the Mediterranean region, who get together to discuss aspirations and shared challenges, discuss and find solutions and joint leverage.”
Exchanging best practices in small groups