The Italian delegation ‘Ya Basta’ Bologna, visited JINWAR, the women village in Rojava. It is an experience of struggle, self-determination and freedom, as the delegation underlined.

The name JINWAR comes from Jin (in Kurdish woman but also life) and War (in Kurdish place and also home).

“The name - said the delegation in its report - well reflects the atmosphere we can breathe in this community which is putting in practice a new way of living life”.

JINWAR is a small village where a community of women has been living for the past year. It has been built on a land seized after the withdrawal of the Syrian regime.

Various women’s associations have built a space where they can feel free and safe. A space which follows the self-determination route developed in a participated and collective way.

In JINWAR there are thirty houses (21 already finished) for women, a communitarian organic orchard and a vegetable garden, a school for children of both sexes, a women’s Academy and a meeting space.

These, the delegation found out, are only some of the projects being implemented in the village. Others are being developed according to the needs and wishes of the women living there.

“As we visited the village - said the delegation - the women told us how the building of a baking oven soon became a collective project, able to engage women from neighbouring villages. A space where to share our passion for cooking, said the women”.

Indeed, the oven soon became a meeting point. “Women from other villages - Nujin told the Ya Basta delegation - were coming here, first to drink a tea, then to chat and now to bake their bread and help us in the fields”.

JINWAR is an ecological village: the Rojava Revolution and its democratic confederalism model propose a lifestyle in harmony with nature and earth. Everything here, from the building material for the houses to the agricultural projects is organic and environmentally friendly.

JINWAR, said the Italian delegation “is a village for women of all age, some have fled from forced marriages, some from domestic violence. Some women came because they wanted to study, others because they became widowed and were seeking a safe place to live”.

The aim of the village is “to provide women with the necessary tools to become independent also from an economic point of view and to give them the possibility to change their role in society and break up with the patriarchal scheme”.

* Compiled with news from the report written by Ya Basta delegation.