UN Representative Enaam Ahmed Ali: ‘We All Want to Feel At Home’

 

 

Also read part 1: Mela Chiponda, Our lives are tied to the land, and part 2: Lara Jesani: 'For those who fight this system, there are consequences' ; part 4: Marianela Mejía: ‘Without Our Land, We Have No Culture’; and part 5: Kholi Sisonke: 'Consent Should Not Be Illegal.'

 

‘For a lot of kids, especially those who aren’t ethnic to that region, high school can be pretty hard. So you’d expect that for me, a Muslim Libyan girl growing up and studying in Utrecht, the Netherlands, things would be rocky.

But it was quite the opposite. At the peak of my teenage years, I couldn’t be happier. I was excelling in school, since I came from a family where none of us was allowed to fail. An 8/10 wasn’t good enough, you had to hit the perfect score. And my father didn’t just settle at the Dutch curriculum, which is applauded around the world, but we had the Libyan curriculum at our fingertips too. I took part in multiple sports in school, and was involved in other extracurricular activities. I had friends, an active social life, and wouldn’t change a thing about my life at that moment.

Which is why I felt like my life had been completely turned over when in 2008 my parents announced that we were moving to Libya. I didn’t know how to take the news, and I wanted to be left behind, but I couldn’t, so the only bargain I could drive was have my parents enroll me into an international school.

Now, I know I hit you with one shocker in this story already, but here comes another one. From what I’ve explained already, and what you may know about Libya at that time, my life was supposed to be utterly ruined by this move. But instead, I got something I didn’t even know I needed.

I don’t like explaining myself, especially to people who do not share my daily lived experiences. So to be amongst people who were like me felt amazing.

But, of course, things weren’t all that rosy there. At this time, Libyans had grown tired of Gaddafi’s dictatorial rule over them, and tensions were so thick you could cut through the air with a knife.

Back in the Netherlands, I already knew there was a certain way that the world treated women. At home, I saw how my sisters and I were expected to help our Mother in the kitchen, were trained to be good housewives and hosts, while my brothers would just lounge and be carefree.

So now, in Libya, where the leader had shown that women were to be mistreated and abused, things were worse. Back in my old school, I could stand by the roadside and talk to classmates, whether male or female, without anyone casting a second glance at us. Here, my father would get angry at us, and forbid us from ever doing it again.

I guess seeing this, and the things I’d observed from childhood, asking my parents, friends and later colleagues why things work like this and not getting any concrete answers is what drove me into the field that I’m in now.

I work in the intersections of climate, gender and technology. Tech seems a bit out of place here, but when you understand the power that it has in sharing knowledge and information and how easy it is to have a certain group locked out of this access, it can be a bit dangerous.

Okay, let me slow down a bit and explain things properly, sometimes I get a bit heated when talking about these things because it’s painful to watch.

To own a smartphone, or computer, and buy data bundles to connect to the internet, you need money. We live in the age of YouTube teaching us more than any school ever could, online forums, free virtual classes, articles, basically a treasure trove of information that’s just a click away. 

But very quickly after starting my work, which largely involved financing for small farmers, I realized that women in this field had a harder time getting credit to purchase seeds, farming tools or other things they needed. Meaning they were reaping no profits from their land, thus cutting them off from the much needed resources that are so readily available to everyone else. Which we can call tech poverty, because women are 20% less likely to be digitally literate.

And when harvests are low, and the family has no money for food, the responsibility of feeding them falls on their daughters, some even minors, who would be married off in exchange for dowry.

When the men of the household would leave to go to the cities in search of greener pastures (really just for themselves, and not so much for their families at home), the women would be left to fend for themselves and for the children who had been left behind too. I believe it was Mela Chiponda from Zimbabwe who cited this same issue too.

In the event of extreme weather conditions due to climate change, the women would be turned into refugees, and their safety put at risk due to the rampant cases of rape and violence against women from these camps.

You can think of climate change as something that only affects farmers and people who reap from the land. But it has a ripple effect, as you have seen above. And the people who are the first to be hit by the full blow of it are women.

Technology can be used as a big tool in fighting climate change and empowering minorities and marginalized folk, but when most of the positions in tech are held by men, this really isn’t a priority. Why, even in the activism spaces I am in, women will clearly be shown that they can only be one thing. You are limited to fighting against only one issue. Because how dare you, as a woman, occupy multiple spaces? Even when your ideas are brilliant and your vision clear, it’s still very much frowned upon.

 

I want to create a better world for women everywhere, whether it’s in the Netherlands, Portugal, Kenya, Morocco, Germany, or my home country, Libya, where women are unable to dream of a future just for themselves because of society’s continuous downtrodding on women, a world where women are not limited to what they can be or achieve.

I am grateful to the individuals and organizations who let me do this work, like the UNGA, where I am the Women Representative, and Rabobank, through which we have done a lot of work in different countries to empower women in all ways possible and S.P.E.A.K. , who have actively listened to us and shown us that our ideas and opinions were valid and important.

Listen to women when they speak. Empower them to reach their highest peaks. Give them the same access that is given to their male counterparts, without expecting anything in return. Treat them with respect, and understand that they have autonomy and control.

We hope for a future where women occupy as many seats, have their voices heard equally. Where women are no longer afraid or sitting in the shadows. Because we know how valuable they are in our society.

Take this as a challenge. In the spaces you occupy, no matter how small. A challenge to ensure that there is no more discrimination, and there is equality for all.