Initiative Justice for Nagihan Akarsel : open Letter to the International Community

On behalf of the Initiative Justice for Nagihan Akarsel we, 312 women of different professions and organizations from 51 countries of all continents, have signed this open letter calling on the UN, the European Council, the Iraqi government and all relevant organizations to take urgent actions against extrajudicial killings on Kurdish women.

Nagihan Akarsel was assassinated on 4 October 2022 in Sulaymaniyah, in the autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq. She was an academician, writer, activist and founding member of the Kurdish Women’s Library, Archive and Research Centre as well as a member of the Jineolojî Academy. Although the police declared that they had caught a suspected perpetrator the day after the murder, no legal proceedings were initiated. Neither the Kurdish Regional Government nor Iraqi bodies provide information about the case.

Unfortunately, the assassination of Nagihan Akarsel is not an isolated case. Kurdish women’s right activists, journalists and politicians are daily targeted, killed or persecuted in Irak, Iran, Turkey and Syria. The impunity of all this crimes is encouraging authoritarian regimes to commit further feminicides, as we have seen in relation with the killing of Jîna Emînî by the Iranian state forces last year.