Do you know the work of Azul, our member organization from Morocco? We’ve interviewed one of their founding members, Amina Amharech, who shared with us their story, main areas of work, and strategies they take to tackle challenges. For more information about Azul, read our article on their best resilience practices.
Can you tell us a brief history of Azul?
In 2012 some friends and I were members of a Facebook group dedicated to Amazigh poetry, which is an essential element of our ancient culture. Poetry is for us a means of expressing ourselves and describing our life, our socioeconomic conditions and our worldview. Unfortunately, whenever we tried to discuss a topic and analyze the texts to understand their contexts, the Facebook group administrator would say: “Don’t say that, because that’s political”.
There was a lot of censorship, so in 2013 we decided to leave that group and create another one in which every Amazigh person could come, share, debate, say what they think about the current situation and tell their stories, as well as stories from their communities and families and from the tribes.
From that moment on, we really started to analyze the situation, the conditions, the historical facts and the socioeconomic phenomena that affect us. We also began to talk about why we Amazigh people felt bad about ourselves, why there was so much discrimination, poverty and socioeconomic exclusion for the Amazigh living in the mountains and in the countryside.
We also talked about colonization and what the Protectorate over Morocco brought in terms of administrative organization and changes in legislation, ignoring Amazigh laws, and about how we were gradually dispossessed of our lands through foreign laws.
We then raised the question of our responsibility, that is, how we, Amazigh people, should react and what we could do against this exclusion and discrimination. Through the group, we carried out solidarity campaigns for communities that were experiencing difficulties and campaigns for the resistance of ancestral knowledge, among other actions in which each person helped with as much as they could.
In 2016, I went to Geneva to participate in the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) and made statements about the situation of the Amazigh in Morocco as we collectively understand it in the group.
We came to the conclusion that national laws could not protect the Amazigh people, and therefore we had to look for another approach. We chose the path of the United Nations and international advocacy.
From the Facebook group, we then started to function as an Amazigh network where there were people with roles with whom we organized conferences, meetings and actions, but also grassroots activists wishing to defend their identity and rights as best as they can.
What are Azul’s main areas of work?
Azul’s main areas of work come from the reflections carried out by the group and the priorities that emerged from it.
There are main themes, such as the right to land and natural resources, which are essential elements for the Amazigh as indigenous peoples. But there are also others which are equally important, such as confronting linguistic discrimination, socioeconomic marginalization, the lack of access to health care and education, the refusal of birth registrations with Amazigh names, isolation… All consequences of national laws of colonialist and neocolonialist inspiration.
The problems we face are cumulative and interconnected. An Amazigh person whose land has been taken is an uprooted person and a vulnerable victim of forced assimilation.
Of course, whenever we talk about the rights of the Amazigh people we talk about women, who are at the center of our collective rights, and young people, who are our future. The fact is that women are the most affected by the consequences of past and current policies and by institutional, religious and socioeconomic discrimination.
Our network covers practically the entire region of Morocco, but among us there are also Amazigh people from Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and the diaspora, as well as foreign friends who support our cause.
Something that is very important to us is to keep listening to the communities and ensure that no one feels alone or isolated. Colonialism has always been built on the principle of “divide and rule” and we must remain united in solidarity with each other and around our cause.
When communities are isolated and information does not circulate, people can be expropriated in record time. Our role at Azul is to stay informed by the network’s members and process the information received before publishing it to mobilize public opinion or using it for advocacy.
In addition to using social networks, which allow us to communicate and stay informed, we sometimes travel and go to the field, hitting the road to visit communities. In the meantime, we remain vigilant and preserve our safety, which is an enormous responsibility.
What are the main challenges faced by Azul and how do you resist and organize?
As with all indigenous peoples in the world, the challenges faced by Azul and the Amazigh people are multiple. Simply because when we talk about land we talk about empowerment, socioeconomic rights, the preservation of knowledge, traditions, the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), climate change, ecosystems, biodiversity, forced displacement and immigration.
To understand the challenges, we need to see things from a global and multidimensional point of view. When we talk about the loss of rights over land and territories, this inevitably implies the loss of ways of life, culture, language and also the loss of identity.
Without the right to manage our natural resources, we cannot be economically autonomous, nor guarantee the sustainability of these resources, which are under threat of extinction.
We face climate change and the consequences of extractive activities and public agricultural policies that consume a lot of water and, above all, of the colonialist laws that dispossessed us for more than a century and cause damage to the functioning of Amazigh society, which is traditionally matriarchal.
Many things have been lost in our culture, such as traditional knowledge and the governance and management systems of the Amazigh people. And among the forms of resistance to face these challenges, we consider it essential to practice solidarity, which is one of our values.
Through Azul, we organize solidarity operations and campaigns to support communities in difficult situations and also to revive ancestral knowledge related to wool work and “Tiwiza” (community work) in the countryside, helping small farmers to preserve endemic seeds and to avoid GMOs.
Another major challenge is the safety of communities and the protection of human rights defenders. Since the pandemic, we have seen a setback in human rights that weighs heavily on our daily lives.
All these challenges do not discourage us. They allow us to have even more strength to continue fighting for our rights and not leave as a legacy to our children the same traumas we experienced. This hope for a better life for future generations keeps us alive and is our driving force.
Thanks to our advocacy, but also thanks to the values transmitted by Azul and all its members (the Azuliens), today we have many friends from all over the world who show solidarity with us, value what we do, support us and respect our struggle.
This solidarity is also very important for us. We are a pacifist people who show solidarity with all people on Earth who experience the same as us. Our conditions bring us closer to other indigenous peoples around the world, who we join to advocate for rights on a global level. Despite the differences in languages, regions, religions, colors, countries, etc., we face similar problems as indigenous peoples.
The last challenge is linked to the post-Covid pandemic context, when we saw the regression of the rights of indigenous peoples, but also of all human and community rights. A crisis combined with the economic crisis faced by families. This inevitably leads many people to become increasingly discreet and try not to be noticed. People fear for their safety, and we understand that very well.
To face all these challenges, we work hard on networking. Today we have strong international alliances and good relationships with other organizations. We also make our knowledge and experience available to other organizations and university researchers who study topics that concern us.
For example, we work in partnership with the Traab platform, led by sociology PhD Soraya El Kahlaoui, who develops important work on land issues. In this project, which consists of an application for mapping cases of expropriation, we collect information on land conflicts to identify affected communities, map the problem comprehensively and amplify the voices of displaced communities. Thus, we address the problem of lack of data on the issueand allow women, in particular, to have their demands heard.
We also contribute with information to special rapporteurs and national and international reports, such as the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR), with contributions on Amazigh rights.
These reports are an excellent alternative to the lack of financial resources and allow us to stay connected, active and proactive, avoiding both expenses and putting human rights defenders at risk. Let us not forget that our sister Kamira Nait Sid is still imprisoned in Algeria for defending the Amazigh cause.
To prevent this type of abusive incrimination, we refer to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which to date is the only global legal text that defends our rights, in addition to the Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and CEDAW General Recommendation No. 39 for indigenous women and girls.
How does the Feminist Land Platform contribute to your work?
Of course, just as there are challenges, there are always opportunities, such as being part of international networks and platforms that give us visibility and allow us to meet other organizations that experience the same problems and with whom we exchange knowledge, experiences and good practices.
Azul joined its first international network, the International Land Coalition (ILC), in 2018. When I became a member of the global board, I met Patrícia Chaves, from Espaço Feminista (Brazil). This allowed us to debate the issue of gender and women’s rights to land and territories.
We reflect a lot from our perspective as women who work with the communities and know the daily struggle, and about how to provide concrete solutions for those who experience the same situations as we do.
This is how the Feminist Land Platform was born, to become a space that respects this “bottom up” approach, which is rarely respected in the world. Generally, decisions are not made at a community level, but rather dictated by very large organizations or at a global level, which distorts the logic, and we have wanted that to change.
Today the FLP is a concretization of this new way of seeing women’s problems in the context of gender justice and land rights to improve women’s socioeconomic conditions: it is a political demand for, by and with women.
The Platform has also given us a space that values our experience. Azul is more focused on advocacy work at an international level, as national laws do not protect us. Since 2016, we have acquired and developed a set of mechanisms and knowledge in terms of legislation, international law, and means of protecting and defending the rights of indigenous peoples and women to land, territories and natural resources in a context of immigration and climate change.
We bring this expertise within the reach and at the service of our sisters from the Feminist Land Platform, but at the same time we learn a lot from them, because each organization has an area of expertise. Our wealth comes from our diversities, which are full of similarities among the issues faced by original peoples.
Azul is proud to be a founding member of the FLP, to share its vision and to work towards its goals of justice and equity in rights in general and in land rights in particular. Land and women are very important in Amazigh culture; in fact, the same word, Tamazighte, means land, tongue and woman. This proves that we have the entire FLP spirit in our culture and this is simply extraordinary for us.
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