The visit of the Jineolojî lecturer Dejla Haidar to the University of Emden/Leer ended after a week in which she visited the university of applied sciences, which has an academic partnership with the Department of Jineolojî at the University of Rojava since 2018.

Presentation of the university partnership

The symposium started with a greeting from the Dean of the Department of Social Work and Health, Prof. Dr. Soren Schmidt. Schmidt emphasized the high value he attaches to the university's collaboration agreement with the Jineolojî department at Rojava University and said: “Jineolojî criticizes the patriarchal image that shapes people and society. It enables new perspectives that relate to core areas of society such as ethics, economics, history or politics and education.”

Mechthild Exo presented the history of the university partnership, which was signed after a unanimous decision by the department council on 13 March 2018 and the first online encounters for a seminar organized in April of the same year.

Dean paid tribute to Nagihan Akarsel

Although a first trip to Rojava University in July 2018 ended at the Semalka border check-point between the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) and the self-governing region of Syria because exit from Iraq was denied, ways were found to transfer the letters of support, the agreement document, as well as book donations to Rojava.

Nagihan Akarsel, who was murdered by the Turkish secret service in Sulaymaniyah on 4 October 2022, traveled with a small academic women's delegation to the hotel in Hewlêr (Erbil) and held a conversation on their behalf. At the symposium, the Dean said: “Ms. Haidar and her colleagues work and research under life-threatening conditions, as the murder of Nagihan Akarsel has shown. Military and terrorist actions against Rojava are also aimed at what we sometimes take for granted: a social model in which women's rights and free democratic self-determination are possible. Nevertheless, people there continue to work towards this goal and I would like to express my greatest respect for that.”

Cooperation agreement for a further five years

The cooperation relationship was praised and a few hours before the start of the symposium, the Vice President for Research, Knowledge Transfer and International Affairs at the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, Prof. Dr. Steinigeweg, signed a renewed cooperation agreement for a further five years.