Sisterhood or barbarism

In today's interconnected world, defending women's rights and sexual and reproductive rights is a shared responsibility.

According to the reportThe next wave: how religious extremism is reclaiming power(2025), from the European Parliamentary Forum, organizations linked to religious extremism and its machinery – which combines the legal offensive withthink tanksPolitical parties and media outlets capable of gaining institutional influence received $1.18 billion between 2019 and 2023. Of that, $171 million, which was used to attack sexual rights, came from public funding.

Every March 8th serves to denounce the attacks of the global far right. Whenthink tanksWhen Hungarians try to reduce European funding for human rights defense, while Spanish anti-abortion organizations receive millions of euros, we cannot speak of national policies: this is a global battle waged by an infrastructure with money and strategy against human rights and democracy.

In this context, feminist cooperation becomes a clear commitment to justice and the defense of democratic geopolitics. In Catalonia, the far right has focused on international cooperation and the entities and projects centered on defending women's rights in other countries. When Catalonia supports feminist projects in places where abortion is criminalized, where there is genocide, where women are persecuted and murdered and lack access to education—let alone sex education—where LGBTQ+ people are criminalized, it is not imposing a foreign or extravagant agenda: it is global. Furthermore, it is strengthening international networks that will protect Catalan women when necessary. In fact, the experience of many women and human rights organizations in countries where their work leads to imprisonment, exile, or death is already helping us understand the attacks and how to confront them. In the Catalan case, moreover, the cooperation model is not based on whims, but on a public policy approved by a large majority in the Catalan Parliament, and consistent with polls showing majority social support. The question, then, is not whether Catalonia should fund feminist projects and organizations in other countries. The question is whether we can afford not to at a time when the ultra-globalization wave is a reality. Few international days are as significant as March 8th. Thanks to millions of women organized and connected around the world, celebrating March 8th means taking a stand for women's rights everywhere. This March 8th, feminists will celebrate, for example, that eight years after her assassination, justice has been served for Brazilian councilwoman Marielle Franco, whose sentence affirms she was the victim of a misogynistic and racist political crime. Without transnational sisterhood, we will descend into barbarism.