New World Embassy: Rojava
Saturday November 26
Oslo City Hall, Norway
The New World Embassy: Rojava is a temporary embassy in the Oslo City Hall, which represents, through cultural means, the ideals of “stateless democracy” developed by the communities of the autonomous region of Rojava, northern Syria. The embassy consists of a large-scale oval shaped architectural structure, designed as an “ideological planetarium.” The embassy will operate for two consecutive days, bringing representatives from Rojava together with international politicians, diplomats, academics, journalists, students, and artists. Through open deliberation and public discussion the New World Embassy: Rojava proposes a platform to build new transnational relationships and explore alternative models of people’s diplomacy. This includes an analysis of the history, ideals, and implementation of stateless democracy; of the successes of Rojava in building a new civil society in a war-torn region; and finally the alternative that Rojava proposes in order to confront the crises of democracy seen on a global scale.
Panel I — History & Politics
This opening panel focuses on the history of the Kurdish Revolutionary Movement, the recent history of Kurdistan, and in particular the situation in Rojava following the declaration of autonomy in 2012. It will address the fight against the Assad regime and jihadist organizations such as the Islamic State, and the implementation of the Rojavan model of democratic confederalism. How and why was the idea of a “democracy without a state”—a stateless democracy—as Kurdish revolutionary Abdullah Öcalan described it, developed in the first place? In what way has this stateless democracy been able to unify the different peoples in the Rojava region, and how should we understand its day-to-day practice?
Co-Ambassadors:
Asya Abdullah has been the elected Co-Chair of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) of Rojava since 2010. She was also one of its founding members in 2003. Abdullah has represented the party in meetings with international diplomats and prominent leaders all over the world, and continues to work towards the recognition and inclusion of Rojava in the international arena.
Bassam Said Ishak is the President of the Syriac National Council (SNC). The SNC is a political body opposing the Assad regime. The Syriac Union Party and the autonomously organized police forces of Sutoro and military forces of the Syriac Military Council work closely with their Kurdish and Arab counterparts in establishing the Democratic Self- Administration while fighting the so- called Islamic State.
Panelists:
Macer Gifford
Macer Gifford is a human rights activist and anti-IS campaigner from the UK who gave up his job in London as a currency trader to join the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Rojava. He has spent several months on the frontlines with the YPG, and is now working in Europe to increase Western aid to Rojava. He is also in the process of creating a charity to improve medical training and pro- vide equipment for all those fighting on the frontlines against the Islamic State.
Kariane Westrheim
Kariane Westrheim is a professor
at the Department of Education, University of Bergen. Her research focuses on issues of multiculturalism, knowledge, and identity construction within social and political movements, and education in areas of war and con ict. Besides her academic research, Westrheim has been active in several commissions monitoring Turkey’s compliance with EU’s ac- cession criteria and the human rights situation in Turkey and in Bakûr in particular. While active as the chairwoman of the EU’s Turkey Civic Commission, she was denied entry to Turkey in 2010.
Chair:
Joost Jongerden
Joost Jongerden is an assistant professor at the Center for Space, Place and Society at Wageningen University and has a special appointment as Professor at the Asian Platform for Global Sustainability & Transcultural Studies at Kyoto University in Japan. His main interest is the relation between people, place, and power. He is the author of several books and articles about the Kurdish issue in Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and democratic confederalism/ democratic autonomy in Bakur and Rojava. In October 2015 Jongerden partook in the fifth New World Summit in Rojava as a member of the international delegation.
The New World Embassy: Rojava is a collaboration between the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava and Studio Jonas Staal. The project is part of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016, After Belonging: A Triennale In Residence, On Residence and the Ways We Stay in Transit, and funded and co-produced by KORO, Public Art Norway / URO.
Video by Ruben Hamelink
Translation by Seevan Saeed and Cihad Hammy
www.newworldsummit.org
