FEMYSO Elections Announcement 2021

The weekend of 22-23 October 2021 saw the election of a new Executive Committee of our organisation by its Member Organisations. With that, we say goodbye to our current executive team after two years of service.  

We would like to thank our outgoing team for their commitment to this organisation over the mandate: 

Abdelrahman Rizk – President (United Kingdom) 

Arjeta Xhomara – Head of Communications and Marketing (Albania) 

Ibrahim Kraria – Head of Internal development (Germany)

Hiba Latreche – General Secretary (France) 

Marwan Akari – Head of Fundraising (Ireland) 

Nadia El Faroukhi – Head of Member Organisation Relations (France) 

Vullnet Selmani – Head of Finance (North Macedonia) 

Fatima Halawa – Head of Training (Ireland) 

Burak Barut – Head of Services (Germany) 

Hande Taner – Head of Media (Netherlands) 

Yusuf Hassan – Head of Campaigns (United Kingdom) 

Outgoing FEMYSO President Abdelrahman Rizk said “On behalf of our outgoing executive, I would like to honour the immense work done by my team and this organisation to represent and advocate on behalf of and support the development of Muslim youth across Europe. This mandate has been one of many firsts and this is as a result of the incredible collective carried out by the volunteers of the wider FEMYSO Family. The COVID-19 pandemic definitely provided challenges, but I’m proud to say this Executive Committee delivered on the goals we set out at the beginning of our term. Even as some of us leave the organisation formally, we will all continue on our mission to strive for a diverse, cohesive and vibrant Europe.  

 

Sunday the 24th of October saw the election of the incoming FEMYSO Executive Committee: 

Hande Taner – President (The Netherlands) 

Salman Gadid – Head of Communications and Marketing (Finland) 

Hiba Latreche – Head of Fundraising (France) 

Vullnet Selmani – Head of Finance (North Macedonia) 

Esmanur Aslan – General Secretary (Belgium) 

Nadia El Faroukhi – Head of Member Organisation Relations (France) 

Fatima Halawa – Head of Internal Development (Ireland) 

Burak Barut – Head of Training (Germany) 

Nourhene Mahmoudi – Head of Campaigns (Italy) 

Yusuf Hassan – Head of Media (United Kingdom) 

Ibtihelle Ben – Head of Services (France) 

 

Incoming FEMYSO President Hande Taner said “I would like to thank the outgoing Executive Committee for their excellent work in bringing the organisation to where it currently is. I am proud to lead this organisation in its 26th year of existence, I am also incredibly proud to lead a fantastic team of committed young leaders from different parts of Europe, who are excited to take this organisation’s work to another level. I am thankful to our Member Organisations for putting their trust in me and this team to deliver for them, and we will endeavour to hold firm to our collective mission of trying to serve our communities and our region”. 

  

FEMYSO, together with all our Member Organisations, stay committed to a more diverse, cohesive and vibrant Europe.  

  

Notes:  

FEMYSO (est. 1996) is a network organisation for 33 Muslim youth and student organisations across 20 European countries, and is the leading voice for European Muslim youth, developing and empowering them, and working to build a more diverse, cohesive and vibrant Europe.    

For more media-related information or requests please email media@femyso.org.  

Training of Trainers in Human Rights Education

FEMYSO President, Abdelrahman Rizk, completed the ‘Training of Trainers in Human Rights Education for Young People’ 2019-2021 course organised by the Council of Europe in cooperation with the United Nations (Human Rights of the High Commissioner). 

The course started in December 2019 with online modules and ended with a 10 day residential at the European Youth Centre in Budapest, Hungary. More than 30 activists and educators from across Europe and beyond participated at this well thought and holistic course.  

The aim of the training course is to support the implementation of the Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education through building the competences of trainers to develop and apply quality human rights education activities with young people at national/local levels and to advocate for the further mainstreaming of human rights education in youth policy and youth work. 

During the course the participants had the opportunity to strengthen their understanding of the key concepts of human rights education with young people, strengthen essential competences for trainers working with human rights education in non-formal learning settings based on using and adapting Compass, and analyse current developments and trends in human rights education in order to mainstream it in youth policy and youth work. 

FEMYSO stands with communities and organisations fighting for human rights, fundamental freedoms and human dignity. We will continue to work for a more diverse, cohesive and vibrant Europe. 

Letter to European Parliament President David Sassoli

Brussels, 15 October 2021

Dear President David Sassoli,  

 

On behalf of the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisations (FEMYSO), a pan-European network representing the voice of the Muslim Youth in Europe, we had the pleasure to participate at the European Youth Event (EYE) 2021, the biggest event for thousands of various young people at a European level. Please read our letter below about our recent experiences, especially ahead of the European Year of Youth 2022, as presented by President Von Der Leyen. 

 

As FEMYSO, we were proud for having been provided and having made us of this great opportunity to participate in a democratic process facilitated by the European Parliament to engage young people more closely with the most democratic and representative institution of the European Union. We participated before in 2016, 2018 but for the first time this year we participated by bringing Muslim youth from more than 14 European countries, by delivering two workshops (education and policymaking) and moderated one panel (fighting discrimination) which also had an MEP as a speaker. Before coming to the EYE, we prepared our participants closely through three webinars on what the European Parliament is, what the EYE consists of and what topics they can expect and can prepare for. Indeed, we even had a “green delegation” as part of our wider FEMYSO delegation, which consisted of participants who completed a European Youth Foundation funded international training on climate justice. These participants prepared with concrete ideas and proposals to make Europe greener, knowing that some ideas would be selected for the EYE report and would contribute to the Conference on the Future of Europe. 

 

We are really happy with the five suggested outcomes from the closing plenary, and we are committed to these proposals as an organisation. We also look forward to seeing them developed throughout the Conference on the Future of Europe. As FEMYSO, it is in fact our vision to strive to build a more diverse, cohesive, and vibrant Europe for all. We do this through our campaigns, training, representation and networking activities. 

 

Unfortunately, the experience of our passionate young people, who came to this event to proactively contribute to the process of bettering our European Union, was negatively impacted as they were targeted by a far-right youth delegation. In different occasions, members of our delegation were specifically targeted and subjected to Islamophobic and Anti-Muslim hate speech at the very heart of the European Parliament. Our workshops were disturbed and the panel we moderated got hindered in the end by racist slurs shouted through the microphones. The far-right youth delegation kept furthering their Islamophobic and xenophobic agenda through a multitude of actions, from verbal abuse to online hate speech. For instance, they also uploaded on social media pictures of our participants (without their consent) and used the hashtag #stopimmigration. These are the actions that we know of, and there might be others that we have not been made aware. Please refer to our statement here. 

 

It is noteworthy that not only Muslim participants were targeted by members of the far-right, specifically of the Identity and Democracy Group (ID) of the European Parliament. Also, members of other minority groups who participated and organised activities at the EYE, such as DiasporaVote and Jesuit Refugee Service, were subjected to verbal harassment, both in person and online, by the same people. The members of the other minority groups shared their experiences with us, only after our Vice President shared our experience in the closing ceremony and after we reached out online for victims of hate speech at EYE2021 to contact us. We highly encourage you to watch this short speech that FEMYSO’s Vice President delivered at the closing ceremony here. 

 

As marginalised young people living in Europe, we are firm believers of active citizenship. We came to this event to effectively contribute by sharing our ideas and listening to the perspectives of youth from all over our Europe. We debated our ideas around climate justice, the role of AI in media literacy, gender equality mainstreaming and of specific ways to fight discrimination. Unfortunately, the disgraceful Islamophobia and racism we were subjected to made us feel unsafe and it ostracised our intent to be active citizens. It is even more disgraceful that some MEPs further encouraged the youths who targeted us, by adding their own hate speech. 

 

What happened during the EYE 2021 – which ought to be a safe space – clearly stands in contradiction with the core values of the European Union of democracy, rule of law, solidarity, equality, and respect for human rights; all of which should be defended. The European Parliament is the heart of our democracy and we expect its leadership to take concrete and effective steps to fight all forms of racism, as well as to call out the unacceptable hate speech and verbal abuse which was subjected to many participants during the EYE. 

 

Addressing Islamophobia and xenophobia is a pivotal part of increasing the trust and confidence of European Muslims, and other minorities, in their national and European institutions. We therefore request a meeting to be organised in order to discuss in depth your commitment and proposals to bring concrete measures to limit Islamophobia, xenophobia and other forms of discrimination that minorities are facing in Europe. One possible idea is to have a Parliamentary Charter against hate speech. We are looking forward to discussing feasible and constructive solutions which may put an end to hate speech and racism.  

 

While looking forward to your prompt response, we take this opportunity to convey our best regards, 

 

Abdelrahman Rizk 

FEMYSO President 

 

Signatories of support to this letter: 

  • Agora Association 
  • Asociación Musulmana por los Derechos Humanos – AMDEH 
  • Beylikduzu Youth Club 
  • Centre for Peace Studies 
  • DemSport 
  • #DiasporaVote! 
  • Dimbaya APS 
  • Eine Welt Netz NRW 
  • Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice 
  • Erasmus Student Network Austria 
  • Erasmus Student Network Lisboa 
  • Erasmus Student Network Portugal 
  • Erasmus Student Network Strasbourg 
  • Euro Youth Mental Health 
  • European Youth Forum – YFJ 
  • European Forum of Muslim Women – EFOMW 
  • European Network against Racism – ENAR 
  • European Roma Grassroots Organisations Network – ERGO Network 
  • Geoclube (Portugal) 
  • Human Rights Association (Georgia) 
  • No Hate Speech Movement Italia 
  • No Hate Speech Network 
  • OpenGlobe 
  • PEBS/ JEF MV 
  • Regional Roma Educational Youth Association-RROMA 
  • The Czech Helsinki Committee 
  • Union of Justice 
  • Voice of the Youth Foundation: St. Maarten Youth Brigade 
  • You(th)+ 
  • Young European Federalists – JEF 
  • Youth Center “Perspektiva”
  • Youth group of the Eine Welt Netz NRW e.V. 

A response to far-right attacks targeting Muslim Youth at the European Parliament

FEMYSO brought together a delegation of young people from over 14 countries to engage with key European institutions, in order to contribute to the discussions that affect our lives as young people in Europe.

Our delegates came from all over Europe, from Scotland to Albania, Gibraltar to Ukraine, Finland to Italy. The positive energy and excitement they brought to learn more about the European institutions and to provide concrete solutions is evidence of the power of young people to bring positive changes to our societies.

Unfortunately our efforts were aggressively undermined and attacked by the malicious actions of a far-right youth delegation at the European Youth Event (EYE).

These actions ranged from verbal harassment of vulnerable members of our delegation, ambushing our workshops with large mobs and aiming to dominate discussions around racism by shouting down at fellow participants.

 

This pattern of behaviour was reflected online with pictures of our participants uploaded with hashtags like #stopimmigration. With far-right Members of European Parliament inciting hatred towards our young people.

When these actions led to members of our delegation to feel unsafe, the senior leadership of FEMYSO carried out measures in coordination with the EYE organisers in order to guarantee the safety of our delegates.

We are thankful for the efforts of the European Parliament and the EYE team for their swift reaction to the numerous incidents.

We would like to reiterate, that the harmful rhetoric used by far right leaders have an impact on the lives of young Muslims, as it did today. We call upon the leaders, policy makers and decision makers of European institutions to ensure that Muslims feel safe in these spaces and that hate speech is not tolerated.

Undeterred by fascists, we will continue our work towards creating a more diverse, cohesive and vibrant Europe for all.

 

[ENDS]

Notes

1. FEMYSO (est. 1996) is a network organisation for 32 Muslim youth and student organisations across 20 European countries, and is the leading voice for European Muslim youth, developing and empowering them, and working to build a more diverse, cohesive and vibrant Europe.

2. For more information or requests please email media@femyso.org