Statement by Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) on the Fourth Anniversary of the Woman, Life, Freedom Movement

Four years ago, on 16 September 2022, the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police sparked one of the most significant movements in Iran’s recent history. What began with grief and outrage became a powerful collective demand for Woman, Life, Freedom — Zan, Zendegi, Azadi.

On this fourth anniversary, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), as a transnational feminist movement, honours Jina Amini and all those who have lost their lives, been imprisoned, injured, or otherwise persecuted for demanding freedom, equality and dignity.

Woman, Life, Freedom has not simply a movement against compulsory veiling. It challenges the wider structures that regulate women’s bodies, restrict their autonomy and deny them equal citizenship. At the same time, the movement has always reached beyond questions of gender and dress. Women, students, workers, ethnic and religious minorities, LGBTQI+ people, artists, intellectuals and families seeking justice have all contributed to a broader struggle against discrimination, authoritarianism and state violence.

Four years of repression have not extinguished these aspirations. Indeed, one of the movement’s most important achievements has been to transform what can be publicly imagined and demanded. Women and girls who refuse compulsory veiling, families who continue to seek justice, and communities that resist discrimination demonstrate that repression cannot erase the desire for freedom.

For WLUML, Woman, Life, Freedom also speaks to the importance of transnational feminist solidarity. Transnational Solidarity is about standing alongside Iranian women, amplifying their demands and defending their right to determine their own futures. The movement

Woman, Life, Freedom has also renewed the power and relevance of transnational women’s movements. The movement has travelled across borders, connecting Iranian women’s resistance with feminist struggles against gendered violence, state control and discrimination in many parts of the world. It has reminded us that women’s movements are strengthened when we recognise our interconnected struggles, learn from one another and build solidarity across differences of context, culture and geography. For transnational feminist networks such as WLUML, this renewed solidarity is both a source of strength and a call to sustain collective action beyond borders.

On this fourth anniversary of Woman, Life, Freedom, as an international feminist solidarity network, we stand with the women and civil-society movements of Iran and support and amplify the demands they themselves have articulated:

1. We honour Jina Mahsa Amini and all those who have lost their lives or sacrificed their freedom in the struggle for equality, dignity and democracy. We stand in solidarity with women and girls, human rights defenders, workers, students, families seeking justice, LGBTQI+ people, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, and all those resisting repression and discrimination in Iran.
2. We support Iranian women’s demands for bodily autonomy and freedom from compulsory veiling and other forms of state control over their bodies and personal lives. We call on the Iranian authorities to respect these demands and the fundamental rights to freedom of expression, assembly, association and peaceful protest; to release those imprisoned for exercising these rights; and to respect the continuing demands for an end to executions and for accountability for killings, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, arbitrary detention and other human rights violations.
3. We affirm and support Iranian women’s demand for full and equal citizenship and their right to participate meaningfully and equally in determining Iran’s political and constitutional future. We stand equally with ethnic, religious and linguistic communities, LGBTQI+ people and other historically marginalised groups in their struggles for equality and dignity. Iran’s political future belongs to its people to determine.
4. We support feminist and civil-society initiatives that seek to translate the aspirations of Woman, Life, Freedom into lasting legal, constitutional and institutional guarantees. We stand with women in insisting that their rights and demands must not once again be postponed, marginalised or sacrificed during political change. Gender equality, bodily autonomy, equal citizenship and women’s substantive political participation are central to the democratic future envisioned by the movement.
5. We reject war, militarism, occupation and foreign domination, and particularly the instrumentalisation of women’s rights to legitimise military intervention in the name of “liberating” Iranian women. International solidarity means supporting people’s capacity to determine their own political future—not determining it for them. We therefore call on governments and international institutions to respect the agency of Iranian women and civil society, oppose repression and human rights violations, and refrain from appropriating women’s struggles in pursuit of military or geopolitical agendas.

Our solidarity is with the people who struggle for their rights, not with those who seek to determine their future for them. Woman, Life, Freedom belongs to those who have struggled to give these words political meaning.

Woman, Life, Freedom is a demand for liberation—not a justification for war.

 

 

Women Living Under Muslim Laws: Transnational Solidarty Network

16 September 2026