NuJINHA, a new voice for women in the Middle East

NuJINHA, founded by the Women's Media Culture Foundation, has begun broadcasting. The agency will broadcast in 5 languages and aims at becoming the voice of women in the Middle East.

NuJINHA was founded by the Sweden-based Women's Media Culture Foundation. The news agency will broadcast in 5 languages: Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Turkish and English.

The new women's agency can be followed at: https://jinhaagency.com/en

In a statement explaining the mission and importance of a women news agency, NuJINHA reminds that “journalism based on women’s rights or women-focused journalism is also a form of human rights journalism against mainstream media trying to build womanhood.

Because news performs their works with reference to patriarchal order and structures and it has an extremely masculine and sexist nature.

Feminist media have been working on this sector for a long time and displaying how mainstream media put women in second place, how it has trivialized, demonized, and ignored women.

Feminist media which starts the debates on “representation of women in the media” keeps its struggle for the transformation of women's representations in the media.

The increasing women's struggle against repressive patriarchal and conservative male powers all over the world has started to show itself in the media sector.”

The statement adds: “As a group of women journalists living in the Middle East, we have been discussing for a long time to create a language for the media free from gendered language.

In our discussions, we have made a lot of progress on how to create a new language by using existing heritage as well as benefiting from women's media experiences in the past.

We are preparing the reporting system that will create a universal women's language against patriarchy, which gives “advice” about how a woman should wear, talk, how many children she should have, whether she will have an abortion or not, and how to describe her body.

While doing this, we are considering creating a new women's publication on the existing heritage by examining the past experiences in our region not starting from scratch.”

JINHA (Women’s News Agency) was founded in Diyarbakır in 2012 and brought women’s journalism to a specific degree, was shut down by Turkish state.

The closure of the agency, which had a significant value in women's journalism, was an attempt to silence the feminist media.

The statement recalls that “JINHA was a common heritage of all women living in the Middle East even if it was founded by Kurdish women.

We have determined our news agency name as Nu JINHA in order to protect this heritage. Nu means “New” in the Kurdish language, JIN means “women” in the Kurdish language while HA is the abbreviation of HABER which means “News” in the Turkish language. We can translate NuJINHA into English as “New Women’s News Agency”.”

Through Nu JINHA, the statement adds, “we want to create a new form of women’s representation against the “lack of representation” of women in the media and to be the voice of all women with the partnership of the Women's Media Culture Foundation based in Sweden.

Nu JINHA will continue to move forward by gathering those who try to reach freedom/ blue sky around it. It will continue to be the voice of the “women’s nation”, regardless of their language, religion, color and belief.”