Pakistani Ayisha Siddiqa named among Women of the Year 2023

Pakistani climate defender Ayisha Siddiqa named among Women of the Year 2023.

According to the details, the American magazine Time issued on Friday a list of women of the year in which the climate defender of Pakistan Ayisha Siddiqa’s name is also included in it. The Time magazine also announced names of women from Mexico, Iran, Brazil, Ukraine and Pakistan among other countries who have been prominent and exceptional in different fields such as politics, human rights, and arts, in its 2023 list.

Ayisha Siddiqa, coming from a tribal community in Northern Pakistan, became a climate and human rights defender after being a personal victim of climate change. She realised at the age of 14 that the environment around her is not safe.  She is considered a potent voice in Climate change activism. Last year, she also addressed the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh Egypt and shared her poem “So much about your sustainability, my people are dying.”

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The activist co-founded an international climate youth coalition named “Polluters out” in 2020 and started a climate training course under the name Fossil free university.

While speaking with the magazine the Pakistani activist said, “I was raised with the idea that Earth is a living being. She gives life to you and in return, you have a responsibility. We have reached a point where we are collectively ignoring the cries of mother earth. This is how the climate crisis is linked to women and girls because of the same structures that are abusing, hurting, and taking without consent. This is how we treat planet earth. This is how we treat the very thing which gives us life.”

The Pakistani climate activist highlighted that she had lost one family member after another over a course of 10 years, due to polluted water. She also said that one starts analysing why people are to be killed for resources. She said that she was absolutely shocked by the human rights violations. Violence is linked to climate defenders and people just trying to as for clean air and water. She emphatically noted with reference to last year’s flooding in Pakistan: “In South Asia, climate change disproportionately affects women. When people are displaced, women have to go get water, raise the children, women have to find work. There were 60,000 women that were pregnant during August and we didn’t have enough haemoglobin, collectively, to save them.”