The fourth and final pillar of our work is reimagining. While the original motivation behind this area of work was the stagnation of the peace process and political action in Syria, the ousting of Assad has rendered reimagination efforts more relevant than ever.

We believe the Syrian people are presented with a portal of justice and healing for their historical losses and the harm bestowed upon them. A portal through which the underlying conditions and power imbalances that led to and exacerbated their suffering can be eradicated. The regime and other perpetrators in the Syrian context instrumentalised and augmented existing patriarchal, socioeconomic, socio-cultural, and political dividers and hierarchical structures, as well as creating new ones. The removal of a despot and the change of a political system alone are, therefore, not enough to break down drivers of discrimination and vulnerability.

It is our profound belief that ending injustice in Syria requires a radical reimagining of how we, the Syrian people, envision, define, and govern ourselves as a society — and how we embrace our differences as a foundation for peace and prosperity.

Decades of dictatorship stripped the population of a fundamental faculty for liberation: our imagination. Therefore, we began work under this pillar with our pilot project, ‘Weaving Feminist Political Action’, in 2022. Dedicated to rethinking the peace process, political frameworks, and feminist action, this initiative embraced reimagining as a powerful political tool for continuing our struggles in thoughtful and innovative ways. Unlike what the name may suggest, reimagining is, in fact, a theatre for action. For decades, we have approached solutions in the realm of the possible within the given limitations. The reimagining pillar pushes the limits of possibility and conceptualises visions, articulations, and solutions that are fit for the future and free from hegemonic systems of oppression and dominant narratives. The life cycle of a reimaging engagement starts with a forum, which produces a paper and invites co-thinking spaces (local and global). In the post-Assad era, state-building, justice and peacebuilding, recovery, foreign policy, and the economy are all areas that desperately need a “Maidan” for reimagining a polarised and less than favourable environment for women and pluralism.