The Şehîd Sakîne Eseliye Workshop is a women’s co-operative in Manbij. The Women’s Committee of the Civil Democratic Administration in Manbij opened the sewing workshop in November 2018.
25 workers are normally in the workshop for 7 hours a day, from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm. According to the workers’ supervisors, the cost of the workshop reached approximately 10 million SP. Workers have a range of specialisations and wages of the workers vary between 60,000 and 70,000 SP.
The project coordinator is called Fatima Hamdo and Fatima Hussein works on the workshop’s plotting machine.
In 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic it is making masks for members of local security forces who must be outside despite the pandemic.
The case of Manbij, liberated from ISIS by the SDF in August 2016, shows how women in a multi-ethnic Syrian city used AANES [the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria] frameworks to build institutions, take on leadership roles, and organize in their communities to change discriminatory attitudes.
The Women's Committee of the Civil Democratic Administration in Manbij started working in the sewing workshop which was named on behalf of the Martyr Sakina Asalieh.
North and East Syria faces serious challenges in the fight against COVID-19. 600,000 IDPs and refugees live in camps across the region, their situation already precarious without a pandemic. Ongoing attacks by Turkish forces, Turkey-backed militias, and ISIS complicate the security situation and threaten essential civilian infrastructure like water lines. According to the Rojava Information Center,
