Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, The Copenhagen Voice, 19 February 2010

A new organisation, EMKR, will work for direct influence for ethnic minority women in Denmark, and it aims at being a platform promoting the political agenda of these women in Danish society. As well as “creating a new and realistic picture of ethnic minority women”, EMKR will work with other organisations that focus on the status of women in Denmark – and will also speak for men and children in ethnic minorities.

The Ethnic Minority Women’s Council (Etniske Minoritets Kvinders Råd, EMKR), set up last September, wants to speak the case of not only women from ethnic minorities living in Denmark, but also of their men and children.

EMKR will collaborate with and support other organisations related to the status of women in Denmark, but its focus will be on women from the ethnic minorities because, in the words of Trésor Kankindi, EMKR’s chair, these women “are one of the most discussed groups in Denmark – but never by themselves.”

According to Trésor Kankindi, who came from Burundi and has lived in Denmark for nine years, “EMKR wants to change that. We want to show ethnic Danes that immigrant women are just as diverse as everyone else. And we want to qualify the many perceptions that exist.”

In a press release issued in connection with a meeting presenting the board of the new organisation, EMKR’s treasurer, Annam Al-Hayali, said, “Women with a minority background are over-represented in many social areas in Denmark, including health and poverty. It’s important that we get problems like these on the political agenda without the focus being on our religion or culture.” Annam Al-Hayali, who came to Denmark from Iraq in 1996, is the co-ordinator of EMKR’s social committee.

Getting the problems discussed on a correct basis means there is a need for information, and EMKR has set up an information committee with Hakima Lasham Lakhrissi at the helm.

“Many people talk about us on the background of public feeling,” she said. “But we must have a proper factual basis if we are to make a difference and bring the problems into the light. The burka debate is just the most recent example of a distorted debate.”

Hakima Lasham Lakhrissi, who emigrated from Morocco to Denmark in 1991, added, “We have a lot to offer, and we’d like that to have a clearer role in the debate.”

EMKR also has a communications committee that will be pro-active towards the media.

“Instead of waiting for the media to present a truer and varied picture of women from ethnic minorities, we aim at writing the agenda ourselves,” said Alma Bekturganova Andersen, who trained as a journalist in Kazakhstan and now lives in Denmark.