"Humanity is a muscle - train it every day!" Düzen Tekkal stands for exactly that: humanity and the irrepressible urge for equality for everyone. We are honored to welcome the warm and emphatic Düzen as our second VIERI Woman.

She is a renowned television journalist, filmmaker and human rights activist. As the daughter of a large Yazidi family, she was born in Hanover and dealt with the topic of integration from an early age.

As a rebel in the family, she went her own way from childhood and briefly became the "black sheep" of the family. She now works with three of her six sisters in the specially founded association "HÁWAR.help" and has an extraordinarily great relationship with them Parents.

It also receives a lot of social, political and economic recognition and receives many awards. She has just received the Federal Cross of Merit for her services in promoting democratic coexistence - she was also "Woman of Europe 2018" and received the Courage Prize for current reporting from the Journalists' Association in 2016. 

August 5, 2014 changed her life significantly. Word got around that there was a Yazidi journalist in Germany. That day she receives several calls reporting what is happening to her people, the Yazidis. A week earlier, the IS terrorists had attacked the settlement areas of the Yazidis in northern Iraq: men over the age of 14 were murdered, women and children were kidnapped and tens of thousands were on the run in the excruciating heat.

She decides to travel to Iraq as a war correspondent - accompanied by a cameraman and her father. 

The Stern TV report “Háwar – My Journey into the Genocide” also made the tragedy and its extent public in Germany. Düzen then founded HÁWAR.help, an organization that aims to create a world in which everyone can develop independently and safely, regardless of gender, ethnicity or religion. Specifically, the organization implements this with development and education projects in Iraq and Germany and international awareness and education initiatives.

In the current Pasta & Jewels episode Vol. 8 you will learn more about the extraordinary activist, her view of different things and what role a certain pragmatism plays in peace mediation. Get inspired, learn and "train your humanity muscle" - for us, for you, for everyone!