#rp26 speaker Kristina Lunz & Düzen Tekkal: Misogyny, Backlash, and why we need broad Alliances
In March 2026, Düzen Tekkal, Kristina Lunz, and Ricarda Lang launched an initiative against digital and sexualized violence in solidarity with Collien Fernandes. The campaign included ten policy demands directed at the German government and was supported by over 250 prominent women from politics, culture, and business. An accompanying petition was signed by more than 330,000 people within a few days. Rightly so, because the backlash against women’s rights is real and tangible. At the same time, according to Tekkal and Lunz, the discourse is increasingly escalating. How can we clearly call out misogyny without falling into oversimplification and escalation ourselves? And what specifically is needed to build effective alliances to better protect women from male violence – legally, socially, and digitally? At #rp26, Düzen Tekkal and Kristina Lunz will speak with moderator Shila Behjat about responsibility, platforms, and a return to mpore nuance.
Düzen Tekkal is a journalist, war correspondent, social entrepreneur, documentary and filmmaker. Following the genocide of Yazidis by ISIS in August 2014, she founded the human rights organization HÁWAR.help, which implements projects and advocacy work in Iraq, Syria, and for the freedom movement in Iran, among other places, as well as the nationwide, educational organization GermanDream. She has received numerous awards for her commitment, including the German Federal Cross of Merit.
Kristina Lunz is an entrepreneur and author. She is the co-founder and CEO of the non-profit Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy. Forbes named her one of Europe’s “30 Under 30” in 2019 for this entrepreneurial engagement. Kristina Lunz holds two master’s degrees, from both University College London and Oxford University. She has worked for the United Nations in New York and Yangon, for an NGO in Bogotá, and as a consultant at the German Foreign Office. Her 2022 bestseller “The Future of Foreign Policy Is Feminist”, now translated into English, has taken her to international stages – including New York, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Brussels. In October 2024, her second book, “Empathy and Resistance” was published, also by Ullstein Verlag.
Shila Behjat is a journalist and culture editor at ARTE/ZDF, where she co-produces the geopolitical culture series TRACKS East. She is an active writer with German-Iranian roots; in 2024, Hanser Literaturverlag published her non-fiction book “Raising Sons as a Feminist”. This was followed in 2025 by “Women and Revolution”. She studied law and international law in Hamburg and Paris, worked as a correspondent in London, lived as a freelance journalist in India, and reported on gender equality in the EU for the women’s portal Aufeminin.com. She wrote her latest book (September 2026) about the Persian poet Tahirih and has since published regularly on icons of the women’s movement from the Global South.