Construction of the houses of the villages began in 2017, and it was officially inaugurated on 25 November 2018, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
It is based on the principle of self-sustainability and aims to give women a safe place to live, without violence and oppression.
[4] Jinwar's philosophy is that by giving women the necessary resources and tools to educate themselves, they will become free from the social constraints under a patriarchal society, which in turn creates freedom for everyone.
Through the implementation of educational programs such as sewing, reading, and writing, and even driving lessons, the women and children in Jinwar have an abundance of opportunities they could not even fathom having access to before moving there.
Ocalan believed that for the world to reach full liberation, there must be a radical women's revolution that challenges all aspects of oppression.
The ideology establishes an alternative means of reviewing social sciences in contrast with historical androcentric systems of knowledge.
[8] "With Jineoloji, the science of women, she will develop social and scientific remediation methods and deepen her knowledge of education, art, production, ecology, economics, demography, health, history, ethics-aesthetics, and self-defense.
"[9] Jinwar's official website introduces their fight for female-only spaces by recalling the beginnings of the women's movement in the Middle East.
On the shores of the Euphrates, Tigris, Habur and Zap rivers, women led the development of a meaningful life, based on ethics, nature, humanity, and rationality.
The women's movement in Syria is hundreds of years old, but it reached a recent turning point in 2011 when the Syrian Civil War began.
The community of Jinwar was inspired by another all-female commune called Umoja in Kenya, where women were facing similar mistreatment.
Many of the women who have fled to Jinwar are victims of various forms of assault either from soldiers who invaded their communities during the war and/or at the hands of the men in their villages.
[10] "Some of the women who live there have fled displacement, rape, imprisonment and death at the hands of ISIS and other armed groups.
Women face the threat of sexual assault and rape on a regular basis under the conditions of the Syrian Civil War.
"A June 2015 investigation by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) questioned 190 women and girls from Dara’a and Quneitra, and found 40 per cent had experienced sexual violence while trying to access aid.
[13] As stated on Jinwar's official website, "By working to build a free women’s village, in essence we aim to transform all living spaces of society.
“The women’s military wing of the PKK, Yekîneyên Jinên Azad ên Star (YJA-Star), have challenged traditional gender roles and contributed to the idea of “democratic confederalism,” a term the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan coined to highlight a move away from patriarchal nationalism.” YPJ is among these organizations that work with the Kongreya Star academy.
The village consists of 30 houses, a clinic where patients are treated with herbs, the al-Om Awish school which is named after the mother of Abdullah Öcalan, a small museum and the JINWAR Academy.
[19] The women in Jinwar built their houses and other buildings through a process called "Kerpîç,"[20] which translates to "Adobe" in English.
Adobe is an environmentally conscious and sustainable way of building because it uses natural resources such as "sand, sometimes gravel, clay, water, and often straw or grass.
[21] On Jinwar's website, it states that while from an outside perspective mud-brick construction might not appear to be innovative, to those who are coming from "battle zones where bullets, blood, gunpowder, and human parts are gathered have a different understanding of life, and their philosophy and vision of building with mud bricks is different.
[25] The items Jinwar published on their June Newsletter said "aubergines, paprika, tomato, bamya, beens, watermelon, melon, cucumber, onions, garlic and several other vegetables"[24] The purpose of learning how to farm gives women a new sense of autonomy over how they get their food and a means of making money by selling left over produce to other communities.
The leaders of the commune intend on letting the children raised in Jinwar decide whether they want to remain living there once they come to the age of adulthood.