AWID es un organización feminista internacional de membresía, que brinda apoyo a los movimientos que trabajan para lograr la justicia de género y los derechos de las mujeres en todo el mundo.
Esta sección de análisis especial ofrece un análisis feminista crítico y acceso a los recursos clave relacionados con la «protección de la familia» en los espacios internacionales de derechos humanos.
Durante los últimos años, venimos observando una nueva y preocupante tendencia en el ámbito internacional de derechos humanos, donde se están empleando discursos sobre la «protección de la familia» para defender violaciones cometidas contra miembros de la familia, de modo de reforzar y justificar la impunidad y para coartar la igualdad de derechos en el seno de la familia y la vida familiar.
La campaña para «proteger a la familia» es impulsada por proyectos conservadores que tienen como fin imponer interpretaciones «tradicionales» y patriarcales de familia; quitando los derechos de las manos de sus miembros para ponerlos en las de la institución «familia».
Los proyectos de «protección de la familia» tienen su origen en los siguientes fenómenos:
el auge del tradicionalismo,
el auge del conservadurismo cultural, social y religioso, y
posturas hostiles a los derechos humanos de las mujeres, los derechos sexuales, los derechos de las niñas y los niños y los derechos de las personas con identidades de género y orientaciones sexuales no normativas.
Desde 2014 un grupo de estados opera como bloque en espacios de derechos humanos, bajo el nombre «Group of Friends of the Family» [Grupo de amigos de la familia], y a partir de entonces se han aprobado resoluciones sobre la «Protección de la familia» todos los años.
Esta agenda se ha extendido más allá del Consejo de Derechos Humanos (HRC, por sus siglas en inglés). Hemos visto cómo el lenguaje regresivo sobre «la familia» se ha introducido en la Comisión de la Condición Jurídica y Social de las Mujeres (CSW, por sus siglas en inglés), y hemos asistido a intentos por incluir este lenguaje en las negociaciones sobre los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible.
Nuestro enfoque
AWID trabaja con asociadxs y aliadxs para resistir conjuntamente las agendas regresivas de «Protección de la familia» y otras, y para defender la universalidad de los derechos humanos.
En respuesta a la creciente influencia de actores regresivos en los espacios de derechos humanos, AWID se ha unido con aliadxs para formar el Observatorio de la Universalidad de los Derechos (OURs, por sus siglas en inglés). OURs es un proyecto colaborativo que monitorea, analiza y comparte información sobre iniciativas anti-derechos tales como la «Protección de la familia».
Derechos en Riesgo, el primer informe de OURs, traza un mapa de los actores que conforman el cabildeo global anti-derechos e identifica sus discursos y estrategias principales, señalando los efectos que estos discursos y estrategias están teniendo sobre nuestros derechos humanos.
El informe expone a la «Protección de la familia» como una agenda que ha promovido la colaboración entre una amplia gama de actores regresivos en las Naciones Unidas. La describe como un marco estratégico que aloja «múltiples posiciones patriarcales y anti-derechos, cuyo marco, a su vez, apunta a justificar e institucionalizar estas posiciones».
De la India, Janette era enérgica, extraordinaria, compasiva y amorosa.
Su intolerancia de la injusticia y su firme compromiso de defender los derechos de todas las personas la llevaron a trabajar en TARSHI (una ONG que trabaja en temas de la sexualidad y la salud y derechos sexuales y reproductivos) durante más de 15 años. Janette dirigió con destreza las finanzas, los recursos humanos y los aspectos operativos del trabajo de TARSHI, atravesando hábilmente la laberíntica burocracia a la que están sometidas las ONG indias.
Lxs integrantes de su equipo recuerdan que «Ella se quedaba vigilando, de manera que pudiéramos seguir el rumbo en aguas abiertas. Mujer de muchos talentos, Janette no sólo nos ayudó a conseguir nuestra propia oficina sino que también la diseñó para una utilización óptima». Amaba viajar y a los animales, y estaba interesada en la terapia asistida por animales.
Membre de la communauté autochtone maya ixil, Juana était infirmière professionnelle et coordinatrice du Comité de développement des agriculteurs (CODECA)
CODECA est une organisation de défense des droits humains composée d'agriculteurs autochtones et vouée à la promotion des droits à la terre et du développement rural pour les familles autochtones dans la microrégion de Nebaj Quiché. Elle a d'abord rejoint le CODECA en tant que membre de la Juventud de CODECA (branche de la jeunesse).
Au moment de son décès, elle venait d’être élue membre du Comité exécutif du Mouvement de libération des peuples (MLP).
Le corps de Juana a été retrouvé par des voisins au bord d’une petite rivière sur la route située près de Nebaj et du village d’Acambalam, au Guatemala. Selon le CODECA, son corps portait des traces de torture.
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"A Feminist Approach to Understanding Illicit Financial Flows and Redirecting Global Wealth"
Snippet FEA Introducing Carmen Silva Ferreira (EN)
We have the pleasure to introduce you to Carmen Silva Ferreira.
She was born in Bahia, the Northeastern part of Brazil. She is an immigrant, a social activist and a mother of 8 children.
Carmen experienced homelessness at the age of 35, after migrating to Sao Paulo on her own. This led her to become a fierce advocate for vulnerable, marginalized and invisibilized communities most affected by the housing crisis. She eventually became one of the founders of MSTC in 2000.
As a visionary political organizer and the current leader of the MSTC, Carmen’s work has laid bare the city's housing crisis and provided inspiration to others on different ways to organize and manage occupations. She stood strong on the forefront of several occupations. One of them is the 9 de Julho Occupation, which now serves as a stage for direct democracy, and a space where everyone can be heard, seen, appreciated and work together.
Carmen has been long celebrated for her boldness in giving life back to abandoned buildings in the heart of São Paulo.
To know more about her life, you can follow her on Instagram!
Flujos financieros ilícitos y agentes antiderechos
📅Lunes 11 de marzo
🕒4:30 p. m. - 6:00 p. m. EST Organizan:AWID, IJSC y NAWI
🏢 Church Center de las Naciones Unidas, 777 United Nations Plaza, piso 11, Nueva York. (Interpretación disponible en francés y español)
Madiha was a prominent Professor of Sociology who actively engaged with civil society as an advocate for women’s rights in the Arab region.
She chaired the Alliance for Arab Women and was a member of the Committee on Civil Society and the Committee on the Development of Minia Governorate with the National Council for Women. She produced numerous papers that shed light on, and analyzed, gender inequalities and discrimination against women.
She is remembered fondly by colleagues, students and friends.
Holding up the Skies
A Film Series on Feminist Realities from Africa and the African Diaspora
by Gabrielle Tesfaye
When I created my short animation film, The Water Will Carry Us Home, my mind was plugged into a magical world of fearless resilience and ancestral mermaids who transformed their deepest scars into a new generation of life. Set during the time of the transatlantic slave trade, I was pulled to show this history of African enslavement in a different way than it has ever been told on screen. I wanted to give my ancestors the commemoration they never received. I was motivated to reclaim the history that continues to paint us as helpless victims. Essentially, I wanted to tell the truth. To reclaim and reimagine our history and perspective, means to simultaneously heal our generational traumas that exist today. It is this important work that so many women through the African continent and the African diaspora are doing today, igniting our collective Feminist Realities.
In the making of the film I researched religiously, and in what was written, I saw what was not. There were many times I felt I was hitting a wall trying to find something that was not there, and it was in those voided places that I realized the storytellers of today are filling the voids. I found the most useful stories in contemporary art, film, and African diaspora folklore.
“... a truly unique, raw and representation of feminist power in action.”
The Water Will Carry Us Home carried itself around the world into the hearts of the Diaspora. It also led me here, as the curator of the African and Diaspora film screenings of AWID’s Co-Creating Feminist Realities initiative. Whilst curating this collection of films, I looked for stories that were completely unique, raw and representational of feminist power in action. Consisting of three shorts and one feature, they reveal stories through many communities in Africa and the diaspora, including Ethiopia, Uganda, The Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa and Kenya. These films reposition African women as what they truly are- self governing and empowered through the unfiltered lens of their work.
“An incredibly beautiful, attentive, finely observed telling of the connection between Africa and its Diaspora formed form the trans Altantic slave trade. The visual universe it creates is just gorgeous… an echo of the fusion of spiritual traditions and non-linear time that speak to how we are still experiencing the moments of the past that formed 'new' worlds of diaspora blackness.”
- Jessica Horn, PanAfrican feminst strategist, writer and co-creator of the temple of her skin
Our short documentary film, Women Hold Up the Sky, created by the WoMin African Alliance, tells the story of women activists in Uganda and the Democractic Republic of Congo who are actively reclaiming their land rights, threatened by mining and other extractives in their homes. The film not only exposes the corruption of extractivism, but finally shares what we have been missing on screen - how grassroots African women are actively organizing, strategizing, and analyzing within their communities to create women-centred and community-driven alternatives. Margaret Mapondera of WoMin explains it beautifully, that they are the “custodians of lands, forests, waters, rivers and territories; the ways in which women hold and transmit the stories / herstories of our past and our futures; the powerful and transformative ways of being that women embody in their relationships to each other, to the environment and in themselves.”
“A refreshing and much-needed piece of cinema highlighting the many ways African women are coming together to create women-led and community-driven alternatives… The fight is on and
women hold the key.”
Pumzi, created by critically acclaimed director Wanuri Kahiu, bridges Africa and science fiction around climate and environmentalism. Pumzi imagines a futuristic world where humankind has been forced to settle on another planet. While Pumzi seems afro-futuristic and new for Africa on the surface, Kahiu reveals the truth that science fiction and fantasy is something that has always existed in African storytelling, but never recognized. Kahiu creates a world where women are truth seekers and heroes who pioneer us into a new world, the opposite of images that position Africans as victims of war and destruction. Instead, Pumzi writes the narrative of African women being their own saviors and problem solvers, who stop at no cost to follow the cryptic visions they channel in their dreams.
“A pioneering African sci-fi film, situating women as scribes of the future and opening up our visions about other worlds, other universes we might occupy as Africans - always an important exercise as we imagine our way out of present crises.”
- Jessica Horn, PanAfrican feminst strategist, writer and co-creator of the temple of her skin
Our feature film of the program, Finding Sally is set in 1970’s Ethiopia during the time of The Red Terror war, documenting the striking history of director Tamara Mariam Dawit’s activist aunt, Sally Dawit. Throughout the film we learn of Sally’s incredible journey as a young and courageous woman activist navigating one of the most violent times of Ethiopian history. Sally’s story not only reveals the gravity of this time, but the reflection of her own personal evolution as a young woman. Dawit was intentional to tell the film through the lens of women, untouched by male voices. Due to so much Ethiopian history being told by men, the making of this powerful story preserved its reality of honoring the feminist perspective. Dawit explains, “Women in revolution and war are often only included as someone's spouse or someone who did cooking or typing work. I wanted to look at the activism around the revolution only through the memories and voices of women.” Finding Sally demonstrates the reclamation of history sought by current filmmakers today. It is an igniting of feminist power and our connected realities throughout time.
“The responsibility falls on us, to remember these women that came before us and their brilliant work so they are not forgotten like the thousands of women already forgotten while fighting the good fight. Sally is such a woman and may she never be forgotten.”
These films have became a part of my own psyche, empowering me to continue building powerful alternatives towards justice from within. They affirm that I am a woman among a world of women, holding up the skies and actively building indestructible Feminist Realities. These films are more than stories of African women - they are globally relatable, inspiring and set the example of Feminist Realities for all of us around the world.
Gabrielle Tesfaye:
Gabrielle Tesfaye is an interdisciplinary artist versed in painting, animation, film, puppetry and interactive installation. Her work is rooted in the African diaspora, Afro-futurism, ancient art practices and cultural storytelling.
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Retratada en The Guardian como uno de los íconos nacionales de Kiribati, Teresia fue una valiente activista.
Trabajó estrechamente con los grupos feministas en Fiji y que puso sus investigaciones al servicio de las cuestiones feministas y de género en el Pacífico. Además, fue coeditora de la publicación International Feminist Journal of Politics. Su influencia se extendió desde la frontera académica hasta los movimientos por la justicia social en la región de Oceanía.
