Download - Central ameriCa Women’s netWork aCtivity report Report - January 11, June 12.pdf · Central ameriCa Women’s netWork aCtivity report January 2011 to June 2012 Jan uary ... for

Central ameriCa Women’s netWork aCtivity report January 2011 to June 2012 J a n u a r y 2 0 1 1 t o J u n e 2 0 1 2

International Women’s Day March, London, March 2011

Central America Women's Network, 44-48 Shepherdess Walk, London, N1 7JP T: +44 (0) 20 7324 5065, [email protected], www.cawn.org

In 2011 the Central America Women’s Network (CAWN) celebrated 20 years of solidarity with women in Central America. CAWN was born out of a growing solidarity movement in the UK in the late1970s and 1980s in response to civil wars and escalating human rights abuses in the region. CAWN was founded by women in the UK keen to network with, learn from, and support women’s organisations in Central America.

Between January 2011 until June 2012, one of CAWN’s major concerns has continued to be violence against women. The situation has not improved for women, and indeed, their experiences may be even worse than when CAWN was founded. Alarming statistics reveal the extreme levels violence and atrocities of femicide committed against women in the region. What has changed is that more women are fighting back, as women have created support groups, gathered research and evidence and taken their cases to court, pushing the issue of violence against women up the political agenda.

Since our foundation, CAWN has supported women’s organisations in the region through advocacy work, political lobbying, holding conferences and events – often with inspirational women from Central America – and producing research reports and information to continually raise awareness of the ongoing women’s struggles. In this report of our work over the last eighteen months, January 2011 to June 2012– we hope to give you an insight into the projects we have been involved in and how we work to ensure that these issues and the work of women in Central America are not forgotten here in the UK.

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“ C h a l l e n g i n g v i o l e n C e a g a i n s t W o m e n i n h o n d u r a s ”

CAWN’s project Challenging Violence against Women in Honduras, identifying the links between reducing poverty and promoting women’s rights was funded by the Big Lottery Fund for five years and ended in July 2011.

CAWN worked with the Centro de Estudios de la Mujer Honduras (CEM-H) to address violence against women and poverty by taking a community-based approach that empowered women living in poverty. CEM-H piloted a holistic model for support services. with inter-locking components: a) Women’s organisations, b) capacity-building and c) empowerment through networks, self help groups training and participation.

a d v o C a C y

CAWN carried out effective advocacy work in the UK and at a European level to raise awareness of femicide in different activities throughout the project. In March and April 2011 representatives from CEM-H, visited the UK for a speaker tour. They spoke at public events in the House of Commons, University of St Andrews and participated in a number of meetings with organisations working on violence against women to exchange experiences of their work. The Honduran women found the experience of coming to the UK and having their voices heard powerful. At the same time, it is revealing for marginalised Honduran women to realise that VAW is also experienced in first world countries: “Here we have the idea that domestic violence only exists in Honduras amongst the working classes, but I discovered that there was also domestic violence in England” (Maria Amalia Reyes, 23/6/2011).

CAWN also co-organised a seminar in Brussels with the Heinrich Bolls Foundation and a follow up seminar in Spain, together with a Spanish women’s organisation in 2010. As a result of these initiatives and subsequent lobbying by a Spanish academic there was an agreement made to draft an international protocol for research and documentation of the crime of femicide that was presented to the UN at the end of June 2011.

The 2009 coup d’état had negative impacts on the project including State repression of CEM-H project team and women beneficiaries; however it also had an unexpected positive impact: the strengthening of women’s voice and participation in protests in demand for the respect of democracy and institutions (base on rule of law).

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Marching with Honduran feminists against coup d’etat, Tegucigalpa

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Challenging Violence against Women in Honduras Field Visit, Honduras, 2011

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r e s e a r C h

A research report, Intersecting Violences by Patricia Muñoz Cabrera was published in October 2010, that used intersectional analysis to understand the complex web of factors contributing to poverty and VAW in Latin America. The toolkit, published in March 2011, complemented the report and showcased examples of NGOs in Latin America that are implementing intersectionality in practice in their work tackling violence against women and girls. These resources gave a new perspective on traditional methods of producingf public policy in this area.CAWN’s publications were distributed in Latin America, the UK, and other parts of Europe, to a mix of aid and UN agencies, universities, scholars, human rights and social organizations. The prominent scholar Professor Maxine Molyneux has said of CAWN’s publication that they are “useful for bridging practitioner and scholarly work and also are of high quality” (Interview 6 July 2011).

p r o J e C t e va l u at i o n

The independent final evaluation of the project highlighted some of the positive impacts that our work has helped to generate, including across

these key areas:

Gender: Hundreds of women in Honduras have been empowered over the five years; they now know their rights and can challenge the men who

attempt to dominate them.

Influencing opinion: Women have increased their capacity to influence opinion at a local level as well as national State institutions and at

international forums.

Capacity building: Women have acquired leadership and negotiating skills, and the capacity to speak up for their rights.

Networking: In 2011 CAWN continued to share experiences learned from out work in the region with a number of networks, such as the BOND

network for international development, Women in Development Europe (WIDE), and the UK Gender and Development Network.

Horizontal approach: The CAWN/CEM-H’s ways of working are exemplary, as they enhance a horizontal peer approach. CEM-H has been

inspired by CAWN’s shared management committee, and has adopted a tri-partite co-director approach, to date with positive results. It has also

fostered a share d involvement in decision-making and greater transparency in financial matters. Volunteers in CAWN expressed appreciation about

being included in CAWN’s discussions and felt valued: “I really liked the fact that CAWN is so horizontal, we are really listened to, my opinion is

really valued; this gives me confidence” (CAWN intern 8/7/2011).

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e n a b l i n g a C t i v i s t s : W o m e n ’ s r i g h t s , s o C i a l i n C l u s i o n a n d t h e m e d i a

Our most recent project, “Women’s rights, social inclusion and the media”, was launched in October 2011 in partnership with the Austria-based women’s organisation Frauensolidaritat.

Through this project we want to encourage women to make greater use of information technology for communication and the media to advocate for women’s rights, to support networking among women’s organisations and activists North and South, and to promote the human rights of women and women’s equality. We also aim to increase the understanding of women’s rights, globalisation and media among policy makers and the general public.

Funded by the European Commision, this project is focused on enabling and empowering women’s rights activists to leverage social media and lobby government to increase visibility and raise awareness of issues relating to the exploitation of women in order to trigger change. In doing so, the project organises activities such as conferences, training workshops on the use of alternative media and advocacy skills, and media-interventions (print, radio and film). We also carry out research and produce in-depth briefing papers and factsheets, and organise public events with women rights activists from Central America and Southern Africa.

C o n f e r e n C e a n d d i s C u s s i o n f o r u m s

Public meetings include workshops centred around different themes, such as: “The use of media in Nicaragua to advocate women’s rights”; “Trafficking and exploitation in Southern Africa: Stories from the ground” and “Global events: exploring the connections between women’s exploitations and the Olympics”. These workshops were part of our conference, “Images of exploited and trafficked women: the role of the media in women’s empowerment” on 27th April 2012 which was attended by over one hundred people, and brought together prominent policy-makers, NGOs and academics in the field to explore the effectiveness of current approaches to tackling these issues.

Other, more informal, public meetings were organised to provide advocates with a space to learn and discuss. On 22nd February 2012, for example, a guest from English Collective of Prostitutes introduced a discussion forum by explaining the links between trafficking of women and prostitution. The debate informed CAWN’s advocacy strategy to defend the rights of exploited and trafficked migrant women.On 26th June we hosted a second forum “The right to safe abortion in Central America”.

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2 0 t h a n n i v e r s a r y C e l e b r at i o nIn 2011 CAWN celebrated its 20 anniversary. For this special occasion we hosted an evening of talks and discussion with our guest speakers from Honduras, which was followed by a drinks reception at the Amnesty International Human Rights Action

Centre. A commemorative film celebrating the work and evolution of the organisation over the last two decades, was shown. If you want to learn more about our history and deeds take a look at the special edition of our newsletter launched

for the anniversary.

Conference plenary ‘Images of exploited and trafficked women’, London, 2012


Media training, group picture, London 2012

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a d v o C a C y a n d t r a i n i n g s e s s i o n s

In November 2011 we ran our first training session: “Fighting Back: Tackling violence against women through advocacy in Latin America and Africa”, in partnership with the University of London Institute for the Study of the Americas. It examined advocacy practice in Latin America and Africa. Talks were given by prominent academics and professionals, including Director of the Honduran Women’s Studies Centre, Mirta Kennedy; Acting Nation Coordinator for Women and Law in Southern Africa, Hope Kases; and Marilyn Thomson, Chair of the Central America Women’s Network, followed by a group discussion and debate.

A second session took place in February 2012: “Influence policies and practice that impact on women’s lives”. It explored power and empowerment, what we mean by advocacy and women’s strategies to address exploitation and issues of security, poverty and gender discrimination, and porvided trainees the tools and knowledge to design sound and effective campaigns. We provided attendees with advocacy toolkits to take-away to build on what they had learnt.

Our most recent training, held in June, “Practice your campaigning skills to lobby Parliament for the rights of exploited women”, aimed to educate activists about how the UK Parliament and lobbying works. We spoke about tracking bills and how to build awareness of supportive Members of Parliament and how fostering better relations with them can be key to a successful campaign. We also highlighted the different aspects of parliamentary work: questions, EDMs, debates, committees, law-making and processes and also work done at Parliament on trafficking exploitation of migrant women.

Training sessions are combined with planning and strategising meetings where trainees meet to put in practice the theory and skills gained in previous sessions, developing and executing a campaign.

C o m m u n i C at i o n s W o r k

CAWN has set up a blog, http://womensrightsandthemedia.wordpress.com as a focal point for all our activities and a space where activists, participants and those interested in the project can share their views, debate issues, find out about upcoming and past events, and access a wide range of resources including tool-kits and research documents.

Additionally, the newsletters we circulate every quarter provided our members and networks with news from the region as well as relevant events and publications. You can sign up to it by emailing us to [email protected].


Challenging Violence against Women in Honduras Field Visit, Honduras, 2011

s p e a k i n g o u t f o r W o m e n ’ s r i g h t s

CAWN joins calls for action to raise awareness of the situation of women in Central America and generally to support women’s causes, including marches and meetings. In an event organized by Oxfam UK in May 2011, ‘Making women’s voices count: from participation to power’, CAWN’s Co-Director, shared her reflections about successful strategies to include women’s voices in decision-making processes and learning from CAWN’s project experiences in Honduras. A successful strategy, Marilyn said, was to build capacity to improve service delivery for women affected by violence with local judiciary, judges and public prosecutors, the police, town council and local health ministry. You can watch here the full video.

There are many and exciting ways of getting involved with Central America Women’s Network. You can write a contribution for our quarterly newsletter, take part in our marches and protests, participate in our discussion forums with activists and experts, conduct research or help with translation. We are also open to suggestions. If any of these are of interest get in touch by sending us an email us at [email protected], or visit us at our new office, 44-48 Shepherdess Walk, London, N1 7JP (ring Virginia on 0207 324 5065 to arrange a meeting). You can also find us on Facebook - search for for the Central America Women’s Network.

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http://www.odi.org.uk/events/details.asp?id=2969&title=womens-voices-participation-power-gtf#audio-video


CAWN is welcomed by Honduran women, Honduras, 2011

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This report is funded by the European Commission.

The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.

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Download - Central ameriCa Women’s netWork aCtivity report Report - January 11, June 12.pdf · Central ameriCa Women’s netWork aCtivity report January 2011 to June 2012 Jan uary ... for

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