Mission
The International Indigenous Women's Forum (best known as FIMI, by its Spanish initials) is a network of Indigenous women leaders from Asia, Africa, and the Americas. FIMI's mission is to bring together Indigenous women activists, leaders, and human rights promoters from different parts of the world to coordinate agendas, build unity, develop leadership and advocacy skills, increase Indigenous women's role in international decision-making processes, and advance women's human rights.
FIMI's work aims to:
- Amplify Indigenous women's voices in the international arena;
- Strengthen local Indigenous women's organizations; and
- Promote collaboration between the Indigenous women's movement and the non-Indigenous global women's movement.
History
The seeds of FIMI were planted in 1995, at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women (often called Beijing, after its host city). More than 30,000 women attended the conference, in what was one of the most broadly participatory United Nations conferences ever held.
Indigenous women's organizations were some of the most active and effective participants at the Beijing conference, and in subsequent follow-up processes. As a result of Indigenous advocacy, the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA) specifically addressed the role of Indigenous women. Paragraph 32 of the PFA reads:
"The past decade has also witnessed a growing recognition of the distinct interests and concerns of indigenous women, whose identity, cultural traditions and forms of social organization enhance and strengthen the communities in which they live. Indigenous women often face barriers both as women and as members of indigenous communities."
The Beijing conference was one of the first times that Indigenous women were able to come together at the international level to articulate their needs as Indigenous women, distinct from those of Indigenous Peoples as a whole. At the end of the conference, Indigenous women issued their own declaration, firmly asserting their identity and their struggle as Indigenous women. In the declaration, Indigenous activists praised the PFA for recognizing poverty as a central barrier to realizing women's human rights, but challenged conference participants to take their conclusions one step further and "acknowledge that this poverty is caused by the same powerful nations and interests who have colonized us and are continuing to recolonize, homogenize, and impose their economic growth development model and monocultures on us."
Five years later, many of the participants in the Beijing conference gathered in New York for follow-up meetings, known as Beijing +5. This time, before returning to their homes around the world, Indigenous women decided to create an organization that could continue the international advocacy and organizing work that began there. The result was the International Indigenous Women’s Forum, or FIMI.