WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

 

AWID - http://www.awid.org

Association for Women's Rights in Development


September 14, 2007


Movement Building: The International Indigenous Women's Forum

At the core of the struggle for women's rights is our capacity to organise,
mobilise and influence. This week, AWID interviewed Monica Aleman, founder
and coordinator of the International Indigenous Women's Forum, about their
strategies to facilitate change for Indigenous women, and how they build
and strengthen their capacity as a movement to advance women's human
rights.

By Rochelle Jones - AWID

Monica Aleman (MA): The International Indigenous Women's Forum (also known
as Foro Internacional de Mujeres Indígenas or FIMI) 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 works to ensure that the perspectives, recommendations, and
methodologies of Indigenous women who work within their communities are
reflected in international human rights discussions and processes, and to
infuse human rights principles into the work of Indigenous organizations in
local settings. FIMI conducts capacity-building trainings to strengthen
local Indigenous women's leadership, and collaboration between local
women's movements. And FIMI strives to advance a dialogue between different
movements, including the global women's movement and the Indigenous women's
rights movement, with the aim of advancing human rights for all people.

The Beijing Conference in 1995 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. Recognising the need for an organisation that could
continue the international advocacy and organising work that began at the
first Beijing Conference, FIMI was conceived by Tarcila Rivera, Lucy
Mulenkei, Lea MacKenzie, and Bernice See at the 1999 meeting in Lima of the
Continental Network of Indigenous Women. FIMI was then formalised and its
steering committee was established to organise the first Indigenous women's
forum in New York at the Beijing+5 Conference in 2000, under the leadership
of the Assembly of First Nations. The members of the steering committee are
representatives from Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Following Beijing+5, FIMI's mandate was to participate in United Nations
conferences and to organise the second forum of Indigenous women in 2005.
FIMI participated in Beijing+10, organising a preparatory Indigenous
women's conference for the UN Conference. This gathering helped Indigenous
women integrate agendas, strengthen unity, further develop leadership and
advocacy skills, and learn to increase participation in decision-making
processes related to projects, programs, policies, and laws from the local
and national levels to the international arena. FIMI thus became a network
whose purpose is to strengthen Indigenous women's organisations; increase
their participation and visibility in the international arena; and build
capacity.

AWID: How was the agenda of FIMI developed, and how did you build
alliances?

MA: The starting point of FIMI's agenda are the unmet needs of Indigenous
women in communities around the world.  Because FIMI is comprised of
Indigenous women who work at the community, national, regional, and
international levels, the organisation is well situated to understand—and
impact—the ways that policies in the international arena affect women in
communities; and the ways that community-based organising can be
strategised to affect policies at the national and international levels.

Based on that understanding, FIMI set out to create and expand networks
that operate in different arenas, but can coordinate efforts to maximise
their effectiveness. To realise that aim, FIMI prioritised building
alliances across various sectors. In particular, we have focused on
organising inter-movement dialogues between Indigenous women and feminists.
For example, in 2005, FIMI organised an event entitled, 'Indigenous Women's
Visions of an Inclusive Feminism" at the AWID International Forum on Women
and Development in Bangkok, Thailand. The purpose of the event was to
develop strategies to incorporate Indigenous feminism into Indigenous
women's networks and into Indigenous Peoples' struggles for collective
rights, and to incorporate Indigenous women's feminist perspectives into
the international women's movement.

AWID: What are some of the strategies used to achieve FIMI's goals?

MA: FIMI Strategies include:

Human Rights Trainings and Capacity-Building:
Through training and human-resource building, FIMI aims to support
Indigenous women in their professional growth and development, helping
Indigenous women to improve communication with their constituents at the
local and national levels and to acquire the skills they need to influence
social, cultural, political and economic debates in the regional and
international arenas.

Alliance Building:
Much of FIMI's work is situated at the cross-roads of the international
Indigenous movement, the global women's movement, and the broader human
rights movement. An important part of FIMI's strategy, therefore, is to
promote collaboration between people working in these related arenas.
Specifically, FIMI is working to make the feminist movement more inclusive,
and to develop a sustainable development agenda that can be adopted by the
global women's human rights movement.

International Advocacy:
FIMI works to amplify and unite Indigenous women's voices in the
international arena. FIMI helps Indigenous women activists effectively
confront the tremendous hurdles they face in their struggle to make their
voices heard, and ensure recognition of the legitimacy of their demands,
respect for their rights, and implementation of long-awaited changes.

AWID: How does FIMI link to and influence other women's movements -
particularly non-indigenous women's movements and the larger women's rights
agenda?

MA: An important part of FIMI's strategy is to promote collaboration
between the Indigenous women's movement and the non-Indigenous global
women's movement. Specifically, FIMI is working to make the feminist
movement more inclusive, and to develop a sustainable development agenda
that can be adopted by the global women's human rights movement.

Today, one of the biggest challenges facing the feminist movement is the
creation of a plural feminist identity that can integrate the vision of
Indigenous women. This is necessary if the feminist movement is to discard
its homogenised version of struggle which, at times, repeats the same
patterns of discrimination and cultural degradation that the State has
inflicted on Indigenous Peoples and, in particular, Indigenous women.

Any inclusive feminist analysis must recognize that present-day
inequality—not only social and economic, but also ethnic—has its foundation
in paradigms imposed during the colonial era. These paradigms continue to
function today in globalised social systems that homogenise and, thus,
re-veil the cultural and linguistic diversity of Indigenous Peoples.

FIMI is working within the global women's human rights movement in an
attempt to make it more sensitive to and reflective of cultural, racial,
and economic diversity among women and, in particular, to incorporate the
views of Indigenous women.

AWID: What are some of the major successes of FIMI to date, and can you
think of any challenges that FIMI needs to overcome to achieve its
objectives?

Successes:

Asserting Indigenous Women's Priorities at the UN: Last year, FIMI played a
leadership role in a series of meetings with various UN Agencies in Mexico
City. As a result, in Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala and Paraguay, UNIFEM is
implementing a program that aims to include gender equality and racial and
ethnic perspectives in policies to reduce persistent inequality in Latin
America. Thanks to FIMI's advocacy, UNIFEM Mexico is in a stronger position
to create programs that reflect the concerns of Indigenous women.
 
FIMI Report on Violence against Indigenous Women: On October 17, 2006,
FIMI/IIWF released a report to the United Nations entitled, MAIRIN IWANKA
RAYA: Indigenous Women Stand against Violence. The report contributes to
the development of a human rights discourse capable of generating concrete,
effective strategies to combat violence against Indigenous women, and to
bridge persistent gaps between the global women's movement and the
international Indigenous movement by putting forward an Indigenous
conception of gendered violence.

Inter-movement dialogues: In November 2006, FIMI and one of our partner
organizations, MULABI (Grupo de Trabajo Latinoamericano en Derechos
Sexuales/ Latin American Working Group on Sexual Rights) facilitated a
roundtable discussion between members of the sexual rights and Indigenous
women's movements in Latin America. Together, we will use the transcript of
the dialogue and the insights we gained from one another to help shape the
Convention on Sexual and Reproductive Rights in the Americas (an initiative
being advanced by the Latin American sexual rights movement and others),
incorporating the visions, needs, and contributions of Indigenous women
into the discussion of sexual and reproductive rights.

FIMI Trainings: In 2006, FIMI organised a training workshop on violence
against Indigenous women in India. The workshop was conducted in a group
discussion and asked questions such as: what is Human Security? Why are
Indigenous Peoples especially vulnerable to having their human security
denied? Are Indigenous communities protected by the state? What role have
state and UN peacekeeping troops played in Indigenous security? What is
violence against women? How does the UN definition of violence against
women compare? What is left out? What are some strategies to combat
violence against Indigenous women? There were approximately 30 Indigenous
women participants in the training, as well as women from local and
non-governmental organizations.

Challenges:

FIMI's greatest challenges reflect the systematic violations of Indigenous
women's rights that the organization was created to confront. The many
forms of gender discrimination that Indigenous women face within their
families and communities and the systematic violations of Indigenous
Peoples' collective rights by state and corporate actors combine in the
lives of Indigenous women to form very serious barriers to the enjoyment of
their basic rights.

For example, in many communities around the world, Indigenous women have
been denied the right to basic education. Illiteracy is a tremendous
barrier to effective political organising, as well as a human rights
violation in itself. One of our greatest challenges, then, is building the
capacity of Indigenous women to raise their voices in their communities and
in society at large. On the whole, Indigenous women are still a long way
from having access to the education, training, technology, and funding that
we need to achieve our objectives.

For more information about FIMI, please visit
http://www.indigenouswomensforum.org/

(*) Mónica Alemán is a founder and current coordinator of the International
Indigenous Women's Forum (FIMI). Ms. Alemán is an Indigenous Miskita from
Nicaragua who was among the planners and organisers of the International
Youth Summit at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR)
in Durban in September 2001.  She was instrumental in establishing a
Special Unit for Youth within the UN Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights and Advocating for the development of a policy in this entity
to mainstream youth issues. She also serves as MADRE's Program Director and
International Advocacy Coordinator.

________________________________________________





================================================================
To leave the list, send your request by email to: wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.