WUNRN
By Milagros Salazar
|
CUZCO,
Peru, Nov 4, 2009 (IPS) - For tourists and other visitors,
Ten years
ago, a group of
"We
used to keep our heads down, but now we’re doing something about it. It’s never
too late to start," Elsa Mamani, one of the activists, told IPS.
Mamani is a
shy woman, has been all her life. So it’s even more surprising that at 52 she
would become the heart of CODECC (Coordinadora Departamental de Defensorías
Comunitarias
CODECC works
in coordination with the justice system and state authorities, but its 500
members - mostly women - are volunteers from the communities themselves who are
trained to help victims in the difficult step of reporting the abuse and
supporting them through the whole legal process.
The
organisation currently has a total of 65 defenders units operating in six
provinces, with at least 25 percent male volunteers.
The
community defenders units receive battered women and accompany them to the
police and the courts to file complaints. The victims are better able to relate
to these women defenders, who are not much different from themselves and speak
the same language, and the advocates are in turn greatly empowered. "We’re
there for the entire process; we don’t leave them on their own until they get
justice," Mamani explained.
Drawing on a
law that addresses family violence and the Children and Adolescent Code, the
organisation also provides legal and psychological aid through an agreement
with a local university and partner institutions.
CODECC is an
independent organisation with direct financing from international aid, although
it forms part of a larger joint project implemented by the non-governmental
Institute for Legal Counselling (IDL) and the Bartolomé de las Casas Centre.
"I used
to be an ordinary housewife, afraid of my own shadow," said Mamani, who is
now president of CODECC, before listing all the achievements of the
organisation in a region where abuse of women is commonplace, especially in
rural and marginalised indigenous areas.
World Bank
studies reveal that
Data from
From 2001 to
2005, over 14,000 reports of abuse against women were filed with the
Extrapolating
from the number of complaints, however, it is estimated that 70 percent of all
women in the region have suffered physical abuse and nearly 47 percent have
been victims of sexual violence.
From January
to May 2009, the government-run Emergency Centres for Women - multidisciplinary
facilities that provide free, specialised assistance, guidance and prevention
services for victims of domestic and sexual violence - registered 1,269 cases
of violence against women in the department of Cuzco, which has a population of
1.2 million, with almost a third living in the capital.
Estimates by
this division of the Ministry of Women and Social Development place
gender-based violence levels at 10 percentage points or more above the national
average.
Stepping out
of the shadows
Mamani was
one of those women who didn’t dare tell anybody about the hell she was living
at home. Then one day she was invited to participate in a local mothers’
committee organised under the Cup of Milk initiative, a nationwide government
programme aimed at providing a nutritional supplement to children under six and
pregnant women. "I started getting more and more involved, and eventually
I became district coordinator," she said.
That was in
1999. That same year she was asked to participate in a workshop on women and
violence, which became the seed that would give rise to the community defenders
units, initially formed in slums around the capital.
CODECC’s
work is recognised and backed by the Ministry of Women and Social Development,
and in its ten years of work it has successfully introduced several projects in
the local participatory budgets of the provinces where it operates, in addition
to implementing a departmental plan to improve skills and infrastructure in
community defenders offices.
Through
alliances with institutions and women’s organisations, it has also been able to
press the
In 2006, the
organisation received the social innovation award by the Economic Commission
for
Two years
later, CODECC obtained a 32,000-dollar grant from the National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) - a Washington D.C-based non-profit funded by the U.S. Congress
- for a project to strengthen institutional capacity and effectively advocate
for women’s and children’s rights. In 2009, NED again provided a similar grant.
"Now
that they’ve expanded, they want to strengthen themselves and de-centralise.
Their aim is to obtain support from
But progress
has been far from smooth, and it hasn’t been easy for the women volunteers to
reconcile their family responsibilities with their advocacy work.
Nothing
comes without effort
"My
husband would push me to choose between 'my friends' and him, telling me not to
bother to come home. We’ve achieved a lot, but for many of us the price has
been very high, because it’s cost us our jobs," Mamani recalled,
describing her own case as one illustration.
Mamani
admits she spends 80 percent of her time working at CODECC, but that she tries
not to neglect her duties as wife, mother and grandmother.
"I’m
probably better off than other women now, because I have my own business, which
allows me to bring money home and I don’t neglect my obligations. My husband
understands now, and my in-laws give me a hand because they see how hard I
work," she added.
But
sacrificing family time is only one side of the difficulties these women
defenders deal with. Mamani also says that helping victims of violence is hard
in itself because they often face tragic situations.
"I
remember one case: a young deaf woman who came to us all beat up and bloody. I
couldn’t find the way for her to tell me what had happened. I felt utterly
helpless. That case has stayed with me," Mamani said.
"After
I’d tried just about everything to communicate with her and find out what had
happened, I burst into tears," she said. Finally with the help of a
Catholic priest they were able to get through and help her.
In many
cases, the defenders have also been "threatened by aggressors. The police
are not very sympathetic, and they’ll just write anything they want in the
report. If a woman is beaten by her husband, they sometimes write up the report
as if it were a case of mutual physical aggression," she said.
According to
Vergara, two aspects need to be taken into account to understand the importance
of CODECC’s work: culture and gender.
"There
are cultural aspects working against the defence of women’s rights, and it’s
particularly hard for their rights to be accepted by the community and the
state. Many people are not comfortable with women being treated as equals. It’s
ok for women to help out, but when they start to voice different opinions, then
they become a problem," she said.
One of the
challenges the organisation faces is in strengthening links with other justice
system operators, like justices of the peace and prosecutors, in the areas it
works in, towards incorporating an intercultural, civil rights and gender
equity approach.
"CODECC
offers us an opportunity to better ourselves, to open up new spaces, give our
opinions and say what we feel. This helps us recover our self-esteem,"
Mamani concluded. For her, that’s the only way that
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