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Latin America Indigenous Women Hold
Independent Tribunal during UN Indigenous Forum - Call for Women's Justice
To puncture official indifference, Latin American indigenous women staged a tribunal on the sidelines of a U.N. permanent forum "to push back the invisibility" about what they suffer. "The justice system really doesn't work for us," says one.
"Indian,
short, black and savage," Narvaez told a gathering here last week, with
her voice breaking and her translator in tears. "They hit me on my head
too," said Narvaez, adding that neither the teachers nor anyone else at
the school has done anything to protect her.
Across the street from the United Nations Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues, taking place here from
May 12 through
May 23, indigenous women from
Narvaez
was one of a dozen indigenous women from
"One
of the main problems is the type of systems we have," Rose Cunningham
told Women's
eNews in an interview at the
Cunningham,
director of the Wangki
Tangni Women's Center on the north coast of
Rape,
sexual abuse, femicide, physical and verbal abuse and discrimination are some
of the forms of violence experienced by indigenous women in their own communities,
said the women at the forum.
The problems have systemic roots, the women added. In many countries, the
simultaneous influence of national legislation and customary or religious laws
often lead to tensions and complications in the implementation of the rights of
women and girls, according to a 2013 UN Women report. For instance, child marriage
may be well accepted by certain customs while national legislation opposes this
practice.
Drug Trafficking and War
Cunningham
added that drug trafficking in
In 2012 a
U.N. expert group found that gender-motivated killings, or femicide, were
particularly common among indigenous women and girls caught amid the armed
conflict in
In addition to
gender-based violence, indigenous women in Latin America continue to face large gaps in access
to higher education, health services and employment, according to a report
published in 2013 by the U.N.'s Economic Commission for Latin America and the
To break
through the official silence about what they experience, indigenous women are
using tribunals such as these ones "to push back the invisibility"
they are suffering in their own communities and countries.
"It
is an important mechanism to build a conscience and a historic memory of
femicides," said one speaker at the forum here, organized by a number of
local groups from the region in partnership with MADRE, an international women's
human rights organization based in New York, and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung,
a German nonprofit institution for civic education.
The
tribunal follows others in
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