Women's Rights and Gender Justice

By Beverly Bell
March 8, 2013

On this International Women's Day, we rerun a 2005 piece on one of our greatest heroines, Marie Simone Alexandre. Though she died eight years ago, her life and message remain as powerful and inspirational today as any we know. 

"It was thanks to God and Sister Simone." I heard this over and over in the mid-1990s as I was interviewing rape survivors in one of Port-au-Prince's shantytowns. The women were battling the devastating effects of rape, employed as a weapon of war by one in a decades-long series of U.S.-backed regimes.[i] My question to these women, which so often invoked Simone's name, was "From where have you found the strength to go on?"

“We, women from more than 40 countries, from different indigenous peoples of Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania, have gathered together to participate in the creation of a new right: the right to food sovereignty. We reaffirm our will to act to change the capitalist and patriarchal world which puts the interests of the market before the rights of people. We will find the energy to establish our right to food sovereignty, carrier of hope in constructing another world. We will carry this message to women all over the world.”

“Over a half-century ago, Mahatma Gandhi led a multitude of Indians to the sea to make salt in defiance of the British Empire’s monopoly on this resource critical to people’s diet. The action catalyzed the fragmented movement for Indian independence and was the beginning of the end for Britain’s rule over India. The act of ‘making salt’ has since been repeated many times in many forms by people’s movements seeking liberation, justice and sovereignty: César Chávez, Nelson Mandela, and the Zapatistas are just a few of the most prominent examples. Our food movement – one that spans the globe – seeks food sovereignty from the monopolies that dominate our food systems, with the complicity of our governments. We are powerful, creative, committed and diverse. It is our time to make salt.”

By Beverly Bell
January 7, 2013

In the high desert outside Taos, New Mexico, I drove down a dirt road that parallels the Rio Grande and saw the thick haze of a forest fire. To see the spectacle, I quickly reversed my planned course and drove as close as I was able. Across a long line of mountains, red flames flicked up like snake’s tongues amongst dense black ropes of smoke. Where the blaze had worn down, thinner smoke wisps arose above charred, black land.

Re-posted from Truthout.

Sunday, 23 December 2012 

By Meena Jagannath, AlterNet | News Analysis

What is the point of doing any work in Haiti? After all, the country is a mess and it’s hard to shake that habit. And its reputation.

Athena Kolbe and Robert Muggah’s December 9 New York Times op-ed illustrates in detail the post-rape reality for a survivor of sexual violence in Haiti – a series of misfortunes that encapsulate all of Haiti’s failings in responding to rape. Yet the authors make no mention of the hard work of many groups that have been trying to improve the country's reputation.

Cross-Referenced from potofi.org

A comprehensive field progress report, “Beyond Shock: Charting the Post-Quake Landscape of Sexual Violence in Haiti – Progress, Challenge and Emerging Trends,’ is being presented today in Haiti by the PotoFanm+Fi Haiti post-quake coalition (Women and Girls Pillar inKreyol). The Beyond Shock report charts advances in addressing gender-based violence (GBV) and providing services to sexual violence victims across key sectors of the reconstruction. It provides updates from over 60 agencies and field providers, and offers profiles of grassroots leaders. It was written by author and journalist Anne-christine d’Adesky and includes a foreword by Haitian author Edwidge Danticat and a visual essay on Girls in Haiti by photographer Nadia Todres.

The report is attached in pdf form at the bottom of this article. 

By Beverly Bell
November 1, 2012

While all eyes and ears are trained on the elections, Woody Guthrie, whose 100^th birthday we celebrate this year, offers up another perspective on politics. In his poem “This Is Our Country,” he wrote, “I seen the pretty and I seen the ugly and it was because I knew the pretty part that I wanted to change the ugly part. Because I hated the dirty part that I knew how to feel the love for the cleaner part.”

Cross-posted from grassrootsonline.org

By Sara Mersha 

On May 1 of this year, my colleague Saulo Araujo (Program Coordinator for Latin America) and I spent the day with Rafael Alegría, a leader of the Vía Campesina based in Honduras.  The video below offers some of his reflections.

Cross-posted from CNN 

By Allie Torgan

Malya Villard-Appolon is a rape survivor who co-founded KOFAVIV, an organization that helps victims of sexual violence in Haiti. She is a top 10 nominee for CNN's 2012 Heroes award. 

From our friends at EcoViva: