International Delegation Amplifies Honduran Women's Voices

TEGUCIGALPA – JASS (Just Associates) announced that an international delegation arrived in Honduras Monday for a week-long women’s rights watch. The delegation is conducting a local and virtual Observatorio (Feminist Transformation Watch) from August 17 to 21 to shed light on women's rights violations occurring under the de facto regime that overthrew the democratically elected president in a coup d'etat on June 28th.

The delegation comprises representatives of JASS, Honduran Feminists in Resistance, Las Petateras, Radio Feminista, Nobel Women’s Initiative, and the Consortium for Parliamentary Dialogue and Equality, and includes human rights activists, researchers, legal experts and journalists from Central America, Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The purpose of the mission is to gather information, to denounce the coup, and to increase awareness of the impact of the crisis from the perspective of women.

Honduran women continue at the frontlines of pro-democracy actions and resistance against the de facto regime that ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Women’s organizations are under surveillance and members’ lives continue to be threatened as they practise non-violent resistance to the repression and demand a return to the rule of law, an end to violence, and respect for human rights.

A central imperative for democracy is that the perspectives and voices of Honduran women must be included in the resolution to the current crisis in that country. Systematic violations of women’s rights can be traced back to the 1980s dictatorships, with the cycle of violence and oppression continuing today within a culture of impunity. In the current crisis of ruptured democracy, these systematic violations and abuses have increased. Without a commitment to breaking the impunity, there can be no sustainable democratic resolution in Honduras.

To document the human rights violations against Honduran women that have occurred since the coup on June 28th, the delegation is conducting interviews and collecting testimonials from Honduran women and organizations, and engaging in dialogue with feminists and other Honduran women about their strategies of resistance and their actions in response to the coup. This information will be disseminated through national, regional, and international media.

For more information visit http://www.justassociates.org/actions/honduras_action_coup.html.

Las Petateras at the Feminist Forum in Mexico City

JASS and Las Petateras are participating actively in the 11th Feminist Forum in Mexico City. The 6th Feminist Transformation Watch began with Radio Petatera, a radio program broadcast on Feminist International Radio Endeavor (FIRE). Guests to the show included a transexual woman who sparked an intense debate about the necessity of feminist spaces to be inclusive of all women, regardless of weather or not they were born into female bodies. Today´s program brought up issues of indigenous women´s movements as well as the inclusion of women with disabilities in feminist spaces, with two visually impaired women interviewed during the program. JASS and Las Petateras also convened a workshop on Technology for Feminist Movements, delivered to a packed audience, that provoked a lively and intense discussion about the use of new media tools for organizing and building women´s movements. Las Petateras held a space for the Feminist Transformation Watch were diverse women were able to share their stories about how they came to feminism and how they cross the line in their personal lives. The session produced a very intimate and open space for sharing and connecting among us that is an often overlooked and vital part of our movement building. The feminist movement, historically fractured and divided, needs more spaces like these for listening to each other and understanding each other in order to build upon our differences and create a stronger and more unified movement.