One of the goals of the campaign is to increase the number of women who understand their rights and can effectively defend them as Adelina Ortiz did. To help educate the next generation, the campaign developed a program for teachers and schoolchildren in 2007 that teaches young people about how to prevent gender violence and what to do if they are attacked.
"We used to talk about gender equity here," says Patricia Jovel. "But never gender violence." Jovel is the director of a school participating in this new initiative in El Progreso, a village perched on the impossibly steep Quetzaltepeque volcano outside San Salvador. The school, where 850 students from 6 to 16 years old attend classes in two half-day groups, is a collection of six cinderblock classrooms topped by metal sheet roofing on either side of a terraced concrete courtyard sloping down the mountainside. It is a beehive of activity after classes, as without any level area for a playground, the students play tag around the central courtyard in the brisk mountain air. Jovel says the young women who sometimes have to walk home in the dark after school are now better equipped to fend off the young men offering drinks and cigarettes to them. "Thank God there have been no rapes," she says.
The students have learned their lessons well: Karla Sanchez, 15, says it is a matter of her basic rights. "Everyone must respect our rights as children, girls, youth. We all have the same rights, and no one can violate them. And if something should happen, we know we can tell our parents, our teachers, or adults we trust. They are here to help us," she explains patiently. And if these people can't help, she knows where to go. She lists a number of institutions where she can turn for protection: the Human Rights Office; the National Police; and the Salvadoran Institute for the Advancement of Women, known as ISDEMU. As she leaves, Sanchez articulates one essential idea about reporting gender violence: "We should not be afraid of what people say."
In 2007, this pilot project in 53 schools exposed 25,000 students to the key messages of the campaign and trained 1,000 students and 1,000 teachers. The teachers now have incorporated violence prevention into their curriculum, and they work with the trained students. The pilot was supported by the Ministry of Education and was such a success that the minister decided to incorporate it into the public school curriculum nationwide.
Sustained pressure to change societal attitudes toward women is a slow process. One effective way to question long-held ideas and beliefs is to educate those entrusted with defending the rights of women, protecting them in the community, and helping them if they are attacked or injured. These include public officials like police officers, judges, public health officials and doctors, and social workers. The campaign organized a formal training program at the University of Central America (UCA) in 2005, and 45 people attended.
Maritza de Vasquez, a psychologist at the family court in the city of San Marcos, just outside San Salvador, says this training has helped her assist the many women who come through her office. De Vasquez says that women are hearing the messages of the campaign and are taking action to protect themselves. In the steady stream of domestic violence and divorce cases she sees, there is a different attitude. "Women take the opportunity to come here and talk about their situation they come here right away to denounce it," she says. "They are expressing their rights more openly now."
Back in Ahuachapan, Ortiz grows corn and raises sheep to support her children and grandchildren. He husband is in jail awaiting a hearing. "I'd rather see him in prison than anywhere else," Ortiz says. It was her participation in a sheep-raising program run by one of Oxfam America's partners, Association of Salvadoran Agriculturalists (AGROSAL), that exposed Ortiz to the human rights training that helped her defend her own life and protect her children. She points out that in all her training to become a health worker, no one ever educated her about domestic violence or how to prevent it. "The training taught me that women have rights and people are obligated to respect them," Ortiz says. "This made me act, to look for help, and thank God I found it."
]]>The Izabal region, which is located in northeastern Guatemala, along the borders of Belize and Honduras, is one of the country's richest in natural resources. It is home to the country's largest lake—Lake Izabal—which has a unique ecosystem that includes hundreds of animal species, some of which are endangered. The people who live around the lake give it a rich cultural mix—they are ladinos, Garifuna and Maya Q'eq'chi indigenous people. Their livelihood is based on fishing, planting corn, beans and cardamom, and ecotourism. The region's unique resources give it great potential for sustainable development.
Among the natural resources in the area are oil, gold, silver and nickel. The government has granted mining concession to foreign companies, including the Guatemalan Nickel Corporation (known as CGN in Spanish), which is a subsidiary of Skye Resources of Canada. CGN received a license to mine nickel in Izabal in 2005 and will begin operations in 2008. CGN has wrongly accused Eloyda Mejia and other members of ASALI of squatting on company property.
Critics of the mining project say it endangers the abundant natural resources in the region and offers little in the way of local development because companies pay only one percent of their profits in royalties and only half of that—0.5 percent—goes to the municipality where the mine is located.
ASALI was created to defend the lake, its surrounding areas, and its indigenous culture. In 2002, ASALI was successful in its bid cancel a license to drill for oil under the lake. Since then it has been educating and informing the local population about the consequences and problems that mining can cause in the region and about the alternatives for sustainable development that existing natural resources can provide. Oxfam America had been helping to fund the work of ASALI since 2006.
The case of Eloyda Mejia and ASALI are not isolated incidents. In recent years, those who have opposed mining in their communities—principally indigenous communities—have received threats and suffered acts of repression. In January of 2007, there were incidents in numerous communities in Izabal in which people were driven from their homes or in which their homes were destroyed by security forces and police.
"Communities and local organizations, which in Guatemala are largely indigenous, should have the right to express whether they are in favor or against mining, based on objective information about its probable impact, without suffering retaliation," said Oxfam America's program officer Andres McKinley. "These opinions should be taken into account by the government and the mining companies."
]]>Dr. Almendares is a renowned defender of human rights and the environment. He has a long trajectory of work in the poorest communities of his country, providing people with free health care, organizing them, and passing on his knowledge. In his academic career, he has directed research at prestigious universities and institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and the Cardiovascular Research Institute in San Francisco. In his own country, he has dedicated himself to the sciences, first as a professor at the Medical School, later as its dean, and eventually as rector of the Autonomous National University of Honduras.
After the award ceremony we spoke with Dr. Almendares:
What does it mean to you to be nominated and then elected for this prize from InterAction?
I accepted this recognition as a noble and generous act by the organizations in the United States, and also as an act of solidarity with the people we are working with to build a better world that is more respectful of human rights and environmental justice. This honor has been a great act of moral support for me in the face of the all the risks we take in order to defend the life and dignity of human beings and to provide for a great love of humanity and our planet earth.
What inspired you to study medicine?
My greatest inspiration was my mother. I call it the theology of dreams. When my mother was pregnant she dreamed she was in paradise and that I worked with plants, the environment, and serving humanity. I come from a poor family. We lived in a poor neighborhood plagued with alcoholism, prostitution, and violence. Thanks to my mother's advice, I didn't get involved in all that. She never physically or psychologically abused me and she taught me a culture of non-violence. But it was a struggle to make it out of that environment. When I was in college sometimes I went hungry. I was malnourished and anemic. When I it was my turn to spend six months in bed, I learned what it meant to be a patient, and that as a doctor, one must be humble. When I graduated from the university with a degree in medicine, I had three callings: to work on behalf of the poor, to educate, and to dedicate myself to science.
These callings led you to establish various projects aimed at improving people's lives...
For many years we have run a clinic for poor people where we provide free medical attention. Mostly we work with the urban poor residents of Tegucigalpa and with indigenous people in some of the most remote communities in the country, where doctors rarely venture. In addition to providing medical attention, we do organizing work. For example, we work with 26 communities in the Tegucigalpa urban areas. We organized the women in these communities into a committee called the Honduran Committee for Peace. Now they have family gardens. Also, with the support of a Canadian organization, we have constructed more than 200 tanks to store the water that they get only once a month. We held natural medicine workshops to teach women how to treat common illnesses themselves. For example, chamomile, mint, and linden flower teas, and massage techniques, can relieve stress and tension. We have taught them how to treat a cough or diarrhea. We are also concerned about the environment and founded the Madre Tierra [Mother Earth] movement. Now we are working on a reforestation project. We asked the kids in the program how many trees they would like to plant. The told us one million trees. So, with the dream of planting a million trees, we are working with them in the poorest neighborhoods. We have already planted more than 15,000 trees and within this movement we have created a school of sorts, where kids are learning how to care for the environment and their health.
How is your work related to Oxfam America's work?
Through our work with Madre Tierra, we have been involved with Oxfam on the issue of mining. Madre Tierra has been studying the health impacts of heavy metals. We have been conducting research for five years in the Siria Valley region of Honduras, where there is a large mine. With the help of a Harvard student, we were able to get baseline data on the health conditions in the community prior to the mine, in order to make a before and after comparison. We go to the communities to conduct research and clinical exams and what we have noticed, interestingly, is that it is mostly the women who are ill, not the men who work in the mines. The women use the water often, to cook, clean, and wash clothes. We have seen many health problems in their skin, eyes, and nervous and respiratory systems. Oxfam America has helped a lot by providing us with information on technical and ethical issues. It has worked on a broad scale in many different areas.
In all these years that you have spent working with the poorest of the poor, have you seen any changes in the people, their situation or policies?
Yes, we have seen changes. The people have a better perception of their situation; they are more aware. This allows them to dissent and make demands of the authorities if they disagree with decisions they make. We also work in human rights. We have a center for torture victims and violence prevention, inspired by the teachings of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Francisco Morazán [Morazán, a Honduran politician and defender of democracy, was the last president of the Federal Republic of Central America in the mid-1800s]. We have been able to promote a message of non-violence with government institutions, which we see as directly related to the issue of health. We advocated for the government to incorporate mental health issues in its human rights agenda and women's rights into the health agenda. The government also approved and ratified The United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Your work presents you with some of the toughest situations in your country. What motivates you to keep going?
Despite it all, I always maintain great optimism and a love for the earth. I appreciate the cooperation from the international community. I have found great human beings in all the continents: Africa, Europe, Asia, and America. I am very grateful for this. We must always have love and compassion among us and with all that we do.
]]>Although 83.3 percent of the population considers rape to be a crime, 16.7 percent still denies it. This is an alarmingly high percentage which is then reflected in the high rate of rapes. In its 2005 report on crimes (through November), the Attorney General's office reported 2,296 registered cases of rape, sexual aggression and statutory rape. 40.2 percent of the people polled affirm that the place where these types of crimes most often take place is within the home—a place believed to be among the safest for women, boys and girls—and that the person who most often commits the crime is the step father (58.3 percent).
If the previous information sounds alarming, the panorama gets even worse. Seventy percent of those polled believe that the National Civilian Police (PNC) shows little interest in the rape cases that are presented to them, and 20 percent think the PNC could care less. At the same time, the PNC is one of the agencies where people most often go to denounce an act of violence. This was shown by another study done by the Human Rights Ombudswoman's office, which was also supported by Oxfam America.
This study, in addition to asking about the treatment that women receive in the different institutions of the State, also investigated the situation of gender violence within these very institutions. As well as a high rate of sexual harassment, there is a high degree of discrimination in the way women are treated and in opportunities that exist for them. Furthermore, the study reveals salary inequality between men and women. It highlights that although most of the women have a university degree, they usually don't denounce sexual harassment for fear of losing their job or other acts of revenge. Harassers operate with an alarming degree of impunity. In only 3 percent of the cases where harassment was denounced were the perpetrators fired or transferred.
The Human Rights Ombudswoman's Office convened many public functionaries from the aforementioned offices in order to share the results and said they would follow up.
]]>Rodolfo Pocop, the National Coordinator for the National Indigenous and Peasant Council (CONIC), says that despite this violent history, the indigenous people of Guatemala are well-organized, and mobilizing to protect their culture and defend their rights and ancestral lands.He feels their next big challenge is surviving in the "Free Trade" economy in the Americas. The number one concern: international mining projects, which Pocop saysis a significant threat to Mayan lands and culture. In a talk with Oxfam America staff in Guatemala, Pocop explains indigenous concerns about mining and indigenous lands and rights.
"Our ancestors taught us to love mother earth and live in harmony with all natural beings. All our political, economic, and social institutions are part of this heritage. This is the base on which we construct the future. The valleys, the plains, the mountains, the deserts, the oceans, the rivers, the condor, the eagle, the hummingbird, the puma, the jaguar—they are all witness to our collective systems of living, based on sustainability of humans and the environment.
We were kicked off our original lands by the colonizers, and then by our governments. We were divided in order to guarantee political control and pushed onto inhospitable lands. We are now trying to manage these lands by the conservation of biodiversity and natural resources. This started in 1492 and continued through the 19th century. In 1954, the best, most productive indigenous lands were passed to private hands, like the banana companies. Big areas now grow cotton and sugar cane; the best lands are for coffee production. In 1954, our culture and our collective ways of living were destroyed, and collective property was abolished.
[From 1960] until 1996, there was an armed conflict. Part of the reason for this was the concentration of wealth in the hands of no more than 30 families. They had all the economic and political power and social control over the country. Seventy percent of the population, the indigenous people, did not even have basic legal rights. We did not get any benefits from the government, we were just used as cheap labor, almost slaves or indentured servants. During the 36 years of armed conflict, 83 percent of the victims were among the indigenous Mayan people.
In Guatemala we have a republican constitution, almost a literal copy of the US Constitution. Only in articles 66 to 70 are indigenous people mentioned. We are seen as resources and folklore. Our fundamental rights are not recognized.
Discrimination is structural, it comes from the government, and it is replicated in the educational system. It teaches more about other cultures than our own. And for that reason, when we speak our own language and wear our traditional clothing, they say that we are inferior to those who are not Mayan. They assume that other peoples' culture is superior to that which is here.
If the state structure discriminates against indigenous people, then this is converted into exclusion from development. These last four years we have seen an example of this exclusion : 85 percent of the national budget was spent in the urban areas; 15 percent was for rural areas. But not even this amount reached the countryside due to high levels of corruption and misuse of funds.
The social fabric of indigenous communities has been torn. If we have survived for 500 years, it is not just chance. It is because our grandmothers and grandfathers have taught us to survive by growing crops without chemical fertilizer, and to live together, in solidarity, in harmony between humans, nature, Mother Earth, the birds, and animals."
"Before the first conquerors came, the Maya worked with gold, and silver, and other metals. They used these resources, but for personal and domestic usage. It was not for export. Now the extraction of metals comes with a cost. It is breaking the harmony between families and nature.
We are concerned about mining, and the way it is done, with open pits. Cyanide is highly toxic for humans.
We also can't understand why these companies don't respect something very important and fundamental to our survival: our own perspective and spirituality. Ours is not any old religion. Our spirituality is precisely the harmony between humans, Mother Earth, space, and nature. When we see the respect to Mother Earth is lost, we feel our roots are touched. And that is what is taken from us. It is like an extermination of our cultural identity, a moral extermination of our historical memory, of our grandmothers and grandfathers and what they have contributed to the development of humanity. This is the harmony of the Maya.
A whole system of life and culture is being destroyed. Scientific data and analysis show one impact, on nature, but to us it is deeper. We feel like this kind of mining represents a destruction of life and culture. So we are denouncing this new system of development, because it is passing over our right to be consulted, which is protected by the International Labor Organization Convention No. 169.
The benefit of mining to Guatemala is about one percent of the earnings generated, and only about half of one percent is for the municipality. So after all the millions and millions are taken out, half of one percent is nothing. And after they are done, they will leave our lands and they will be no longer useful for agriculture.
In the case of the Marlin mine, they project 109,000 ounces of gold and silver. With this comes the destruction of 10,000 hectares of land. There will be a lot of Mayan communities unable to survive into the future.
Our struggle going forward as indigenous people directly affected by mining is based on three principles: we will keep struggling so that our cultural rights as indigenous peoples are recognized; under no conditions will we negotiate with the government or companies the principles of lands and territories—we have a territory, and this should be respected; and we have the freedom of self determination about our lands and territories and their resources."
"We do not have a formal mining code that reflects our world view. Our ministry of energy and mines does not recognize that we have a right to be consulted each time they want to take a product out of our territory. Our government does not take into consideration the priorities of the indigenous people. It does not know about rural poverty and realities and does not understand indigenous peoples.
A high level commission is now developing a mining law. The government is trying to please every sector—using a sort of double discourse. When they speak to us, they say "Oh, you indigenous people, we love you and admire you" and they are going to give us all these things. And when the transnational companies come, they do the same thing. It is selling Guatemala, and keeping a good relationship with everyone while doing it.
The issue is not for them to give us something; the issue is for them to recognize our ancestral rights."
]]>In any society, developing or not, women are likely to be poorer, less educated, and less empowered than men. Oxfam recognizes women should be valued equally and enabled to reach their potential. What’s more, research has shown that when women earn income, they are more likely than men to spend it on family welfare. And when women are educated, they make decisions that benefit their families and influence their communities.
In the pages that follow, you'll read about how Oxfam is targeting the laws in Mozambique and the gender violence in El Salvador that severely disadvantage women. You'll also learn how Oxfam is equipping women to mediate peace in West Africa and to grow the income of their families. In every case, when it comes to empowering women, men are an equal part of the equation. Oxfam is striving to shape societies that not only permit women to be contributors, but societies that recognize that if they don't seize upon what women can offer, they are failing to leverage one of their most valuable assets.
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