The International Indigenous Women’s Forum and the Indigenous Women’s Watch against Violence are pleased to invite you to share experiences regarding violence against indigenous women, which will be presented during the fifty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women that will take place at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 4 to 15 March 2013. Deadline for participation/submissions: September 22nd, 2012.
The CSW has decided that the priority theme in the next session will be the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls (http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/57sess.htm). In that sense, FIMI/IIWF promotes the participation of indigenous women in this important political space in order to include their demands and perspectives.
Indigenous women have identified multiple forms of violence such as:
•Racism and structural discrimination expressed through the lack of access to justice, social services, health, education, statistical invisibility and barriers to political participation.
•Violence as a result of the economic model expressed through the lack of access to microcredits and financial opportunities, unemployment and labor exploitation, economic dependence, lack of access to land and food insecurity and violence by corporate enterprises.
•Criminalization, militarization, insecurity expressed through drug trafficking, militarization of indigenous regions, drug addiction, criminalization of protest, terrorism, armed conflicts, incarceration, genetic piracy, trafficking and sexual exploitation.
•Loss of lands, territories and natural resources expressed through forced displacement, extractive industries, hydroelectric, mining, lack of access to water and to traditional medicine, climate change / natural disasters.
•Loss of cultural values expressed through migration, breakdown of the social fabric, lost of social network, suicide, prohibition of cultural practices (language, dress, forced assimilation, lack of opportunities for spiritual healing).
If you know of any kind of expression of violence against indigenous women in your community or country, please complete the attached form and send it to the following e-mail (observatorio@iiwf.org) before September 22nd, 2012.
FIMI/IIWF will be compiling all the possible information in order to present it to the CSW session in 2013. Join FIMI/IIWF and participate.
If you have any question, please contact: observatorio@iiwf.org
