Feminist International Radio Endeavour/October 2005

Campaign

"Between women, with affected communities"


Fact sheet & background

 

  •  The campaign “Women to women, with the affected communities” is an appeal to feminist sorority and solidarity in the face of natural disasters.

 

  • This Campaign is an appeal to share what we have, no matter how little or much, with women who live the devastation produced by natural disasters. We are asking that feminists, their organizations and any person and institution who wish to contribute to woman-to-woman support, -make cash contributions from his/her own pocket and their institutional budgets so as to strengthen women in the communities affected by natural disasters in Guatemala.

 

  • We hope this initiative will be reproduced for women in El Salvador, Southern Mexico and Pakistan, and wherever else is needed.

 

  • By coincidence, this campaign started on October 13, 2005, which is International Day for the Reduction of Natural Disasters, so designated by the UN and to be celebrated each second Wednesday in October, by Resolution 56/191 of the General Assembly on the 21st of December as a “means to promote a world culture of natural disaster reduction, which includes prevention, mitigation and preparation efforts”.

 

  • This is a woman to woman campaign, inspired by the images of the survivors and the devastating impact on indigenous communities in Guatemala, as seen in the media.

 

  • It was inspired by the reportsmade by women communicators in Guatemala (La Cuerda), and community radio programs made by women of the Mujeres al Aire (Women of the Air) Network

 

  • It was inspired by the words of Guatemalan Mayan Carmen Victoria Álvarez, from the indigenous women organization Kaqla, when she spoke at the 10th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Congress about feminism and ecology, referring to the urgent need of feminism address their relationship with indigenous women and their surroundings

 

 

Nature of “natural” disasters

 

  • Neither the currents of El Niño and La Niña, nor Hurricane Mitch  in 1998 nor more recently Hurrican Stan, are very “natural” phenomena. This is well known. Global warming of the Planet because of carbon dioxide emissions as well as deforestation and pollution produce reactions from a planet that searches rebelliously and desperately to rebuild its own harmony.

 

  •  Scientific data from the UICN (World Conservation Union) provide evidence of the fact that deforestation and desertification constitute very serious problems in many countries. For example, each minute 99 acres of forest are destroyed in the world.

 

  • Desertification is the gradual transformation of habitable land into desert land because of destructive uses or due to climatic change.  In the whole world, of each 230 acres of land , 138 acres, or 36 million square kilometers (22.4 square miles) are in the process of degradation in the world because of the loss of forest or desertification. 

 

  •  James Lovelock and Lyn Margullis discuss the concept of “GAIA,” which  recognizes that Planet Earth does not have life on it, but that it is life. It is a living unit, a self organized organism that in its millions of years of history has had the capacity to survive, producing and reproducing its own balance.  It does this by means of expelling from its womb the species causing its imbalance.  Thus, it is not the earth’s survival which is threatened, but that of humanity.

 

  • Feminist scholar, Elisabet Sahtouris warned at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, that “ Many have come to talk in a protectionist  mode about the need to save the Earth. They say they are here in this conference to see what they can do for her.  But many people and communities, mostly indigenous, know that behind their “altruism” hide huge interests to control the last frontier: natural resources that haven’t yet been exploited on the Planet. It is not GAIA, it is we who will not be able to keep on living if the excessive pillage to turn everything into exploitable resources continues” (FIRE, 1992).

 

The Sense of Urgency

  • Carmen Victoria Álvarez knows and reminded us about this urgent situation when she referred to the subject in Brazil at the 10th Feminist Encounter.  And at the time she was addressing us, the indigenous poor populations of her country, Guatemala, were facing havoc caused by Hurricane Stan.

 

  • The CONRED (National Coordinator for the Reduction of Disasters) reported recently that the hurricane caused 508 deaths, 97 injuries, 337 missing (other sources mention up to 1,000), 97,872 displaced persons, and 84,949 lodged in 255 shelters. 

 

  • Other official reports indicate that in southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and other Central American nations, Stan caused about 600 deaths, as well as 1,563,250 injured by the rains: Just two days after, the numbers reached 3 million injured and vast areas of devastated.

 

  • The images in media of women, girls and boys, and older women and men suffering during a disaster were the most compelling, which helped the audience understand an important part of the impact: the more visible which is expressed in pain, trauma, vulnerability of the more affected sectors, the loss of lives and the ecological desolation which surrounds and affects all forms of life that once were able to thrive in those same zones.

 

  • This kind of media coverage plays an important role because they help activate “ethics of caring,” solidarity, and generosity and in the best of cases, social responsibility of all as people and community, and of the governmental and non-governmental entities in the aftermath of such events.

 

  • But often, behind media these images and messages are hidden realities that also need to be brought to light. One of them is the “gender factor”, which is sometimes the most invisible of factors. According to Elaine Enarson “… gender makes up the social world, which greatly shapes the impact of natural disasters.  The sense of urgency consists of recognizing that our social links and relations are highly relevant in the face of immediate needs and strategies in the aftermath of natural disasters”.

 

  •  Specialists on the subject state what women already know but is rarely diffused in the media: “The structure of gender relations is part of the social and cultural context that provides the capacity of a community to anticipate disasters, be prepared to survive them, to face them and to recover from them” (UN, Interagency Secretariat for International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, 2002).

 

  • Elaine Enarson also states that “Given the magnitude of a disaster, economical, political, socio-cultural contexts and the integration of gender in policies and measures for reduction of disasters translates into identifying the place that women and men have in society. This allows for the provision of an effective idea, not only of the different ways in which the lives of women and men can be affected, but also of the ways in which they can contribute to the efforts of reduction of impact”.

 

  • Nonetheless, in a 2002 report of the Gender Program of the World Conservation Union, named “Forgotten Heroines: The Role of Women in Natural Disasters,” it stated that: “In spite of the crucial role women play in mitigation, preparation and recovery in natural disasters, this role is generally not seen or is ignored. However, history shows that when disasters hit, women assist in recovery”. (UICN)

 

  • On the other hand, parallel to the invisible leadership of women is also the fact that women are more deeply affected by natural disasters. Women are disproportionately affected by policies that address disasters, precisely because of their gender role in society. 

 

Towards a feminist strategy of solidarity

  •  A feminist perspective highlights that the political-social formula that pervades in almost every social fiber of any community, shows that women take care and men decide, with not very beneficial results in general.

 

  • In natural disaster situations this formula does not work, and it is women who take the role of leaders in their communities in crisis situations.

 

  • For reasons that are obvious for those who understand the gender factor and power inequality, women are rarely placed in formal roles of responsibility for natural disasters, but most of the time it is their job to clean up others’ disasters, without participating in decision making and being invisible in their leadership for recovery.

 

  • When humanitarian aid after disasters flows exclusively through the already established structures in the affected zones,  almost always in the hands of men and masculinized organizations, too many times the opportunity is lost to position aid strategically, that is, channeled through the social tissue rapidly knit by women after these same disasters.

 

  • Women care, repair, and prepare food from whatever surrounding resources are yet available. They pay emotional attention to victims, give first aid, and reconstruct a minimal social, communal, and   family network for survival, be it in shelters or other locations, as well as organizing funerals, mourning and search for missing persons, etc.

 

We need to:

  •  Put in place and demand strategies and actions that are required to demonstrate that a change of strategies contributes to channel efforts by way of strengthening women and their capacity to handle resources and participate in decisionmaking. 

 

  • Put in place and demand projects that recognize the capabilities of women and their significant contributions, while at the same time contributing to modifying the gender relations that invisibilize their help.

 

  • Strengthen women’s organizations in fostering their local and national capabilities in communities, to face the causes of disasters which continue and will continue devastating many populations, too often those which are the most vulnerable in our countries.

 

  • Work to contribute to diminish vulnerability to danger and diminish the consequences, and at the same time promote the strengthening of women, their organizations and social networks.

 

  • Contribute to the creation of a model of “woman to woman” support that will give us trust in the fact that women, far from being only vulnerable, are builders of proposals for prevention and reconstruction.

 

Examples in the region

 

  • The Pan American Health Organization has recognized the role played by Central American women after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Women in Guatemala and Honduras built homes, dug wells and channels, hauled water and built shelters. They took an active role which was not acknowledged.

 

Examples given by the Pan American Health Organization: 

  • Groups of women throughout the American continent have realized that the best way of reducing the negative consequences of a disaster is to be prepared. Women have promoted preparation measures at the community level because they understand what impact a disaster can have on the everyday reality of life.

 

  • As an answer to the higher levels of gender violence in Nicaragua after Mitch, the NGO Puntos de Encuentro organized an information campaign that used different means to communicate a simple message: “Violence against women is a disaster that men can prevent”. The campaign proved to be effective for a change of behavior of men related to violence against women.

 

  • The campaign “Women to women, with affected communities” is an appeal to develop further feminist sorority and solidarity to face disasters.

 

Co-sponsors of this campaign:

·         Gender Program of UICN

·         Association of women in Development –AWID

·         Global Fund for Women (GFW)

·         Feminist International Radio Endeavor – FIRE

 

·         For more information on how to support this initiative, contact:

 

 

  • Use this information to make your own reports and promote the campaign giving credit to FIRE in www.radiofeminista.net