We Help Ourselves But We Cannot Do It Alone
We are afraid that they will find out that we are human rights defenders, that we are those women who lend a voice to those who don’t have one. We are afraid of this regime of exception because we are from communities classified as red zones because of the control the gang had in this area. We are defenders of women’s rights in our communities, but we don’t have support from anyone who will listen to us about what is happening. We are afraid.
Under this regime, women leaders and defenders expect the worst, but we keep going, no one can silence us for denouncing the violence and injustices we face. There are no government institutions to protect us, not even the mayor’s office pays any attention to us. If it were not for the unity of the social organizations, we would have no one to turn to in the event of a human rights violation.
We are 16 women from 16 different communities. Gathered together we realize that our situations are very similar because we have suffered various types of violence and now it has worsened with this regime of exception. We all met in a program called Ciudad Mujer, a program of the previous administration that protected women and provided support to those who sought help. But this current administration closed the program and we were left without support from anyone. So we decided to unite as women to support others. When we got together we realized that there are many victims of violence and violations in our communities and that they are not only adult women, we know of cases of girls and adolescents, all without support.
That is why we want the organizations and Cristosal to continue accompanying us. This relationship we have with Cristosal has been good for us because they have given us the strength to denounce, defend and speak out. We have identified the violations and rights that we did not know we are entitled to. We all have rights, we cannot remain silent. Now we have more knowledge of the situation, of all the rights that we lose from this regime of exception and that although each one of us has a different story, the final situation is the same: women violated by the system.
What we do is to help ourselves but we cannot do it alone. If Cristosal is not there for example, where are we going to denounce? Where will the victims go?
Cristosal’s team is currently providing accompaniment to this group of women with training on human rights, empowerment, migration, forced displacement, leadership and advocacy.