After we sent out a call asking for messages of support for our partners at Midwives for Peace, who are celebrating the organization’s 5th anniversary, our MADRE members responded as they always do: with open arms. We got permission to share this moving display of support below. As always, we thank you all for everything you do for MADRE and for our partners worldwide. The solidarity you demonstrate makes it possible for us to move forward, together, every day.

Dear Midwives for Peace,

Your work is SO important to the health of mothers and babies, and to the mental and emotional well-being of parents-to-be and parents of newborn babies.  I was blessed to have the expertise, knowledge, support and love of two wonderful midwives during pregnancy and at the very long and complicated birth of my child, Evalín/Ilanit, who, thank God, is 10 years old and healthy, and so I know first-hand the immediate and lasting value of what you do.  Attached is a recent picture of us with our friend’s puppies!

Thank you for reaching beyond borders and differences to serve all populations.  My respect for you is great, and I will support you/Madre through donations when babies are born to my friends and family.

Shalom/Salaam and Mahbrouk/Mazal tov on your anniversary,

Sherry Pachman

Vermont, USA

“As an Israeli midwife, I always wanted to talk to Palestinian midwives, to see their experience and exchange stories—that’s how we learn. We are neighbors, and with neighbors, you should talk. It’s unnatural that we don’t talk. So I came to the first meeting of this group. That was five years ago. Now we are more than neighbors. We are friends.”

Gomer, the Israeli coordinator of our sister organization Midwives for Peace, told me this on my recent visit to the West Bank. I was there to celebrate the group’s five year anniversary, a truly remarkable milestone.

Israel and Palestine are at a political standstill. The level of despondency in the region is as strong as I’ve ever seen it. And the lack of confidence in progress is widespread. As you can imagine, under these difficult circumstances, collaboration can seem impossible. Yet the commitment of our sister organization of Israeli and Palestinian midwives remains strong. Through it all, they continue to work together to learn from each other and to safely deliver babies in the West Bank, despite the conflict that surrounds them. What an inspiration!

The anniversary meeting gave the midwives a chance to celebrate, reflect and share their plans for the future. In 2014, the group hopes to send representatives to the International Conference of Midwives in Prague.

And this August, they are planning a group trip to the beach. You might be wondering what a day at the beach has to do with breaking down barriers between Palestinians and Israelis, but consider this: some of the Palestinian midwives are refugees whose families came from coastal villages, yet they themselves have never seen the ocean. As Aisha, the group’s Palestinian coordinator, said to me, “the friendships we are building as midwives, as women, are opening doors in our lives and in our hearts that the conflict had tried to nail shut.”

I’m always so moved to see the collaboration and friendship between our Israeli and Palestinian sisters. Our partnership with Midwives for Peace is something I am proud of every day. I was so grateful to be able to attend their anniversary event, and I look forward to celebrating their next five years.

My beloved coworkers have a saying: “You don’t have to be a mother to be a MADRE.” They’ll say it lightning-quick, in tones that range from reassuring to affirming to just plain old firm. And certainly we practice what we preach; most of us are not mothers – but we are MADREs.

I’ve been a big sister, a fairy godmother, a cousin, a daughter, a coworker, a friend, a best friend, a partner, a Wife, a Boston Wife, a Job, a teacher, a partner-in-crime and more, but I’ve never been a mother. In the most expansive set of the word, I’ve never mothered a single living creature. I can’t keep a plant alive, I’ve never been pregnant, I refuse to be independently responsible for the well-being of a pet, and my fondness for leather jackets and bacon says I’m not much of an Earth Mother, either. But I’m a MADRE.

If the coworkers, sisters, partners, interns and volunteers who make up our world are what I can measure a MADRE by, here’s what you need in your toolkit if you want to carry the mantle. You’ll need strength and compassion. You’ll need a big, loud voice and a willingness to use it when necessary. You’ll need patience: with systems, with other human beings, with the incredibly, devastatingly slow pace of progress. You’ll need endless reserves of determination and devotion to the overwhelming cause of making the world a better place for everyone who occupies it. You’ll need to believe in collective action and understand that the world is structured to advantage some and disadvantage others, and at the end of the day, you’ll need to believe unflinchingly that this ultimately disadvantages us all. Most of all, you’ll need hope. You’ll need hope when everything else in your toolkit fails, because you’re human, and building things is hard.

And in return for having these things and hanging on tight when it’s hard, which is almost every day, we all get each other. Like a mother, a MADRE is never alone – but unlike a mother, you can enjoy an uninterrupted night of sleep. Happy Mother’s Day, moms. May your breakfast in bed not begin at 6am.

Wishing you a Happy Mother’s Day from all of us at MADRE.

My MADRE, the woman who brought me into this world, embodies what I believe a MADRE is through the resilient strength she demonstrates every day and her willingness to do more than what is asked of her with this strength.

My MADRE’s strength is powerful and inspiring. She has given birth to and raised three children in a way that seemed effortless, despite all the challenges of motherhood. She consistently provides a shoulder to lean on, and the strength to keep my world turning. What is most inspiring is that my MADRE finds her strength within and gives strength and hope to everyone around her. She is a beautiful source of inspiration and love, and has always been a guiding force in my life.

The morning of September 11^th, my father boarded a plane to go on a work trip. Since he travels often for work and the trips are always short, my family didn’t get his flight information. My MADRE picked me, my sister and brother up from school the morning of the attacks so we could spend the difficult time at home together. Even though she was torn up inside not knowing if my dad was safe, she stayed strong for us- she was our rock. For the next two days we did not hear from my dad, but she was as strong as ever. She supported us, she gave us strength when we broke down and cried, and she offered us boundless love. The night of the second day after the attacks we heard from my father and he was safe. I will never forget the strength my mom held onto those few days and the strength she gave me to stay hopeful. She went beyond the call of being a mother and looked beyond herself to provide strength to those around her during this time. I see her strength shine through during all the trying experiences she has, and it is something that inspires me to be a strong independent woman like her- a MADRE.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, and like many of you, I will spend it at home with my family. I’m looking forward to the home-made cards and presents from my kids, and maybe the great gift of sleeping in an extra hour. As I enjoy this time, I’ll also be thinking of the Syrian mothers I just met in a refugee camp in Jordan.

Like mothers everywhere, their first priority is to ensure their children’s safety. That’s why many of them fled their homes in the first place. Now, as their families grow destitute as refugees, many mothers feel that the only way they can provide for their teenaged daughters is to marry them off. “I would rather see her married than hungry,” said Leila of her young daughter. “I just pray that this man will be kind to her.”

A young activist in a local Jordanian women’s organization told me, “This was supposed to be a revolution for freedom in Syria. But for the girls there is no freedom. Instead there are men from the Gulf countries lurking around the refugee camp looking for child brides.”

In my work with women around the world, I see mothers face choices like Leila’s every day.

After an earthquake devastated Haiti, millions of families were displaced from their homes. Mothers put up makeshift tents in huge public encampments with no running water, no security, and no lights at night. When an epidemic of rape swept through the camps, mother were their children’s only line of defense. “I stayed awake through the nights,” Louise  told me. “I had to choose between sleeping or keeping watch over my two daughters. I held a broken bottle for protection and positioned it to dig into my arm if I fell asleep.”

The mothers I met in Kenya were also forced to make decisions no parent should have to face. Severe drought over recent years has decimated herding communities in East Africa. As animals died off and water for even basic survival grew scarce, more and more families resorted to trading daughters for dowries, in some cases to ensure the survival of the rest of the family.

War, natural disaster, environmental crisis. No matter the threat to their children, mothers fight back.

In Jordan, Syrian mothers who are refugees are working with local women’s groups to protect the health and well-being of their daughters and provide safety and shelter for their families.

In Haiti, mothers organized community watch groups in the tent camps and reached out to rape survivors with healthcare and counseling through the women’s rights organization, KOFAVIV. A bill they put before the Haitian parliament would create Haiti’s first age of consent and criminalize marital rape for the first time, protecting their daughters now and throughout their futures.

In Kenya, mothers helped create a network of shelters as a place for their daughters to receive an education and enjoy their childhood, protecting them from female genital mutilation and forced early marriages. They call these shelters the Nanyori Network. In Swahili, Nanyori means “You are loved.”

This Mother’s Day, I’ll be thinking of these women, mothers just like me, facing unimaginable hardships. I’ll be thinking of their strength and their dignity, of their dedication and unfailing love. As the poet Alexis De Veaux has written, “Motherhood is more than the biological act of giving birth. It’s an understanding of the needs of the world.” Fighting to meet those needs, all around the globe, is what mothers do.

(This post originally appeared on RH Reality Check.)

This time of the year last year, I was over-the-moon pregnant with Lucia, a baby girl who brought joy and big smiles to our families, friends, and of course to our partners in different regions who joined us in celebrating the birth of my first daughter!

This time this year, we are celebrating my first Mother’s Day with Lucia. And the fact that Mother’s Day is approaching made me reflect on what this day means personally to me. On one hand, I feel that it is not that important to celebrate a particular day, a commercial day after all. But at the same time, it made me remember the struggle of mothers around the world who deserve recognition and a day to celebrate, to receive love from their sons and daughters, a day that makes them special.

Just this week, my colleague Sahita and I met with mothers from Central America who confronted violence and the disappearance of their daughters and sons during a period of political violence in the 1980s. They have not reached justice or received recognition of their ongoing struggle. I remembered the mother in a remote community in rural Kenya who told me she did not have enough money to send her daughter to school, but still resisted the pressure to marry her off as a child bride to ensure her future. I thought of the mother in Haweeja, a small village in Iraq, who is desperate to get rehabilitation and treatment for her four-year old disabled son, who cannot walk. I was also reminded of the different situations that mothers face every day: mothers in Syria pressured to sell their daughters into early marriage to feed younger children and to save the girls from rape, mothers in Haiti protecting their daughters from sexual violence in the displacement camps, mothers in Colombia whose children were abducted by armed groups and forced to serve as child soldiers. Those are real stories of mothers who confront everyday discrimination, situations of poverty, violence and injustices. Those women deserve better, deserve a day of recognition and so much more.

We at MADRE celebrate the courage of all those mothers who are determined to move forward in the most discouraging circumstances, to change the conditions in their communities, to change cultural practices, to open up opportunities for their daughters. I hope I can contribute to making a better world a reality for all mothers and teach the importance of this work to my Lucia… I hope Lucia can be as determined as all these women to fight for a better future for all mothers, all daughters, all families around the world.

This year and every year, when you celebrate Mother’s Day, celebrate for your mother and mothers in your life, and all the mothers that are trying to make a difference in the world!!

The small town of Haweeja, where we work with our partners at the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), has become one of the sites of increased violence across the northern part of the country as largely Shiite government militias engage with Sunni gunmen in a sectarian conflict.

According to the New York Times:

The deadliest battles occurred near Hawija and Sulaiman Pek, northern towns near Kirkuk, and battles were still raging in the early evening. In Hawija, the army shut off electricity, and troops shouted through loudspeakers, urging civilians to evacuate, witnesses said. Government helicopters also fired at Sunni gunmen on the ground in Sulaiman Pek.

This is not the first time this small town has felt the impact of the legacy of violence left by the US invasion and ten year occupation. In 2011, OWFI discovered that children in Haweeja were suffering from unprecedented rates of birth defects, and disproportionately high rates of cancer were impacting the entire population. These health problems are potentially linked to a US base one mile away, where chemical munitions were regularly detonated and dumped. Since then, OWFI and MADRE have been working to bring adequate medical care to those in need and draw international attention to hold those who are responsible accountable for their actions. We have reached out to our partners there and will provide updates as the situation evolves.

For ongoing updates about the situation in Haweeja, join the Haweeja Action Team and support the community as a member.

A judge in Guatemala yesterday announced a decision to suspend the genocide trial against Efraín Rios Montt and José Mauricio Rodríguez Sanchez, ruling that the proceedings to date were invalid. Guatemala’s Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz has denounced this move as illegal, and prosecutors have pledged to appeal this decision.

Seeking to nullify the existing testimonies is a slap in the face to those who were the targets of genocidal violence in the years of Guatemala’s civil war, particularly the years of Rios Montt’s regime of 1982-1983. Indigenous Peoples, labeled as enemies, were systematically targeted by the military, and whole communities were destroyed. In the past month, people who survived this violence bravely stepped forward as witnesses to put their harrowing stories on the trial record:

The second woman to take the stand wept as she told the court that she had been raped by a series of men over three days in a military post in the Quiche department in the country’s heavily indigenous highlands region in 1982. “They tied my hands and feet,” and raped me, she said, “Not just me but my mother, too.” (Associated Press, April 2)

APR, from Chajul, weeped as she testified that in March 1982, soldiers came to her home and took away her husband, before returning and raping her outside of the house. The soldiers left her one-month old baby behind and set the house on fire, burning the infant alive. Crying throughout her testimony, JST testified that soldiers came to her home in April 1982, took her, her mother, and other women to a room in the local parish building where the soldiers tied them up, beat the, and raped them.

CBG wept loudly as she described being captured with her daughter by soldiers who came to Amajchel, San Gaspar Chajul, Quiche, after they fled to the mountains. She said that the soldiers raped her, beat her, stabbed her, leaving scars, and killed her child. Later, they forced her to prepare food for the soldiers. (RiosMontt-Trial.org, April 3)

Pedro Chávez Brito told the court that he was only six or seven years old when soldiers killed his mother. He hid in the chicken coop with his older sister, her newborn and his younger brother, but soldiers found them and dragged them out, forcing them back into their house and setting it on fire. Mr. Chávez says he was the only one to escape. “I got under a tree trunk and I was like an animal,” Mr. Chávez told the court. “After eight days I went to live in the mountains. In the mountain we ate only roots and grass.” (New York Times, April 14)

These are just a fraction of the testimonies that this ruling would seek to erase. Developments in this trial have moved at a rapid and sometimes dizzying pace, but here is one constant: Survivors have been waiting over 30 years for the justice that is their right.

Update: Judge Yasmin Barrios, who is overseeing the trial, announced that she rejects the decision to annul the trial.

For more information about how you can follow the developments in this trial, click here.

The trial of former Guatemalan General Rios Montt, accused of human rights abuses and genocide against Indigenous Peoples, displacing nearly 30,000 Guatemalans and overseeing thousands of acts of sexual violence, is underway. Today, the defense asked that the trial be suspended. Follow the trial:

On Twitter:

@xeni

@RiosMonttTrial

@NISGUA_Guate

@PzPenVivo

Online:

http://www.riosmontt-trial.org/

http://www.wola.org/highlight/para_que_se_conozca_blog_covering_the_rios_montt_trial

http://www.ghrc-usa.org/

http://www.awid.org/eng%3D/Library/Guatemala-Genocide-Trial-Begins-Be-Part-of-this-Historic-Process

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2013/0404/Guatemala-Rios-Montt-trial-hears-testimony-on-conflict-era-sexual-violence