Working to End Violence against Indigenous Women

MADRE and the International Indigenous Women's Forum (IIWF/FIMI)

The United Nations estimates that one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime—usually by someone she knows. Violence against women and girls is a universal problem of epidemic proportions that shatters women's lives, harms families and communities, and undermines development and the enjoyment of other human rights.

To effectively combat violence against women, it must be understood not only as an abusive dynamic between individual perpetrators and victims, but as one of the world's most pervasive human rights violations.

The likelihood that a woman will be targeted for violence—and the forms that violence takes—are shaped not only by gender (the social roles that men and women play) but also by one's race, class, caste, religion, sexual orientation, geographic situation, ethnicity, and other identities.

For Indigenous women, violence occurs in a context of ongoing rights violations against their communities as a whole. Indigenous Peoples have survived the systematic expropriation and exploitation of their ancestral lands, which are the source of their cultures, identities, and wealth. This attack has left Indigenous communities among the poorest and most marginalized in the world and has contributed to violence against Indigenous women in several ways:

• Gender-based violence was a main weapon in colonial conquests of Indigenous lands. Indigenous women were targeted for rape as a weapon of war in Guatemala during the 1980s. Since the 1990s, Indigenous women in Chiapas, Mexico have been subjected to sexual harassment, rape, forced prostitution, and compulsory servitude in paramilitary camps. In Kenya, the legacy of British colonialism continues to produce violence against Indigenous women. As recently as the 1980s and 1990s, at least 1400 Indigenous Samburu women were raped by British soldiers stationed on their lands.
• In communities worldwide, gender-based violence increases when men are threatened by poverty, discrimination, displacement, cultural disintegration, and other crises that have disproportionately affected Indigenous Peoples.
• Many Indigenous traditions include an egalitarian understanding of gender relations that have helped combat violence against women. However, these traditions have been eroded by colonization, Christianity, and capitalism, while power disparities between men and women�the root cause of violence against women�have been reinforced. Today, most Indigenous women have lower rates of literacy, health, education, and employment than Indigenous men. As in non-Indigenous communities, there is a close correlation between women's economic dependence on men and physical abuse.
• Indigenous women are effectively denied access to most public services�including education, medical care, police protection, telephone service, and transportation�that could prevent or redress violence. In fact, public services are themselves a site of violence against Indigenous women. In numerous Latin American countries, Indigenous women seeking professional healthcare have been forcibly sterilized. Many rural Indigenous women do not speak Spanish�the language of public education, mass media, and the courts. Even programs to combat violence against women usually do not include segments designed by Indigenous women and therefore do not adequately address the problem as it affects them.

Indigenous women know that combating violence within their communities is linked to ensuring the collective rights of those communities, such as sovereignty and self-determination. Strategies to end violence against Indigenous women must therefore work to defend both Indigenous women's rights within their communities and the rights of their Peoples as a whole.

MADRE's Sister Organizations

Wangky Tangni: On Nicaragua's North Atlantic Coast, Wangky Tangni (�Flower of the River� in Miskitu) offers leadership development programs that address violence against women and promotes women's political participation and gender equity through sustainable development programs, human rights trainings, and health care programs that combine Indigenous and Western medicine. The organization's income-generating projects for women bolster women's economic autonomy, while discussion groups enable survivors of abuse to support one another. In the community of Wangky Tangni, many women access power in their traditional roles as midwives, advisors, spiritual guides, and leaders who are principally responsible for the preservation of knowledge, values, wisdom, and agricultural technology in their community. Wangky Tangni therefore works to defend and develop these roles for women in a way that directly addresses violence against women. For example, women from Wangky Tangni run a community-based conflict mediation program that offers recourse to survivors of abuse. For most of these women, the state's legal system is neither accessible nor accountable. Wangky Tangni's program combines traditional Indigenous justice systems and international human rights law to defend women's right to a life free of violence.

Umoja Uaso Women's Group, in northern Kenya, is an organization and women-run community of Indigenous Samburu women who have declared their village a Violence-Against-Women-Free Zone. The community was formed in 1990 by 15 women who became destitute because they were abandoned by their husbands after being raped (many by British soldiers) and did not have property rights. Umoja, as the group is known, is bringing a case against the British military for the rapes of over 1400 Samburu women.

Umoja provides safe housing and physical protection to women survivors of violence; women regularly band together to confront and chase away abusers. Umoja's leadership interfaces with the local police and hospital, demanding enforcement of laws to combat violence against women and ensuring proper medical treatment to survivors of violence. Umoja is demanding an anti-violence unit in the local police force and training of women police officers to address gender-based violence.

Through MADRE's Kenyan partner organization, the Indigenous Information Network, MADRE has provided women from Umoja with human rights training that has enabled them to become decision-makers in their families and community. When these women first began learning about human rights in 1999, none of them had ever spoken in public. Today, they are active participants in local government and are recognized as leaders in their district. Umoja works towards the eradication of female genital mutilation (FGM) by educating community members about the harmful impact of the practice. Umoja also works to educate the next generation of men to respect women's rights. And Umoja works towards women's economic independence through a system of resource sharing and a sickness/disability fund for women in the community. Umoja's programs are so successful that they are now being replicated in the nearby villages of Kilterman and Wamba.