Summary

On the 13^th March 2008, we sent out questionnaires to 72 National Coordinating Bodies (NCBs). Having sent out reminders on the 29^th April and again on the 16^th June, in total 22 NCBs returned filled-in questionnaires: 8 from Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique), 6 from the Americas (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba and Mexico), 2 from Asia (Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Pakistan), and 6 from Europe (Basque Country, Catalonia, France, Galicia, Greece and Portugal).

This questionnaire has been an important tool in the collective monitoring of the Strategic Plan 2007-2010, prepared at the last WMW International Meeting, held in Lima, Peru, in 2006. The questions in it were organised around the World March of Women’s four Action Areas: Violence against women, Common Good and Access to Resources, Peace and Demilitarisation and Women’s Work.

Violence Against Women as a tool for controlling women’s bodies, lives and sexuality

All NCBs reported that they work on this issue.

Most NBCs work in partnership / alliance with other movements, organisations, and networks, and organise demonstrations on this subject, for example, the demonstrations on 25^th November in Catalonia, Greece and Chile and on 29^th May 2008 in the Basque Country to denounce the rape and sexual aggression of two women. They also held forums, workshops and public conferences about violence against women, and worked with grassroots women on the issue.

Many activities were held, such as: the discussions and seminars “How to save women from sexual violence” in Pakistan; the “Not One More” campaign in Portugal and the Basque Country, with the objective of raising awareness and denouncing violence; support to other organisations that receive women in situations in violence and training of activists involved in this work in Mozambique, and radio programmes, TV ‘spots’, and short film diffusion on TV in Burkina Faso. Materials produced by NCBs to accompany their activities have included videos (Kenya), pamphlets (Catalonia), a book (2003) and leaflets and posters (Greece), and leaflets, newsletters and posters (Brazil).

In many countries, the main objectives of these activities were to raise awareness of, generate public opinion about, and denounce violence against women in the struggle for prevention of this extreme form of control of women’s bodies, lives and sexuality. The NCBs of Benin, Bolivia, Burundi, Catalonia, Cuba, France, Ghana, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Portugal all stated similar objectives along these lines. Other activity objectives included the development of a grassroots reporting channel for women in situations in violence (Ghana), a law on violence against women in the family, society and workplace (Greece), free and relevant medical attention for women in situations of violence (Kenya), and the involvement other organisations and institutions in the debate (Bolivia). In Mali many different activities have been carried out to raise awareness of the consequences of female genital mutilation and to encourage the population to abandon this practice.

The questionnaire also asked about the biggest achievements and problems related to activities organised to denounce or prevent violence against women. Ghana reported the victory of passing of the Domestic Violence Bill; while Pakistan stated that their biggest achievement was that the rural women came forward and express their feelings about the violence. On the other hand, Argentina reported that their principal difficulty is the great ignorance that people have about the issue, and the Central African Republic stated that one of their challenges was to struggle against a new site of violence against women, the highways.

Based on the activities reported by the NCBs, the best way to prevent violence against women is to work with grassroots women. And the best way to denounce it is through forums, debates, workshops and manifestations, and also to work with grassroots women.

On the subject of prostitution, 12 NCBs answered that they have been working on the issue and most of them (10) think they still need to continue the debate on this issue. Some NCBs consider themselves abolitionist, others struggle for the legalisation of prostitution and yet others consider artificial the distinction between these two extremes of position.

  17 NCBs reported that they work on this issue. The majority of them have organised forums, debates, workshops, seminars and public conferences in relation to this Action Area – such as the “Without prejudices” Seminar in Portugal; activities with the Galician delegate to the Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum when she arrived back in Galicia; awareness-raising of the need for the preservation and conservation of natural and cultural resources with school students in Benin – and many of them have also organised internal discussions and dialogues. They have also worked in partnership/alliance with other movements, organisations, and networks, such as: the Movement against ALCA, CEDIB Cochabamba and UNITAS in Bolivia; Peasant organisations, CAD-Mali and ROPPA in Mali; and Vía Campesina / MST, the Assembléia Popular and Solidarity Economy Movements in Brazil.

Some examples of the activities held were: a workshop on the implications of land and natural resources management in rural areas, in April 2008 in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic; theatre performances that both reached the rural poor and entertained them in Kenya; the development of a lobby action plan to influence the Mozambique government in the implementation of the Land Law, so as to include the principle of equal rights to land access for women and men; workshops on Climate Change and Agrofuels, etc in the Women’s Tent at the ‘Integration and Friendship between People’s Summit’ in November 2007 in Chile;

One of the key themes of this Action Area is food sovereignty, and this being the case NCBs have organised various types of activities: discussions among WMW activists, such as the European Coordination meeting in Toulouse, France in 2007; public debates, such as those at the Burkina Faso Social Forum on “Gender and Food Sovereignty”; the including the theme in WMW national demands.

Examples of materials produced by NCBs in relation ‘Common Good and Access to Resources’ have included national WMW newsletters, radio programmes on CD and 17^th October leaflets (Brazil), websites such as www.feminismo.info and http://feminismo-galego.blogspot.com (Galicia), and texts such as “ASPAN, Women and Food Sovereignty” (Mexico). In Mali cloth used for women’s clothing has been printed with messages biodiversity and food sovereignty.

Women’s Work

In this Action Area we questioned the NCBs about their work on several different issues. The results were that 12 NCBs work on Employment and Women’s Labour Rights, 12 on Free Trade Agreements, 6 on International Bodies (IMF, WB, etc), 5 on Transnational corporations, 7 on Solidarity economy and 8 on minimum wage.

The method most used to struggle for Employment and Women’s Labour Rights is work with grassroots women and through forums, debates, workshops and work in partnership with other movements, for example, the collaboration with the National Rights of Women Collective in France. Some activities held on this issue are the Social Security Women’s camp and Forum (Brazil) and the IV Women Workers’ International Meeting (Mexico).

For the theme of Free Trade Agreements the most common methods of work used was activities with grassroots women and forums, debates, workshops – such as those organised during the Hemispheric Encounter in the Struggle Against FTAs in Cuba in April 2008 – and public conferences, such as the “Europe-Africa: What Alternatives?” summit in Portugal. Other activities were held, like the Political lobbying for “No” to EPAs between Africa and EU in Burundi and Mali, and the “Don’t owe, won’t pay” campaign in Kenya.

Internal discussion is the preferred method for debating International Bodies, Solidarity Economy and Minimum Wage, including those on the “Background to Financial Institutions” discussion in Bolivia and “What are the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, how do they function” in the Central African Republic. The theme of Transnational Corporations, on the other hand, has been worked on more extensively through external discussion (forums, debates, workshops, seminars and public conferences), such as the “Natural resources in the hands of transnationals” workshop in Bolivia.

8 NCBs reported that they had knowledge of concrete cases of subcontracting and other forms of exploitation of women by transnational corporations. Examples include the Walmart and Blue jeans Maquila workers in Mexico, the factories in Mali and the refusal to respect maternity leave and sick pay rights in Kenya.

To support the struggle against neoliberal policy and for women’s economic autonomy and labour rights, several NCBs have produced varied written materials. In Mozambique, for example, WMW activists joined other civil society activists in the production of a public position paper and call to the government to defend national companies and small traders in the face of Free Trade Agreements, and wrote an analysis of their Work Law from a gender perspective. While in Cuba a text entitled “Cuba Women: Women with Rights” was written and in Benin a documentary on the “Lagoon Project” and a programme entitled “Water ways” were produced. In Greece a chapter was dedicated to the theme of Women’s employment rights in their 2003 book, the “Founding Conference of WMW Greek network”.

Peace and Demilitarisation

13 NCBs reported that they work on this Action Area. Most of them reported working through Discussions, dialogue, and other forms of internal discussion and Forums, debates, workshops, seminars and public conferences. Other methods used were demonstrations and the publishing of material.

Some of the activities organised in relation to this Action Area were:

·         Video forums and mobilisations on 24^th May – the International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament – using the slogan: “Neither war that kills, nor peace that oppresses” (Galicia);

·         Several meetings and debates with Amnesty International, such as the Round table on “VAW in armed conflict” in March 2008; texts, petitions and news of mobilisations in the regular WMW newsletter (France);

·         A big mobilisation of women to welcome the arrival of the WMW Quilt in the Great Lakes region in the week leading up to 8^th March 2008 (Burundi), together with women from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda;

·         Press Conference about the situation in Darfour – September 2007 (Mali);

·         Mobilisations against the war in Iraq and in solidarity with the Arab people (Brazil);

·         A national radio programme about the dangers of small arms in residences, February – June 2007 (Central African Republic);

·         Concerning the conflict in Cyprus, and in collaboration with Cypriot women, common declarations were made against nationalism and in favour of solidarity (Greece).

We asked if the UN Resolution 1325 (2000), which addresses the participation of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in building peace, been useful in this work. 6 NCBs responded “Yes” and 7 of them did not know of the resolution. The Burundi NCB said that for them the Resolution 1325 is a planning and awareness-raising tool and that their collective has developed a project to put the resolution into practice at the national level, and a plan of action will soon be written by Burundi women. In Argentina, the WMW participated in seminars around this issue.

We also asked about how the NCBs have been working to communicate to the external public and to society in general the contents of each theme. The most frequent responses were through newsletter and other printed material, commercial media broadcasting (radio, TV, newspapers, internet) and Alternative media broadcasting.

NCB Challenges

When asked to comment on the specific challenges they face, the replies of the NCBs were varied, ranging from financial and administrative issues to organisational and mobilisation issues. Here is a selection of their answers:

-          To make our membership more dynamic in the provinces, to decentralise our interventions to the regions, organisation issues, fund-raising (Burkina Faso);

-          Due to past experiences, many have lost faith in women’s organisations, especially the grassroots (indigenous) women. So it is challenging to mobilise women for activities. The handout syndrome in one thing that has hindered us tremendously. Women are so used to getting handouts when invited for meetings by NGOs, they don’t see the WMW as any different (Kenya);

-          To improve contact with other NCBs (via workshops, conferences, etc) (Lao People’s Democratic Republic);

-          Fund-raising (Argentina);

-          To make the WMW more known and visible, and deepening links with grassroots organisations (Chile);

-          To organise spaces for contact and debate at the national level; better networking between the different WMW groups in the country (Bolivia);

-          Internal expansion; discussion and deepening of themes and areas; better capacity for intervention and public visibility; cohesion and collective spirit (Portugal).