What will happen in 2005 in the Philippines?

"In the Philippines the national coordinating body of the World March of Women is an organization called Kilos Kabaro (KK). Actually it’s a network of women’s organizations, mostly grass-roots based. In the past year we have been mainly involved helping other countries and also formulate the Charter that was just adopted recently.

We plan to have a symbolic launching of the Charter on March 8th, together with what’s happening in Brazil. We plan to have a big women’s march. Traditionally, March 8th has been celebrated in the country separately by women’s organizations because they belong to different political blocks and formations. Usually there is one event in the morning, one in the afternoon, one late in the afternoon, and even the government calls its own event through the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women.

This coming March 5th, through the values of the Charter, we hope to bring together these women’s organizations into a single base action if it’s possible, at least in the center, in Quezon city. Understandably, the Philippines is an archipelago composed of 7 000 islands, and it’s quite impossible to have the events all at the same time in the different places.

We also brought the idea of the Charter and of other activities to other networks with whom we are working.  There are 28 organizations members of KK and each of these organizations is involved in different networks. Particularly, we brought it up to the Women’s Committee of the Freedom From Debt Coalition, a coalition that is very much involved in the World Social Forum and actually because of this, they have planned to organize a women’s march against poverty and globalization. Not only KK but more organizations are joining. They are committed to be with us on March 8th for the symbolic launching but they will also participate in other actions in and around June. We will try our best to have those activities combined in July so that we could receive the relay in the Philippines.

And then we will also make some kind of arrangement with a big network called Earth Day’s Network which usually has a big activity every April 22^nd, on Earth Day. They plan to make a back-to-back activity : they will be joining us for the March 8th launching of the Charter and we will be joining them for the April 22nd activity so the slant of the Earth Day activities will be women environment.

Aside from that, we will have solidarity actions on October 17th. Traditionally in the Philippines, we have activities on October 15th and 16th that celebrate World Food Day and Women’s Day, so we will just have serious talks with those groups for a joint activity. Of course, we already had formal ones and it’s just to formalize things moving actions to October 15 so we can coincide in the solidarity actions.

Why is the Charter important for you ?

I think the Charter is important for us because it lays down the values that we, as feminists, hold dear to us and it is a very symbolic document that by... with other feminist organizations of all the world - because the March is in 163 countries and is linking up with 5 500 organizations - so in our little way our participation in the formulation of the Charter, and coming here to the meeting in Rwanda to have it adopted, we feel solidarity with other women organizations.

How are you going to use the Charter. I mean are there some values that seems more important to you or related to the fights you have now in the Philippines. How are you going to use this new instrument?

Actually, what we initially planned, was to have a forum about the connections of the Charter with other international instruments. We would discuss of the interfacing of different international documents like the Beijing platform. Some of us are involved in making a parallel report and then, there is of course the Cedaw, the Convention to eliminate discriminations against women, and the UN Human Rights Declaration. So we plan to have a forum where we will be explaining to women what are the links between these different international instruments and, of course, the Charter will be used to reach more organizations.

With the fact of one value having more importance than the others I think that all are of equal importance. In KK, some of us are in environment, others are into trafficking, others into food security, some of us in housing, some of us are in lesbian and gay rights, so they are all of equal importance to us because each of us is working on important themes.”

Interview of Jing from KK realized in Kigali, Rwanda, December 10, 2004.