Women’s Worlds 2011

Why we liked it? Why it is important for us at Battered Women’s Support Services?

by Andrea Canales and Rosa Elena Arteaga

Rosa Elena Arteaga

We’re reflecting back on the four days we spent with over 1600 women from across the globe who gathered on unceded Algonquin territory, for Women’s Worlds 2011.   We were eager to take this opportunity to discuss issues affecting women in a global context in addition to raising concerns about the Canadian government’s response to women’s issues; among them violence against women which is the most pressing social issue of our time and one which we are committed to put at the front of the agenda.

We initiated our journey by joining an exclusive welcoming ceremony for Indigenous women; this welcome was an important start to our participation in this conference, as we could not begin our work without being grounded in the reality of Canada’s colonial history. We thank the Algonquin people for their generosity in allowing us to be part of their ceremony and having us in their traditional land.

Lee Maracle and Andrea Canales

L to R – Rosa Elena Arteaga, Darla Goodwin (WAVAW) and Andrea Canales

We facilitated our session on the first day of this conference on Breaking Cycles:  Empowering Non-Status, Refugee and Immigrant Women Who Experience Violence. Our room was at full capacity thus reflecting the very real need for these discussions and learnings to take place. Participants were appreciative of the comprehensive resources and deemed them “cutting edge”. Workers often feel isolated or lacking the tools to successfully support women and put forward requests for further collaboration and communication.

Battered Women’s Support Services Print Resources for Women and Front-Line Workers

Although women were coming from different parts of the world, the issues where quite similar: colonization, patriarchy, disrespect for the land, globalization, forced migration, and the savaging repercussions of imperialism. Many of the sessions reflected not only the work that we are doing but the pressing need for us to continue our work to end violence against women.

We attended RCMP Accountability?  Review of Yukon’s Police Force workshop which reviewed the case of two RCMP constables were tried and acquitted of sexual assault, Yukon equality-seeking and Aboriginal women’s groups mobilized to demand adequate police accountability. Panellists reported on their coalition-building activities, systemic problems in RCMP responses to male violence against women, racist behaviours, and on their recommendations for national police force change. We compared notes on the increase of arrests of battered women with activists from the Yukon and have committed to collaborating to further our work.  Here’s some of our work on Women Arrests and for Women.  Here’s our blog Women Arrests and Police Complaints:  We Must Remain Vigilant

RCMP Accountability? Review of Yukon’s Police Force 2010 – My Life Depended On It and recent news about RCMP Misconduct in the Yukon

Lois Moorcroft, Yukon Women’s Transition Home Society, Canada; Corinne McKay, Canada; Ketsia Houde, Les EssentiElles, Canada; Barbara McInerney, Kaushee’s Place, Yukon Women’s Transition Home Society, Canada

On day two we attended a powerful march to Parliament to demand justice for missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls, which brought together over 800 conference representatives, alongside media. We took over the main streets of Ottawa, and paralyzed traffic during one of their busiest times of the day. Women of the world came together to make a statement that violence against women, especially violence against Indigenous women, will NOT be tolerated and it must end.  Sadly, Canada’s federal government announced on the same day of the march to Parliament Hill that there would be No Action Plan on Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women, further highlighting a distressing contradiction with Canada’s federal government “tough on crime” agenda.

At the end of the march, we gathered with other Latin American women, who expressed their appreciation at being part of this march.   As, Petronila, an Indigenous woman from Guatemala commented, they are also struggling with the “sanctioned” violence against Indigenous women in one of the largest genocides of modern times, which has left over 100,000 people dead.

Indigenous Feminisms ROCKS

Fleshmapping:  Prostitution in a Globalized World (foreground Cherry Smiley and Fay Blaney AWAN)

Day three we attended Fleshmapping, read this Blog by Rabble.ca for more info   Featuring daily at Women’s Worlds is the multi-lingual, multi-media exhibit Global Fleshmapping/ Les Draps Parlant/ La Resistencia de Las Mujeres: Prostitution in a Globalized World Fleshmapping incorporated interactive videos, games and 70 used bedsheets as canvasses on which women from across the country have expressed their resistance to prostitution and sex trafficking. On each day of the conference, 16 women from around the world came together in spontaneous, public consciousness-raising discussions about the connections between global trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women in their own areas including women who have left prostitution, front-line workers, academics, community organizers and others.

Storytelling and traditional Nunavut Songs

The plenaries and workshops we attended:

• Breaking Ceilings in Mixed Organizations: Commonalities in Experiences from Nicaragua, Cuba and Canada
• Harms of the Pornography Industry: Re-igniting Feminist Resistance
• Towards Inclusion: Amplifying Women’s Leadership and Voices in the International Development Process
• Violencia Contra la Mujer: Sexual, Social, Sistémico
• Flesh Mapping: Prostitution in a Globalized World
• RCMP Accountability? Review of Yukon’s Police Force 2010
• Where is the Love? RE/thinking Feminist Workplaces
• Challenges and Possibilities of Transnational and Cross-Cultural Feminist Self-Making
• Importance of the Seal for Inuit Women
• Addressing Sexual Violence with Young Women of Colour and Immigrant/Refugee Girls
• Storytelling and traditional Nunavut Songs
• Developing Leadership in a New Generation of Women of an Invisible Minority

A Global Team

The energy was vibrant throughout this gathering, as women felt a strong need to come together and make others witness of the issues that are affecting women in their countries. We leave with hope knowing that there are women everywhere, scholars, community organizers, food growers, writers, artists, mothers, daughters and grandmothers who have and will continue the fight against violence against women, for gender equality, for justice for all and who are moved by the hope to change the world for future generations. To these women we say thank you for their determination and for the reminder that we CAN and WILL make a change and that we are not alone. Thank you for being our witness.

We, here at Battered Women’s Support Services, will continue our hard work of ending violence against women; we are re-energized by the awareness that what we are doing is working and that we have a global team to collaborate and hope with.

We are grateful for the financial support from The Law Foundation of BC and Women’s Worlds 2011 for making our attendance possible

In consultation with the University of Calgary Moot team and in preparation for the 2011 Kawaskimhon Moot held in Vancouver from March 5-7, 2011, Battered Women’s Support Services initiated a call for a Royal Commission on Violence against Aboriginal Girls and Women. A royal commission has the ability to address the historic, social, legal, economic, child welfare and political challenges facing Aboriginal girls and women across Canada, while recognizing that violence against Aboriginal girls and women is a grave national concern.

In order to redress systemic inequality and to eliminate this violence, BWSS stresses that there is a responsibility by all to address this issue. BWSS is recommending this Royal Commission on Violence Against Aboriginal Girls and Women not only to address the gaps and to address issues affecting Aboriginal women and girls, but to also make concrete and specific recommendations to end violence against Aboriginal women and girls at a national level.

Read the entire document here.

A Journey to Freedom: Supporting Refugee Women Who Are Dealing with Violence
By Rosa Elena Arteaga, Manager, Direct Services & Programs

At BWSS we have been supporting a number of refugee women who have experienced violence and who are going through their refugee process. During the last twelve months a high percentage of the women who accessed our services and who were going through their refugee process had their claims accepted.

It has been a long journey for the women to reach an official answer that acknowledges that they have the right to protection and freedom from abuse. Each woman has a journey that stems from their strength to escape from their abusive partners, from their country of origin, to the strength to come to an unknown country with the only hope to finally become free from violence. However, at their arrival, they had to face a system that does not understand violence against women and its effects as well as a system that does not understand the migration of abuse across the lifecycle, which follows girls and women through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and as elders.

What did it take for the women to succeed with their claim for freedom? For some of them, it took the support from a family member, a friend, or a neighbour who helped them to escape to Canada. In Canada, it took the support of an anti-violence women’s organization, BWSS, which assisted them to access the right lawyer, the right interpreter, and the right counsellor. BWSS team supported each by identifying and understanding the range of needs from forced migration, sexual violence, and intimate violence to the spectrum of cultural needs. It took an approach which identifies the strength, barriers, needs and support needed from settlement to empowerment.

It took the consistency and commitment of the BWSS team to support each woman’s journey through its programming such as legal advocacy, Stopping The Violence counselling, language specific support groups, and employment program. For the majority of the women their refugee process took more than a year and during that year they were consistently accessing BWSS programs. In addition, it took the willingness of their immigration lawyers to learn and understand about the impacts of abuse. The lawyers became aware that women’s lost of memory, lack of trust, and their overwhelming fear does not relate to their intellectual capacity, cultural background or the veracity of their story, rather it relates to the impact of the violence that they have experienced though their whole life.

Finally, it took the women’s strength and resilience to escape from violence, to expose themselves to strangers and tell their stories, their consistency in contacting their friends, neighbours, family, women’s organizations in their countries of origin so they could gather evidence and expose that gender violence is a social issue and that women’s right to protection is not merely granted.

After a long and painful journey each woman has identified her unique strength, her value, her success and her right to live free from violence. We at BWSS stand and work in solidarity with all women who are on a journey to freedom.

In the Fifty-fifth Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, it was agreed that although girls suffer severe gender discrimination and abuse, they remain “Crucial Constituents for Change”

Read more about this session’s conclusions, including the assertion that “more be done by States and communities to ensure stronger penalties for perpetrators and legal recourse for victims,” here.

Battered Women’s Support Services will march in the International Day for the Elimination of Racism on Sunday, March 20th in downtown Vancouver-Coast Salish Territories. We will be marching alongside community members coming together to commemorate the struggle and strength of Indigenous and racialized people while we continue our fight against all forms of oppression.

The march will begin from the Waterfront Skytrain Station at 2:00 pm.

For more information, click here.

One year after the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the Olympic Village is a ghost town. While developers and marketers try many different tricks to recoup tax-payer’s money, housing activists want the promise of social housing delivered. At noon on Saturday, they held a  Housing Rally, calling for safe, affordable housing within the empty units at the Olympic Village and beyond.

Read about the housing crisis in Vancouver here and here.

Read about the empty Olympic Village here.

Read more about the rally and tent village here.

UPDATE: Protesters were ordered off of the property in the Olympic Village by VPD, 10 were arrested and released without charges, read more here.

“It’s hard enough to get a job today. Imagine trying to enter the workforce after spending nearly two decades in a refugee camp. That’s the harsh reality for more than 40 million people around the globe who are currently displaced by armed conflict, human rights abuses and natural disasters. Forced to flee their homes and their jobs, they’ve been thrust into a world with little means of supporting themselves and their families.”

Read the entire article about the Women’s Refugee Commission is working on that problem in its three-year Livelihoods Project and watch a video on Care2.com