Central American Women Put Their Lives on the Line for Human Rights Jo Tuckman - The Guardian
go to original March 3, 2014

A woman marches towards Chihuahua state local government building in Mexico City to protest against violence. (Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images)

MEXICO CITY - No one could accuse Berta Cáceres of being faint-hearted. The leading Honduran indigenous activist has endured multiple threats, systematic judicial harassment and smear campaigns because of her efforts to keep indigenous lands in Honduras free of companies that plunder their natural resources.

Cáceres describes all this as "just part of the struggle", but says that without solidarity from her peers, it could all be over. "The solidarity is why I am alive and why I am here," she told a recent meeting of the Mesoamerican Human Rights Defenders' Initiative (IM-Defensoras) in the Mexican capital. "And, of course, we are committed to continue."

IM-Defensoras is a three-year-old effort to provide women rights defenders in the region with protection mechanisms that are gender-sensitive and adapted to different contexts, and that go beyond traditional options usually focused on organizing some kind of police guard or facilitating exile.

The initiative includes women's rights activists ranging from some, like Cáceres, who focus on large collective campaigns to defend land and cultural rights, to activists in El Salvador who support women who have been imprisoned for abortion, which carries heavy sentences, even if a woman's life is endangered by a pregnancy.

Read the rest at The Guardian

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