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Gender & Sexual Solidarity: News & Updates

Event
Reproductive Rights Across the Americas
April 7, 2021

Join us for a conversation about reproductive rights activism across the Americas. With panelists from Colombia, El Salvador, Argentina, and Cleveland, this will be an opportunity for all participants to expand their global perspectives and build transnational solidarity.

The panelists include Cinthia Rodriguez from Citizen Coalition for the Decriminalization of Abortion in El Salvador, Kai Kyles from All Options in Cleveland, Ohio, Valeria Pedraza Benavides from Women's Link in Colombia, and Rocío Cruz Alverez from Mumalá Nacional in Argentina.

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News Article
Colombia: Midwives Braving Armed Gangs
March 1, 2021
The Pacific port city of Buenaventura has a long history of violent conflict, which led to it being dubbed Colombia's "capital of horror". Since 1988, armed gangs have battled for territorial control of drug routes out of the port and carried out gruesome dismemberments in "casas de pique" (Spanish for chop houses). Buenaventura is now suffering a new wave of violence, and midwives like Feliciana Hurtado put themselves at risk by confronting armed fighters to help women living in violent areas deliver babies.
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News Article
Colombia: UN Human Rights report shows rising violence and inequality
February 25, 2021
Widespread violence continued to impact Colombia’s most vulnerable and marginalised communities and social groups in 2020, according to the annual report on the country by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The report also found alarming levels of inequality, with women badly affected, and lack of access to essential services, with some regions lacking clean water and medical care. In many instances, the Colombian state has failed to address security and humanitarian concerns, particularly in regions long impacted by conflict, structural poverty and historic state abandonment. The global pandemic also impacted on the human rights of the population. Among its recommendations, the OHCHR prioritised full implementation of the peace agreement in addressing the endemic violence which has claimed hundreds of lives since late 2016.
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News Article
Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras: A Pandemic within a Pandemic: Violence in Latin America against Women and the LGBTQ+ Community during COVID-19
February 12, 2021
The Latin America Working Group (based in Washington, DC) has been monitoring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on human rights across the region. This blog is focused specifically on the impact of the pandemic on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. The following are brief summaries that capture the situation for women and members of the LGBTQ+ community since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and to call attention to the lack of support and urgency behind addressing this violence by these governments.
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News Article
Honduras: Human Rights Monitor - January 2021
January 31, 2021
The humanitarian crisis in Honduras found international attention this month as the first and biggest migration caravan since the corona pandemic took off in mid-January. A combination of a pandemic, two hurricanes hitting Honduras in later 2020, an abysmal response by the JOH regime and a lack of perspective among the corruption and human rights violation left again thousands of Honduras without any other option that trying to leave. Congress also showed again how it rather worsens the situation of minorities and vulnerablized groups by changing the constitution to forever ban same-sex marriage and abortions instead of using its power to improve the situation of Honduras. There were also setbacks in the Berta Cáceres case and the Guapinol case. Further corruption cases were undermined, meanwhile Honduras dropped further in an international corruption index. Last but not least, JOH’s drug trafficking links prominently reappeared in the national and international headlines thanks to newly released court documents from New York. Welcome to another month in Honduras.
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Event
Memory and Resistance: A Social Justice Art Show marks IRTF's 40th anniversary
October 20, 2020 to January 30, 2021
The spirit of IRTF’s 40th anniversary theme, Memory and Resistance, is seen and felt in the juried artwork expressing contemporary justice issues of our time. The artwork honors the memories of past and present advocates on whose shoulders we have stood and who inspire us to envision a world of peace and dignity for all. Inspired by the martyrdom of Cleveland women Jean Donovan and Sister Dorothy Kazel in El Salvador in 1980, we will highlight, celebrate, and commemorate our collective legacies of resistance with a series of Memory and Resistance programming over the next year.
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News Article
Colombia: Nowhere is safe as country confronts alarming surge in femicides
January 24, 2021
Four-year-old María Ángel Molina was recently found dead in rural Colombia, making her one of 18 confirmed cases of femicide this year- with 13 more cases pending verification. Rights groups are concerned about the safety of women and girls, particularly during lockdowns due to coronavirus which forces them indoors with abusive men. Femicide Foundation Colombia, an NGO that provides support for women and tracks gender-based violence, in 2020 confirmed 229 femicides, of which 35 were girls, and is trying to verify a further 260 cases. Horrifying murders of women and girls are not uncommon in Colombia, and are sometimes committed by authority figures. In June 2020, scandal engulfed the military after seven soldiers gang-raped a 13-year-old indigenous girl. “We know that this is not an isolated issue, it is structural,” said Aida Quilcue, at the time a human rights adviser at the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC).
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Guatemala 1/15/2021
January 15, 2021
We wrote to the attorney general of Guatemala regarding the criminalization of the Reverend Delia Adelina Leal Mollinedo, a Christian minister in Cobán, Alta Verapaz Department. In December she was providing hospitality for two young women in a precarious, unsafe living situation who sought refuge at her home. On December 29, police broke into her home and arrested her on charges of kidnapping, trafficking of minors, and obstruction of an investigation. She was not permitted to appear before a judge until January 6. She was eventually released from jail and placed under house arrest on January 11. We believe the charges against Delia Leal have been fabricated because of her human rights work on behalf of women and children. We are therefore urging that authorities in Guatemala: 1) immediately drop all charges against Delia Adelina Leal Molinedo and release her from house arrest; 2) take all necessary measures to guarantee her safety and security; 3) guarantee in all circumstances that all human rights defenders are able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions and judicial harassment.
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras, 1/14/2021
January 14, 2021
There was an attack on the home of LGBTI rights defender José Zambrano., who is receiving death threats. The day after he received the Franco-German Award for Human Rights and the Rule of Law in recognition of his four decades of human rights work, attackers set fire to his home. After he and three members of his family took shelter in another house, unknown individuals sent him death threats. We are urging that officials in Honduras: 1) investigate those responsible for setting fire to José Zambrano’s house and threatening his life, publish the results, and bring those responsible to justice; 2) ensure the right of human rights activists to carry out their work for justice in safety, under protection of the law.
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News Article
El Salvador: No Safe Haven for LGBTQ People in El Salvador; Strengthen Protections, End Asylum Pact with US
January 8, 2021
IRTF has been connecting with the LGBTQ+ community in El Salvador especially since we co-organized the first-ever LGBTQ+ delegation from Ohio to Central America in 2013. While visiting El Salvador, we have become friends with many transgender persons (particularly transgender women). Here in the US, we’ve also gotten to know many who have fled to the US seeking refuge and asylum. This new “cooperative agreement” makes an almost impossible asylum process even more impossible. But there might be hope: US President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to terminate the deeply flawed agreement.
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