Gender & Sexual Solidarity: News & Updates

This Equal Exhange article tells the story of two women who found hope in cooperatives 

This article published in The Guaradian talks about the excruciating reality of criminalization faced by Salvadoran women who face obstetric emergencies.  

In March 2022, President Nayib Bukele – a populist who described himself as the “world’s coolest dictator” – assumed emergency powers and suspended civil rights in a move known as the “state of exception”. Framed as a temporary response to combat rampant gang violence, the crackdown has had far-reaching consequences for human rights and the justice system. Due process has been suspended, and about one in 50 adults imprisoned.

Advocates say those emergency powers have quietly expanded into hospitals, ensnaring women who suffer miscarriages, stillbirths and other obstetric emergencies. There is a new spiral of criminalization against women.

Protests rarely incite policy or cultural changes overnight. Often, their rates of impact are much more gradual. For that reason, looking at them through a historical lens – when movements can be digested in terms of years, or even decades – is a helpful way to appreciate the tangible effect of taking to the streets.

Thank you to all who gathered with IRTF on November 9 for our annual commemoration event to mark the 45th anniversary of the sacrifice of four US women missioners in El Salvador. In response to that horrific tragedy, people of faith and conscience in Cleveland founded IRTF as a way to carry forward their legacy—taking action in solidarity with oppressed and marginalized communities as they struggle for peace, dignity, and justice.

IRTF board and staff wishes to thank all the volunteers who helped us set up, decorate, run the event and pack up at the end of the night, Pilgrim Church for hosting us, the kitchen staff at Guanaquitas pupsería for preparing our dinner, Megan Wilson-Reitz for coordinating our social hour (and the many kitchen volunteers!), Salim and Lucía for coordinating our raffle/auction, Pastor Jay for running the tech, and all who participated in the service and speaker program.

To our 46 co-sponsors: Thank you for your financial support that helps us continue calling people into solidarity with oppressed peoples in Central America and Colombia. We are deeply appreciative of your affirmation of our mission and ongoing commitment to this important work.

The Trump administration has further dismantled legal protections for Honduran women fleeing gender-based violence. Recent U.S. immigration rulings have invalidated key “particular social group” (PSG) categories—such as “Honduran women unable to leave a relationship”—that previously allowed women to claim asylum based on gender persecution. These changes, effectively bar many victims of domestic and sexual violence from receiving asylum. The rulings ignore the deep links between private violence, organized crime, and state complicity in Honduras, which has the highest femicide rate in Latin America.

Members of the LGBTIQ+ community are among the most vulnerable of all populations in the Americas. Often they must migrate due to persecution, further increasing their vulnerability because of the marginalization migrants frequently endure, especially if they are Black, Indigenous, or otherwise non-White.

States’ responses to LGBTIQ+ migrants are vastly deficient throughout the hemisphere, including in the United States. They constitute a growing human rights crisis and a major lost opportunity for progress and prosperity.

The crime occurred in broad daylight and has terrified the LGBTQ+community living in Bello, Antioquia, particularly trans women. The family demands justice and asks that the victim, Sara Millerey, be remembered for her values and beauty, and not for the viral video of the brutal assault that led to her death.

You can read the RRN (Rapid Response Network) letter that IRTF sent to officials in Colombia about this horrific assassination at https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn/2025-05-06-000000.

To add your name as a signer on urgent human rights letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/RRN/join-RRN .