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“Political training for women’s organizations in Ecuador” is one of the best resilience practices developed by the organization Movimiento Nacional de Mujeres Luna Creciente, from Ecuador, one of the members of the Feminist Land Platform (FLP).

The work of Luna Creciente has been extremely relevant for empowering women leaders on political knowledge, mechanisms, and tools to drive processes to conduct the local development based on their own culture and goals.

“Luna Creciente brings together more than 300 organizations of women from popular sectors, with a great diversity regarding age, nationality, and geographical location, encompassing all the regions of Ecuador”, says Clara Merino, the organization’s executive director.

FLP mapped some of the best resilience practices of our members so that other communities and organizations can learn and adapt tools and strategies to their local realities. This is part of a series of articles detailing the practices of each organization. Check out our blog to read the others!

Political training for women’s organizations in Ecuador

Working towards advocacy and incidence in the municipalities, this practice was designed by Luna Creciente to include activities that stimulate the exchange of knowledge, cultural values, and traditions between the various groups of women’s organizations involved in it.

About 4.500 women from 322 communities in 6 provinces of different parts of Ecuador (coast, mountains, and Amazonian region) have already been beneficiaries of this practice, that started in June 2001.

The activities performed by Luna Creciente include:

• National and local schools of political and feminist training, integral health, women’s rights, and conjuncture analysis.
• Comprehensive mapping of each province and/or communities led by grassroots women.
• National Congresses once per year (when they had greater economic resources these were done up to 3 times per year and in different provinces).
• Spaces for analysis of the SDGs, climate change and local, national, and international situation.
• Small economic ventures and bartering.
• Defense of women’s land rights together with men, especially young people, having already formed three groups for land defense and support for women’s organizations.

This was considered a best practice that serves as inspiration to other FLP members and women’s rights organizations in general because it has allowed the growth of the Luna Creciente movement and helped empower of women, increase the respect for their families and communities and promote greater awareness of the rights of women and impoverished communities.

The practice is developed fundamentally in indigenous communities (68% indigenous, 7% quilombolas and 25% mestizos) made up of organized women. The valorization and respect of the various cultures and traditions and their participation in a national movement has been fundamental to the process.

“Our Feminist Political Training School has been promoting, throughout all these years, the confluence, understanding and organized political work of women from different organizations who fight for land and territories, also contemplating our body as the first territory”, explains Clara Merino.

For developing the actions, Luna Creciente has counted on the partnership of theNational Coalition of Women of Ecuador and the Plurinational Platform of Women and Feminists, besides Indigenous Movement, Workers’ Movement, Alternative Media, and Other Feminist Organizations.

Among the results of the work, Luna Creciente pointed out the affirmation of proposals and enforceability of rights to local governments and in conjunction with other organizations to some spaces of the Government, National Assembly and State.

In the current political situation of Ecuador, extractivism, laws against women and impoverished peoples and different kinds of violence are increasing. Therefore, actions like these are extremely important in the fight for a just and equal society.

Representatives of seven organizations that make up the Feminist Land Platform (FLP) participated in the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), promoted by the United Nations in New York (USA).

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On March 7, 2023, FLP convened a round table discussion alongside CSW67, organized in partnership with OXFAM International and sponsored by the Ford Foundation, entitled “Expanding Women´s Land Rights to Guarantee Environmental Sustainability and Dignified Living Conditions. Thirty women from Latin America, Northern Africa, Africa, the United States, and Europe, representing women’s and feminists organizations from diverse constituencies and plural voices and analysis, participated in the event in response to the need to expand the size and quality of strategies for resistance and change, through building a network involving organizations that are working on women’s land rights and the environment.

Responding to FLP´s call to form alliances to occupy strategic spaces at all levels by engaging feminist organizations and leaders in active participation and decision-making processes affecting the lives of women´s rights to land, we agree on:

• Positioning ourselves as a non-partisan movement focused on a contra-hegemonic, decolonial and anti-oppression resistance to gender inequality relating to land & natural resources. Hence every action we take goes against structural racism and all its facets, manifested in elements such as race, gender, class, caste, religion, culture, and sexual preference, among others.
• Opposing the criminalization of social movements that threatens democratic processes and institutions, human rights, and human rights defenders, evidenced by the shrinking of democratic spaces worldwide through the abuse of military or police forces, often legitimatized by normative rules put in place.
• Rejecting all ongoing forms of political/state violence and abuse through human rights violations which mainly affects women and children in all areas of their lives – health, education, housing, land, livelihoods, etc.
• Rejecting militarization and imposition of global policies that go against resistance and rebellion of impoverished populations in their legitimate right to protest.
• Supporting and contributing to an increase in knowledge, evidenced by local experience, in confronting fundamentalisms of a neoliberal and extractive system and authoritarian governments and neofascist groups which are putting democracy at risk and colluding with the ongoing regression of fundamental rights for women and LGBTQI+ groups, witnessed in everyday aspects of life – religion, culture, and education.
• Acting as a catalyst – through messages, statements, knowledge production, and campaigns with elements from local-based organizing – thus challenging the dissemination of fake news and defending women´s rights to land locally, regionally, and globally.
• Deepening regional analysis and consensus in defense of democracies by bringing together feminist women’s organizations with independent political partnership.
• Promoting the Escazú Agreement, especially regarding food sovereignty and in defense of land and territories.
• Fostering solidarity with other feminist and women’s groups, organizations, and social movements while strengthening the political agenda for women and their struggles on the ground over body-land-territories.

Call to action

As a call for action in our collective positioning towards a real transformative gender intersectional agenda for women’s land rights movements and supporters, we agreed on the need to urgently implement and advocate for the following:

• Empower young women on political decolonial feminism.
• Ensure that grassroots women, who are in the forefront of the fight for land and environmental rights, are listened to for what they need most from other sectors to help in the defense of their territory.
• Strengthen movements as an important bridge for grassroots organizations to position themselves and learn from a variety of experiences worldwide.
• Consider oppressive geopolitical and economic structures that exploit peoples and territories in the global south, especially women, in all analysis and advocacy.
• Exchange strategies that as women we have built in the defense of our territory at local and regional levels.
• Plan new strategies for advocacy across borders so that we can widen and strengthen our voices.
• Work globally to position transformative practices and attitudes that create a collective agenda.
• Educate men to learn and perceive their privileges, understanding that the bodies of women belong to women only and men must respect that and value it.
• Work collectively in platforms creating solidarity, and support other women who are unable to express their voices due to oppressive systems.
• Build information and knowledge from the ground to serve as evidence for advocacy, as international institutions need access to this.
• Insist that donors be well informed by grassroots women and their organizations, understanding and respecting their work and needs based on their specific realities. Donor support must respond to the needs of these women, strengthen their local work in their different contexts, and enable them to directly advocate for and claim their rights at the international level.  
• Conduct research on previously identified roots causes and understand how they are structural.

Considering pressing global challenges that threaten democracies, the environment, marginalized groups, global peace and life itself, and bringing to the center of all discussions our positioning and the urgent actions indicated above to bring about transformation, we demand  inclusion, participation, the end of all types of violence, and support for our movements at the community level so that we are able to conduct our trainings, exchange experiences among our movements, and continue to learn from each other.

      Finally, we call on everyone present at the CSW67 to join forces in the struggle for gender justice and women’s rights to land and territories as well as to unite, amplify voices and analysis from women’s struggles for diverse constituencies, building alliances to bring change to address oppressive practices and social norms for a just and equal society for all.

There is a diversity of practices that show the richness of the territorial work carried out by the organisations that make up the Feminist Land Platform (FLP), a network of organisations that fight for women’s land rights in the Global South.

We’ve decided to map these practices to get a broader view of the work done in each territory and allow the other communities to learn and adapt tools and strategies to their local realities. 

The best resilience practices that were mapped focus on four thematic areas:

a) Women’s rights to lands and territories (successful tools and processes);

b) Political training for women’s leadership;

c) Agroecology and forest, land and territory management and;

d) Safe access to water.

You can find below a visual representation of the thematic areas included in each organisation’s work, followed by more information about each of the thematic areas and a list of some of the practices.

Thematic areas

Agroecology

Agroecology has been applied in a variety of ways and it has proven to be a strong ally in managing forests, lands and territory.  For instance, agroecological practices and seed wealth preservation allow for women of landowning and landless class food and seed sovereignty. Additionally, backyard urban gardens for self-consumption have reduced food insecurity in which people find themselves as a result of the loss of their livelihoods. The development and maintenance of urban gardens responds to contemporary needs: community strengthening, landscape improvement, urban habitability, leisure, environmental education, use of rainwater, and improvement of the economy and food autonomy. Agroecology efforts have been carried out by Fundación Plurales, Espaço Feminista, Luna Creciente, MUDECI,  TIN HINAN, and UBINIG.

Right to land and territories

Women have fought to access their rights to land by using a variety of strategies to secure their ability to continue to strive and contribute to communities where they have chosen to live. These successful tools and processes involve accessing legal rights and building public policy that is culturally and gender sensitive and consonant with the relevance of historical processes of resistance. Initiatives include using technology to collect data that proves how long women have occupied their lands and dwellings, cases of expropriation, as well as collecting data that contributes to strengthening women’s security and autonomy in their territories. This thematic area has been implemented by five FLP organizations in Latin America (Fundación Plurales, Espaço Feminista) and Africa (Fórum Mulher, AZUL, and PWESCR).

Climate adaptation

Climate change has become a major threat to humanity. As a result, natural disasters, droughts, and shortage of natural resources have become commonplace globally.  Though it has affected all countries, climate change has had greater impact on the poorest and most vulnerable.  “The consequences of climate change now include, among others, intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity[1].” Initiatives focused on safe access to water to address climate change have been carried out by Plurales, Luna Creciente, and TIN HINAN.

Advocacy

If one considers that every choice is political act, then political awareness is an essential tool for transforming the world. Political training is one of the main ways to promote discussions and understanding about differences aiming for equity. When taken towards promoting autonomy and empowerment of women in different aspects and levels it becomes one of the pillars of the feminisms emancipation processes. Political training for women´s leadership initiatives have been carried out by Plurales, Espaço Feminista, Luna Creciente, Fórum Mulher, and PWECR.

Governance

This thematic area is often derived from political training for women leaders.  It allows for political visibility and perspective, from a general to particular contexts in communities. It targets actions to address violations by actors who contribute directly or indirectly to climate crisis and the damage to women’s territories and bodies. Hence, the most effective strategies to promote such governance is through the development of common intervention agendas which influence directly the ability of women to occupy positions of power. This allows them to make informed decisions that have positive impacts on their right to land and territory as well as increases their ability to address threats face as a result of climate change. Political participation of women – through the leadership they play in their communities and in the relationship that they establish with public authorities – is key to ensuring communal territory governance. The FLP organizations working on this issue include Espaço Feminista, Luna Creciente, TIN HINAN, and PWESCR.

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[1] United Nations Climate Action. In https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change.

Best resilience practices

Country: Mali

Organisation: TIN HINAN MALI

Responsible person: Fadimata Walet ABDALAH.

Practice: Participation of the women of Banguikogho in the management of their forest area.

Country: Morocco

Organisation: AZUL

Responsible person: Amina AMHARECH

Practice: Application to collect cases of spoliation.

Country: Tanzania

Organisation: Pastoral Women’s Council Tanzania

Responsible person: Ruth Kihiu

Practice: Advancing the Land Rights of Indigenous Women in Northern Tanzania.

Country: Argentina

Organisation: Plurales Foundation

Responsible person: Marta Esber

Practices:

• Training at the Intersection of Environmental Justice and Gender.
• Access to Safe Water
• Reforestation and productive practice with the carob tree.
• Women Environmental Defenders Program.
  

Country: Brazil

Organisation: Espaço Feminista do Nordeste para Democracia e Direitos Humanos

Responsible person: Anamaria Melo and Natali Lacerda

Practices:

• Productive inclusion of agroecological basis – Strengthening the autonomy and identity of rural women: agroecology, food sovereignty and network of women producers.
• Feminist and anti-racist political formation – strengthening the identity and autonomy of women through formative processes and the strengthening of networks.
• Land regularization as a guarantee of women’s right to land – Strengthening safety and autonomy – individual and collective of women.
  

Country: Ecuador

Organisation: Movimiento Nacional de Mujeres Luna Creciente

Responsible person: Clara Merino

Practice: Political training for women’s organizations in Ecuador

Country: Mexico

Organisation: Mujeres, Democracia y Ciudadanía A.C

Responsible person: Elsa María Arroyo Hernández

Practice: Urban Agriculture Training Center

Country: Bangladesh

Organisation: UBINIG (Policy Research for Development Alternative)

Responsible person: Farida Akhter

Practice: Nayakrishi agroecological practices and Seed wealth preservation

The Feminist Land Platform mapped some of the best resilience practices of our members, so that other communities and organisations can learn and adapt tools and strategies to their local realities.

This is part of a series of articles detailing the practices of each organisation. Check out our blog to read the others!

Title of the practice: Participation of the women of Banguikogho in the management of their forest area.

The women of the Kel Tin Touhoun community of Banguikogho begin the implementation of their right on the management of the territory and in particular the forest area and the rights of women in general (intellectual property, benefit sharing).

Location: The population is located on the site of Banguikogho which is located 17 km from Gargando (capital of the commune) circle of Goundal, Timbuktu region.  The tribe is located in a valley between the small tourist mountain Tin houn imalolnenene (the white laps) and a forest area of Grewia tenax, Grewia, but also balanites..

Beneficiaries from the practice: It is estimated at about 1,000 people according to the Gargandao town hall and the Banguikogho site manager, Women represent 50% of the population so 500 people including young people. They are nomadic pastoralists, practice market gardening during winter periods, gathering and traditional hunting.

Starting date: The community began organizing for their survival and the protection of their environments around 1999.

Communities involved: The whole region of Timbuktu and in particular the area where Banguikogho is located are experiencing recurrent droughts that destroy biodiversity including trees, plants, animals. Water points are drying up.  The community started by advocating for water. They did not have access to humanitarian assistance from UN agencies, government institutions. The limited support provided by Living Earth, Tin Hinan/FIMI has not been able to solve this problem definitively.  From 2011 to the present day, a group of women and young women from Banguikogho has been formed to enhance its role in the management of their forest environment and space. At the very beginning, women, despite the traditional role they played in protecting biodiversity and the environment, remained invisible and speechless.

Partners or allies for the initiation and development of the practice: Tin Hinan and Les Eaux et Forêts.  FIMI was an implementing partner of the Traditional Knowledge project.

Description of the practice: The aspects to be remembered from the best practice of the site and the women of Banguikogho are mainly focused on mitigating the effects of climate change through the traditional knowledge of pastoralist women and adaptation to climate change.

Results:

• Trained 30 people in Gargando/Banguikogho, (Timbuktu, Mali), (15 adults and 15 young people) in plant production techniques and botanical garden maintenance;
• Trained 20 people in the technique of picking and processing the products of Tarakate and In-fine fruit trees in Banguikogho.
• Trained 30 people in marketing including packaging, labelling, product approval.
• Participation in the development of a compendium on traditional knowledge
• Participation in the national workshop organized in Timbuktu on international processes for the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity agreement, WIPO (one in Mali and one in Burkina Faso). It should be noted that this was the 1st time that women and young people from this community participated in an event outside Banguikogho.
• Participation in the sub-regional exchange and training workshop that served at the same time for the revitalization of the network of indigenous women of West Africa (OAFA).
• The achievements of the project have been capitalized by the Banguikogho site because the activities initiated continue to be carried out. Tin Hinan continues to collaborate with the site.
• The visibility was made through a video and photos. The women of Banguikogho are beneficiaries of the project implemented by Tin Hinan “Pastoral Women of the Sahel in Movement”.
• The women of Banguikogho are therefore members of the Sahel Pastoral Women’s Movement.

Challenges: Overcome insecurity with the presence of fanatical groups in the vicinity of the commune. Droughts and the water problem persist.