WE ARE RESISTANCE, WE ARE EMBRACE.

2025 marks the 15th anniversary of the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IM-Defensoras). Since our birth in April 2010, in Oaxaca, Mexico, at the 1st Regional Meeting of Women Human Rights Defenders of Mesoamerica, we have spent 15 years learning and working collectively to protect ourselves from the violence aimed at silencing us. 

These lessons and collective efforts have borne fruit in our commitment to Feminist Holistic Protection. With this as our foundation, we have cared for each other together, as a network, as a community, forming bonds and coming together with compañeras from a diversity of struggles and social movements who, from across different territories, sow the seeds of change, rebellion, and transformation to make this world a more just, equal, and livable place for all. 

Over the years, repressive policies and violence against us have only escalated. From 2010 to May 31, 2025, we have documented 45,796 attacks against at least 8,871 women defenders and 1,047 organizations in the region. The aim of these attacks is to halt the advancement of human rights and perpetuate the system of inequality. However, during these years, our collective ability to protect ourselves and safeguard our lives and our vital struggles has also grown. 

Today, fifteen years later, at IM-Defensoras we bring together more than three thousand women defenders and 240 organizations through three national networks of women defenders based in El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico, as well as solidarity networks forged with colleagues in Nicaragua and Guatemala. We have made and ratified our Pact to Care Among Ourselves, which means that we organize nationally and regionally to protect ourselves, that we accompany each other in times of risk, that we address fatigue and the impact of violence, and that we mobilize in our territories to support one another and strengthen our protection capacities based on our diverse knowledge and realities. 

In all these years, we have accompanied more than 26 thousand women defenders, their families and organizations in risk situations; we have documented violence in the territories of our region through our Mesoamerican Registry of Attacks on Women Human Rights Defenders; we have promoted the culture and practice of self-care, collective care, healing, and digital care as fundamental tools for the sustainability of our struggles, and we have several spaces for respite and healing for women human rights defenders. 

Based on the needs and narratives of women defenders in their contexts, we have built our own voice and developed a range of communication and advocacy strategies for protection in partnership and solidarity with organizations and movements from different parts of the world. We have also mobilized resources to strengthen our protection and documented the lessons learned from our political-strategic framework and our practice. 

None of this would have been possible without the commitment, effort, wisdom, and generosity of all the people, fellow activists, organizations, donors, human rights mechanisms, and other entities we have encountered along the way. 

In a worldwide landscape where the brutalities of oppressive powers can make us feel like there's nothing to celebrate, we say: 

We celebrate our resilience and our stubbornness in surviving and continuing to fight against this system of death!

We celebrate our commitment to care among ourselves and to make care the center of our political action—and of the world we want to build!

We celebrate because we honor the struggles of our ancestors and all the hope and joy they passed on to us!

As they say in our region when there is a big party, we are going to “throw the house through the window” (go overboard) and celebrate for a whole year!

• We will begin our celebrations by joining in the 15th anniversary of the National Network of Women Defenders in Honduras: “Fifteen years of intensifying hope together.”

• We will launch the artivism campaign “Radical care in a world on fire,” which will culminate during the Global Campaign of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence and the International Day of Women Human Rights Defenders.

• We will engage in dialogue with allies to address the challenges of protecting women human rights defenders in the current context.

• We will celebrate the Third Mesoamerican Gathering of Women Human Rights Defenders.

We want to celebrate our fifteenth anniversary with you, the defenders who are our reason for being; with the National Networks, which are our heart; with our partner organizations and human rights mechanisms that have generously responded to our calls; with donor agencies that have provided us with the resources necessary to carry out our work; with all those who have collaborated at some point in our history to make this possible. To all of you, we say thank you, thank you so much! for contributing to the creation of a network of support and solidarity that makes it possible to continue protecting the sustainability of our struggles, which are, after all, everyone's struggles; and we invite you to join our celebration.  

How can you get involved? 

• By participating in the artivism campaign (poetry, literature, music, visual arts, etc.) “Radical care in a world on fire.”

• By becoming one of our celebration feminist godmothers.

• By participating in dialogues on the challenges of protecting women defenders in today’s context.

If you are interested in joining us, please contact us through the national networks of defenders or by email: info@im-defensoras.org with the subject line “15 years.”

2025 marks the 15th anniversary of the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IM-Defensoras). Through Feminist Holistic Protection, we care among ourselves as women defenders from different social movements to protect ourselves from the violence that seeks to silence our lives and our struggles. For us, caring for ourselves is a right, and it is also a necessity in the context of a world on fire due to the policies of dispossession, destruction and inequality that they seek to impose on us. Caring among ourselves is also a radical decision that sustains our movements and builds the world we want to see.

And so, as part of our anniversary celebration, we want to learn about, share and disseminate the many ways in which women defenders, personally and collectively, take care and protect ourselves from violence. To this end, we invite all our sister defenders, allies and friends to let loose your creativity and send us your experiences and reflections through creative forms and language. Art, as well as being a form of expression, can be an experience in personal and collective care. Creative processes are healing; sharing the expressions and creations that result from these processes is also a way of embracing each other and caring among ourselves.

🌍What’s this about?

It’s about sharing, through creativity and artistic expression in all its forms, your experience about how women defenders care for ourselves – both collectively and individually. We want to bring visibility to our care practices as radical acts of resistance, healing and protection.

🎨🖋️🎤🩰🎬What can you send?

• A video, a photograph, an audio or a text file that documents the fruit of your creativity in any form of artistic expression: drawing, engraving, painting, sculpture, performance, dance, theater, photography, collage, poetry, video poetry, narration, storytelling, installation, video art, muralism, graffiti, singing, rap, among many others...

• Ideally, they should be original works, created individually or collectively by a woman defender or group of defenders who sign it and send it to us. Published works are accepted as long as they are original by the person who submits it, and it is not subject to property rights. We cannot publish works from third parties without their consent.

• Participation is made freely and in solidarity – unpaid. We want to make it clear that the rights over the works presented will always belong to their authors, who may request its withdrawal at any time.

• Regarding language, the invitation is open to expressions in any of the indigenous languages of Abya Yala, as well as in Spanish and in any other language spoken on the planet. For works that are not originally in Spanish, please attach a translation in Spanish or English. The translation will only be displayed as a subtitle accompanying the original version, which will always be the main version.

• This is about celebrating, healing and caring for ourselves through creativity and connection among women defenders, so we cannot accept works produced partially or entirely with artificial intelligence.

💜Who can participate?

Women and people with dissident sex-gender identities who identify themselves as human rights defenders – including healers, activists, friends and allies of IM-Defensoras – from anywhere in the world and who support the principles of Feminist Holistic Protection.

📩How can you participate?

Send your work to: info@im-defensoras.org

Subject: Radical care

Include:

• File that is 10 MB max (if possible)

• Name of the author or collective

• Title of the work

• (Optional) A brief sentence stating how the work connects to radical care in a world on fire

• Brief bio / who am I/are we?

📅Deadline: The invitation is open until 20 November 2025. Throughout the year, we will be sharing the works received through our social media channels, newsletters and Telegram channels.

✨On 29 November, International Day of Women Human Rights Defenders, we will close the cycle with a special surprise.

🔥This call is only part of the celebrations taking place throughout 2025-2026.

#SomosResistenciaSomosAbrazo

#CuidadoRadical