We are
IM-Defensoras
Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders
We call our political project to take care of ourselves together:
Feminist Holistic Protection (FHP)How can you have secure communication with IM-Defensoras?
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Feminist Holistic Protection
What is Feminist Holistic Protection?
The struggles of women who defend human rights within different social movements present a threat to the powerful, that is why they attack us and seek to silence us.
Caring for ourselves collectively is transgressive, transformative; it is an act of historical justice and a way of building lives worth living.
Feminist Holistic Protection (FHP) is the pact of caring among ourselves as women defenders against all forms of violence that affect us.
It is based on four main pillars:
1. Care is at the center of our activism.
Care is a right, a need, and a principle of the world we want to build.
2. Defiance.
We are political subjects, diverse, transgressive, present in all social movements. We have our own ways of facing violence.
3. Context Analysis.
We question the system that harms and exploits our bodies and territories, and we analyze risk through this lens.
4. Networks Save Lives!
Protection is a collective process and capacity. Collective care is what allows our struggles to continue.
Through FHP, women defenders can strengthen our capacity to take collective action against violence, because this is the only way that our communities and organizations will be able to continue fighting for a better world.
Through Feminist Holistic Protection, we build life.
How do we do it?
We accompany women defenders, their organizations and communities facing situations of violence: risk analysis, protection plans, psychosocial support, health, healing, respite spaces, among other
We use a feminist lens to document the violence that women defenders experience in each country and regionally through the Mesoamerican Registry of Attacks
We promote self-care, collective care, and healing to recover from violence and to build a joyful activism that is not based on sacrifice; we have two houses – La Serena in Mexico and La Siguata in Honduras
We conduct advocacy and communications for protection: we embody support for women defenders’ struggles, we alert about violence, we demand that States and other spaces of power take responsibility, we activate solidarity
We promote digital care, building infrastructure and capacity for digital security and self-care in response to the growing virtualization of life
We mobilize resources to organize and protect ourselves with autonomy, based on our needs and knowledge
We systematize our experiences and learnings, developing FHP to strengthen our work and create collective knowledge
We weave national networks of protection among and for women defenders in Mesoamerica; these networks are the heart of our work