Domestic and Sexual Violence Network Workshop: Isis International to coordinate network for 1991

Isis International was asked at the Fifth Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting to act as coordinator of the new Latin American and Caribbean Network against Sexual and Domesic Violence.

In each country there will be an organization to coordinate the National Network and maintain links with Isis International. Isis also undertook to bring up to date and make available to the Network the data base of institutions and groups which work on the issue of violence against women.

Participants of the Workshop at the meeting concluded: "Although we know this effort will enrich and strengthen our local and national work, we are also aware that it is fundamental to plan ways to support and nourish the Network, to make it as dynamic as possible and give it strong roots. To continue working along these lines the Network will meet again in mid-1991 in Rio de Janeiro, where it will continue to discuss the objectives and suategies for action for the next five years." This Network was created in November 1989 as the Southern Cone Domestic Violence Network at a meeting called by the Program for the Prevention of Domestic Violence of the "Lugar de Mujer" group in Buenos Aires. The second session on this theme took place in "La Morada" in Chile in May 1990. The original members included Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, and at the third meeting in San Bernardo the Network opened up considerably and several new members joined: Brazil, Bolivia, Columbia, Costa Rica, and the Latin American collectives from Toronto, Canada, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.

This Network objectives are:

  • to continue to provide an opportunity for exchange of information about work experiences;
  • to deepen and connect the work of institutions, organizations and women's groups in order to create national networks;
  • to make contact with public and private national institutions in order to get the problem of violence onto their respective agendas;
  • to develop the power to negotiate from a position of autonomy

Also as a result of these meetings, the Network's range was extended and it became "The Latin American and Caribbean Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence". It was agreed that its members must be women who participate in non-governmental groups and organizations, or women with a feminist perspective who work independently in this area.