The International Feminist Network (IFN) was proposed at the International Tribunal of Crimes Against Women in Brussels in March 1976. Its purpose is to mobilize support and solidarity among women on an international scale when needed; for example, by sending telegrams and letters in support of victims of rape and sterilization abuse, abortion campaigns, strikes, court cases and other women's struggles.
ISIS coordinates the IFN by receiving information and passing it on very rapidly to specific national contact women, who are then responsible for disseminating the information within their own countries.
The IFN is expanding. Women in India and Mexico have recently begun to set up and coordinate the IFN in those countries. This is in addition to the 22 countries already in the network: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Federal Republic of Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA. We invite women from other countries who would like to work on a national network to write to us. Women in the countries listed above who would like to participate in the network can also write to us and we will put you in touch with the contact women in your country.
The tasks of the national network contact women are basically two. The first is to distribute the information and appeals for support in their country. Whenever ISIS receives an appeal for support, we duplicate it and send a copy to all the IFN contact women. They in turn duplicate the same information -- translating it if necessary -- and distribute it to as many "Women's groups and individuals as possible. Some of the ways this is being done are through feminist magazines and news- - letters, notices put up in women's houses, notices in the mass media or alternative press, by mail to women's groups around the country or through a telephone tree. We hope that the national contact women will report back to us about how the networks are working in their countries and also about what kind of response has been generated by the appeals. We would like to share this information around the network and exchange ideas.
Most of the appeals call for telegrams and letters to be sent in support of women in another country. Sometimes publicity is asked for and sometimes it is requested that women demonstrate. It is up to the women's movement in each country to decide if and how they will respond to the appeals for support. We would like to share ideas around the network on kinds of support and ways to generate response. We know from past experience that it does make a difference when women from many countries send in letters and telegrams, demonstrate and publicize the cases of women in other countries. The Noreen Winchester case is an example of -this (see ISIS Bulletin 8).
The second task of the IFN national contact women is to pass on to ISIS their own appeals for support and information, which ISIS will then distribute to the other members of the network. It is not only the national contact women who do this, however. Any woman anywhere can send us appeals for support, or can request information about campaigns needing international support.
Over the past year and a half the IFN has participated in many campaigns by giving support to women who have defended themselves against rape, victims of rape, women workers' struggles, abortion campaigns, and victims of sterilization abuse. We have supported women and campaigns in Latin America, North America, France, Italy, Northern Ireland, Portugal, South Korea, New Zealand and several other countries. Most recently the IFN has helped generate support for the International Abortion Campaign, for Dalila Zeghar Maschino, an Algerian woman kidnapped from her home in Canada by her brother and taken to Algeria, and for a young woman sentenced to a correctional convent in Mauritius for having an abortion. In the case of Dalila, groups responded not only with telegrams and letters but through demonstrations in front of the Algerian embassies in their countries. It is very exciting to see the International Feminist Network growing and we invite women everywhere to participate in it.