“Speaking of feminism and gender justice is also speaking of the building of a broader justice, which is what we want to achieve with the organization”, added the member of Friends of the Earth Brazil.

She was interviewed on Wednesday for Real World Radio together with Claudia Ramos-Guillén, of Otros Mundos Chiapas – Friends of the Earth Mexico, by the facilitator of FoEI´s Gender Justice – Dismantling Patriarchy working group, Celia Alldridge. This working group is holding its meeting outside San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas State, Mexico, in the Alter Natos alternative environmental center of Otros Mundos Chiapas.

This is the second meeting of the working group, after the first one held in Accra, capital of Ghana, in September 2017. FoEI representatives of all regions and structures of the environmental federation are participating.

This new meeting of the Gender Justice – Dismantling Patriarchy working group allows, according to Claudia, “to follow-up the building of our conceptual framework, the meaning of environmental and gender justice for FoEI, understanding that one cannot exist without the other”. In addition, the participants will evaluate the work carried out so far by the working group and the global situation based on grassroots experiences in the different regions. The aim is also to identify new goals for their work.

Claudia highlighted that despite the differences among the regions, at general level the group identifies “a clear advance of neoliberalism”, “and in the case of Latin America this is worse with the advance of the neoliberal right-wing”. In this sense, she denounced “a militarization project” in the region, and particularly “the militarization of the streets and the processes of justice in our countries”, and specifically made reference to the negative examples of Brazil, Paraguay and Honduras.

The representative of Otros Mundos Chiapas – Friends of the Earth Mexico said that the presence of military and police officers in these contexts of violence has consequences on “women who defend the land and the territory, who put their bodies daily on the struggles and their political role as defenders”. She also made reference to the “worsening of the criminalization of the rights over our body, the right to decide over our bodies, which are increasingly criminalized”, such as in the cases of abortion and the prohibition of same-sex marriage.

Meanwhile, Celia highlighted the link between the exploitation and control over women, their bodies, lives and work, and the exploitation and control over territories and nature.