FEACT Brazil organizations act to strengthen Gender Justice in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic
Communication from FEACT Brazil
Data from UN Women suggests that the number of female victims of violence is increasing as a result of the new coronavirus pandemic.
FEACT Brazil Collective Communication
With a number of countries adopting social isolation measures, approximately four billion people are now sheltering at home against the global contagion of the new coronavirus. This is a protective measure, but one that leads to another mortal danger. We are seeing a growing pandemic — violence against women.
One in every three women around the world has experienced violence. These numbers have grown as a result of the new coronavirus (Sars-CoV-2) pandemic, as noted in the report “The Shadow Pandemic — Violence Against Women and Girls and COVID-19”. The document was published in April by UN Women, a United Nations organization for gender equality and the empowerment of women.
In profoundly unequal countries such as Brazil, periods of quarantine reveal other realities — even more appalling violations of the rights of vulnerable populations to access land, territory, housing, work, basic sanitation, communication and food security. Gender violence is one more of these.
Black women are even more vulnerable to infection and to the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic, given that they form the majority of people living below the poverty line in Brazil. Women make up the majority who work in nursing, women make up the majority in domestic work, and are never valued or remunerated as they should be. Racism and sexism are vectors of death accentuated by the pandemic situation.
Click here to check out the report
The city of São Paulo saw an increase in the number of arrests for acts of domestic violence — rising from 177 in February to 268 in March.
Another example of this increase was seen in Blumenau (SC), where the incidence of domestic violence rose by 39%. Data for March 2020 from the Brazilian Forum of Public Security demonstrate a significant increase, compared to March 2019, in femicide within the home in São Paulo (46%), Acre (100%), Rio Grande do Norte (300%) and Mato Grosso (400%).
The ecumenical diakonia for gender justice has warned faith-based organizations about the urgent need to consider actions that reduce the suffering of women, children, adolescents and the elderly forced to live with their aggressors on a daily basis. We would like to share some emergency and humanitarian activities to combat gender violence.
Happy navigating!
SUPPORTING PROJECTS
The Ecumenical Coordination of Service’s (Coordenadoria Ecumênica de Serviço: CESE) Small Projects Programme established a funding stream for emergency support in March, which has thus far allocated BRL 500,000 to approximately 30 organizations. Among these are six specific women’s organizations, covering urban and rural areas in Pernambuco, Bahia, Maranhão, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.
These include female informal workers, black women living in urban peripheries, indigenous women, domestic workers, fisherwomen, female shellfish pickers, female quilombolas, female rural workers and female members of the LGBTI community.
Support has already been agreed for the Women’s Forum of Pernambuco; CAMTRA — the House of the Woman Worker in Rio de Janeiro; Nzinga — the Collective of Black Women in Belo Horizonte; the Rainbow Group of LGBT Citizenship; AMIMA — the Coalition of Indigenous Women of Maranhão; the Union of Female Domestic Workers of Bahia; the Movement of Female Rural Workers of Pernambuco; and the Small-scale Male and Female Farmers’ Movement (MPA).
Three communities have been provided with 180 staple food baskets containing family/peasant farming products, namely: the neighbourhood of Cajazeiras; the informal settlement of Manoel Faustino (composed of communities from the Homeless Workers’ Movement of Bahia, located on the side of the highway that links the BR 324 highway to São Tomé de Paripe); and the Quingoma Quilombo (Lauro de Freitas).
FEACT and ACT Alliance Emergency Aid — MAB and Koinonia
Over the last three months, approximately 500 families affected by flooding in neighbourhoods in the East and South Zones of São Paulo and Baixada Santista have received food baskets and hygiene and cleaning kits; an activity that expanded at the beginning of May. This is coordinated in local alliance with the Movement of People Affected by Dams (Movimento de Atingidos por Barragens: MAB), a partner of KOINONIA, which represents the Ecumenical Forum ACT Brazil.
Through an ACT Alliance Emergency Fund, the activity forms part of a project of solidarity and organization with families affected by recurrent flooding, now in an even more vulnerable situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The process of mapping and dialogue with the families has been going on since the middle of March and includes connecting with partners in each territory — social workers, health agents, social movements, local neighbourhood leaders and churches have been willing to cooperate.
Staple food and hygiene baskets from FEACT and the ACT Alliance reach families from the peripheries and Baixada Santista in São Paulo. Find out more here
The Lutheran Foundation of Diakonia (Fundação Luterana de Diaconia: FLD) has kept its 2020 grants programme open for the areas of Diakonia, Gender Justice, Young People’s Rights, Environmental Justice and Economic Justice. The institution decided to maintain these funding streams and to provide information on its website and social networks including a plan for a new grants programme aimed at the demands and challenges generated by the pandemic in the coming months, with support for emergency humanitarian aid and advocacy activities in response to the pandemic and its effect on the communities.
Support for Humanitarian Aid activities via the Small Projects Programme has already been granted to the Quilombola Front of Rio Grande do Sul, to reduce the negative impact of the pandemic which, with the need for social isolation, has caused unemployment and aggravated hunger in urban quilombola communities. The project is aimed at the acquisition of staple food baskets, cultural activities that promote the recovery of memory and traditional rites to promote health, with methodologies adapted to the pandemic, and strategies to expand the constitution of more nursery gardens in the quilombos, as a means of subsistence.
DISTRIBUTION OF STAPLE FOOD BASKETS
The Lutheran Foundation of Diakonia, the Council of Mission among Indians (Conselho de Missão entre Povos Indígenas: COMIN) and the Centre for Support to Small Farmers (Centro de Apoio ao Pequeno Agricultor: CAPA) were invited by the Banco do Brasil Foundation to present a project, over a 30-day period, to distribute staple food baskets to 1,900 pickers of recycling material, indigenous families, quilombolas, land reform settlers and the encamped, and solidarity economy enterprises in the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná.
The purchase of staple food baskets will prioritize family farming, agro-ecology and solidarity economy enterprises, supporting cooperatives, associations and collectives that work in the field of poison-free food production, in food and nutrition sovereignty and security, in humanitarian aid activities that respond to the economic context that affects the trade of many initiatives committed to an economic model of good living, economic justice, gender justice and environmental justice.
Organic products in schools
On 15 April, the first baskets of organic products were delivered to municipal schools in Marechal Cândido Rondon. The food is cultivated through the agroforestry system by family farmers settled by CAPA, through partnership with the Itaipu Binacional. The kits, which will be delivered fortnightly throughout the pandemic, are supplied by the Central Association of Ecological Rural Producers (Associação Central de Produtores Rurais Ecológicos: ACEMPRE) through the National School Meals Programme (Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar: PNAE).
Diakonia — Service to Transform Lives — has developed a Contingency Plan to work in the social isolation emergency imposed across Brazil, adapted to the way the organization functions and partner relationships and containing an action plan for the projects’ key audience. The document contains activities specifically designed for the promotion of gender justice within the institution’s territories of action.
Activities cover the following areas:
Direct assistance/fundraising and donations: Mapping groups and needs arising from the pandemic and prevention measures related to social isolation and distancing;
Identification of metropolitan groups and families in the sertão region who require direct assistance with food and hygiene materials;
Donation of equipment — PPE for agro-ecological markets and pickers;
Donation of food and hygiene materials for pickers, women’s groups and Family Farming groups;
Receipt and distribution of food and hygiene materials received as donations.
Coalition of Women from the Extreme South of Bahia and donations from the people of Afro-Brazilian Religious Communities
In the penultimate week of April, staple food baskets, products from the agro-ecological settlement of Dandara dos Palmares in Camamu Bay (Bahia), were delivered to a number of vulnerable families in the municipality. These contained fruit, vegetables and greens, all with the organic seal and all family farming products from the Dandara families.
The entire organization of the donations, including delivery, was conducted by the women themselves in peripheral areas, such as the informal settlements of Nova Conquista and Paulo Jackson, the neighbourhood of Mutirão and other rural communities in the region.
The activity was made possible by the Coalition of Women in the Extreme South of Bahia, with resources from the Agro-ecology Network of Forest Peoples (Rede de Agroecologia Povos da Mata), the first Participatory Conformity Assessment Body (Organismo Participativo de Avaliação da Conformidade: OPAC) in Bahia. The network is authorized by the federal government to issue participatory organic certification. Find out more here.
Health and Hygiene
ACEMPRE, advised by CAPA in Rondon, received a donation of individual face masks produced by the Lutheran Diakonia Community of Martin Luther from Marechal Cândido Rondon (Paraná). The group is using the masks as a barrier to the spread of the disease. Members of the Group of Diakonia began making the pieces at home at the beginning of April. The first consignment was delivered to ACEMPRE on 4 April. According to the Coordinator of the Group of Diakonia, Nelvi Krause, 907 masks have been made.
Erexim
Several organizations from the Alto Uruguai region, including CAPA Erexim, came together in a movement to defend democracy, public education and social rights. Since 2019, this network has provided information services and constructed alternatives to the demands generated by pressure from financial capital. In response to the pandemic, the group has drafted a letter to the public authorities in the municipality of Erexim (Santa Catarina), suggesting a series of activates to mitigate the grave consequences of the situation.
The movement also includes a campaign for solidarity fundraising, as well as the manufacture of masks, hand sanitizer and soap in partnership with the Federal Institute of Erexim (Instituto Federal de Erexim: IFRS) and the State University of Rio Grande do Sul (Universidade Estadual do Rio Grande do Sul: UERGS). The group used the funds to put together 100 baskets containing peasant and family farming products from three family farming cooperatives: Nossa Terra; the Cooperative of Family Farmers from Rio Fortuna and All of Santa Catarina (Cooperativa dos Agricultores Familiares de Rio Fortuna e Toda Santa Catarina: COOPERFAMÍLIA); and the Central Cooperative for the Commercialization of Family Farming in the Solidarity Economy (Cooperativa Central de Comercialização da Agricultura Familiar de Economia Solidária: CECAFES). Five of these baskets were delivered on 8 April to the Guarani Community of Mato Preto, in Erebango (Rio Grande do Sul).
COMMUNICATION AND ADVOCACY
Public Statements
In times of pandemic the Ecumenical Forum ACT Brazil reasserts: Gender violence is a sin against the Common House
“(…)We urgently need to consider that our country is multicultural. Cultural diversity means that we need diverse forms of care and attention. For example, in the south of the country, winter is coming. This is a difficult time for indigenous communities. This year, because of the pandemic, they are more vulnerable than ever, because their trade in products has had to be interrupted. The same has occurred to other vulnerable communities, including quilombola communities, popular and solidarity economy communities, and family farmers. These and other factors expose, with ever greater cruelty, that our social and economic inequalities have gender and race delineations. Click here to find out more.
ACT Alliance: A call for more emphatic Humanity and Global Governance
“It is with consternation that we see the extent to which COVID-19 has affected people and nations. This pandemic is one of the worst humanitarian crises of modern history and has also spread to fragile countries and those affected by conflict. The pandemic increases the vulnerability of people who confront humanitarian crises, poverty, inequality and economic difficulties. Humanitarian needs will become more acute and hard to equip and fund as countries around the world concentrate on meeting their own COVID-19 related needs. See more here
A Joint Declaration: Gender, Faith and COVID-19
As religious agents and networks of organizations based on faith, we respond to the call to work together for gender equality and justice, in the midst of global changes, growing nationalism and conflicts. We are experiencing changes to global, regional and national environments. As COVID-19 spreads around the world, countries, communities and individuals are facing ever greater challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, religious agents are in the vanguard for planning, delivery and implementation responses with a sensitive and holistic view of gender, based on precise information, at the same as they practice social distancing and adhere to directives from the ministries of health. This urgent moment demands a responsive action based on love, dignity and justice.
The COVID-19 crisis does not operate in a vacuum and COVID-19 has accentuated pre-existing inequalities. Women and girls are experiencing intersectional injustice in the political, social and economic spheres[1].
Faith in Beijing is a collective of religious agents and networks calling on governments and faith-based actors and others from civil society, for strong responses to COVID-19 that have gender justice at their heart.”
The ACT Alliance, the World Council of Churches and other faith-based organizations have signed this joint declaration. Find out more here (in English).
KOINONIA: Ten Commandments to combat violence against women in times of social isolation
The violence that frequently exists within the family and in particular between current or former couples, makes it even more important to guarantee the maintenance of daily life in extraordinary circumstances. The consequent burden of caring for children, adolescents and old people in families, which generally falls to women, may create greater tension and lead to violence or aggravate existing violence. Organizations that work in the Closing Gaps project call on the community and all state institutions (national, state and municipal) to recall the need to confront this crisis by paying attention to its impact on the social roles of gender, and offer ten proposals to address gender violence.” See more here.
KOINONIA: Reconstructing a just world: religious leaders and faith-based organizations call for responses to COVID-19 that combat gender inequality
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many religious leaders have been found on the front line. The ACT Alliance stands with them and with faith-based organizations around the world, advocating with government and civil society for urgent responses that protect women’s rights and achieve gender equality.
The crisis does not operate in a vacuum and COVID-19 has accentuated pre-existing inequalities. Around the world, gender roles are linked to the elevated impact of COVID-19 exposure, transmission and pattern of outcomes. Women and girls are experiencing intersectional injustice in the political, social and economic spheres…” Find out more here.
CEDH-RS recommends public bodies pay particular attention to indigenous and quilombola communities
Rio Grande do Sul’s State Council for Human Rights (Conselho Estadual de Direitos Humanos do Rio Grande do Sul: CEDH-RS) which the FLD participates in, also recommends that public bodies pay particular attention to indigenous and quilombola communities which, heeding the call not to leave their territories, suffer from a lack of food and of the structure required for suitable medical care. The FLD and COMIN worked together on a proposed manifesto aimed at indigenous and quilombola communities, which was published on 1 April. Find out more here.
The FLD, COMIN, CAPA and the Indigenous Missionary Council (Conselho Missionário Indigenista: CIMI), with agreement from other organizations, charged the National Indian Foundation (Fundação Nacional do Índio: FUNAI), the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Secretaria Especial de Saúde Indígena: SESAI) and the State Departments to fulfil their obligations and work to guarantee the distribution of foodstuffs in satisfactory amounts to all communities, as a strategy to strengthen immunity, reducing the impact on the community life of the indigenous population. The statement was published on 27 March on the FLD-COMIN-CAPA websites and social networks. Find out more here.
CAMPAIGNS
EMERGENCY BASIC INCOME
All the organizations signed up to the campaign to pressurize the government to implement a policy of emergency basic income for those least protected. The initial government proposal was for BRL 200 per person/month. Due to pressure from social movements and organizations, congress approved an increase to BRL 600 for three months. Mothers and female heads of household may receive benefits of BRL 1,200 per month. A page has been created on the FLD website to answer the questions that people from indigenous communities have put to the team from COMIN. Content is updated as required and can be seen here.
FLD-COMIN-CAPA also helped to disseminate the campaign WATER, ELECTRICITY AND COOKING GAS — DON’T PAY, DON’T CUT OFF, published on 23 March by MAB.
We support the campaign for the remunerated release of more than seven million cleaners, daily and domestic workers through the initiative of the Coalition of Brazilian Female Feminists. 93% of these women are black and elderly, support their families on their own and need the right to stay at home to be guaranteed and their wages maintained, as well as access to food, water and hygiene products.
PROCLAIMING JUSTICE
The Proclaiming Justice campaign, promoted by the Diakonia, is launched annually in November. Given the current context, it was brought forward to take place on Easter Sunday (12 April) with the call “For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard about the global health crisis which threatens the right to life” (Acts 4:20). The campaign aims to sensitize, mobilize, raise awareness and strengthen people, families, churches, grassroots groups and partner organizations about the pandemic situation and its consequences. Following social isolation guidelines, the main methodological tool to disseminate this edition’s campaign are social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and the Diakonia website. The production and dissemination of content has been as provided training resources in the form of informative cards, texts and videos aimed at reaching the greatest possible number of people with content about the situation and how to reduce harm in the poorest and most vulnerable populations, particularly women. These address: emergency basic income (general and specific guidance), prevention measures, domestic violence and the exercise of socially-engaged spirituality. To find out more about the campaign, click on the following link https://bit.ly/2RtX8wS.
The Diakonia posted content on its page aimed at supporting the guarantee of rights and informing people about topics that are most pertinent to family life during the pandemic. The first post was about Basic Income, with information about Emergency Aid. Find out more here.
CESE has shared and promoted women’s movements’ campaigns and crowdfunding activities aimed at disseminating struggles and expanding fundraising to get through this challenging time. With the hashtag #SolidarityCampaign, CESE has set up a special page on its website.
CESE: By 30 April, 16 fundraising campaigns from organizations around the country had gained greater visibility.
CAMPAIGN: SOCIAL MOVEMENT PLATFORM FOR REFORM OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM PUTS FORWARD MEASURES TO COMBAT THE PANDEMIC
“The letter is based on an understanding that the federal government has acted * “negligently and aggressively” * in relation to the pandemic and that, although the social movements and other civil society organizations have operated in daily solidarity to confront it, it is necessary to demand immediate and urgent decisions from the systems of power”. Find out more here.
KOINONIA: Campaign for the Brazilian Women’s Coalition (Articulação de Mulheres Brasileiras: AMB): Combatting violence against women in times of social isolation
KOINONIA: Campaign — Peripheries stay alert in COVID-19 (#periferiaseliguenocovid19)
The aim of this campaign is to distribute hygiene kits and news bulletins to the community in the Canabrava neighbourhood (Link).
KOINONIA: Campaign of faith communities from diverse religious traditions in favour of social isolation:
“PEOPLE FROM AXÉ STAND THEIR GROUND” (Link)
- Afro-Brazilian Religious Leader Jaciara Ribeiro, from the Axé Abassá de Ogum house, in an interview with Radio Metrópole, Salvador (Link)
KOINONIA: COMMUNICATION MATERIAL FOR PREVENIDAS
This project is a partnership through an agreement between KOINONIA Ecumenical Presence and Service and the São Paulo Municipal STD/AIDS Programme and focuses on the training of young socially vulnerable LGBTQIA+ people on the themes of Human Rights and the Prevention of HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), principally debating issues of gender, race and sexuality.
With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, the project was redesigned to conduct training virtually, while campaigns to encourage COVID-19 prevention are now also addressed.
Instagram posts about the pandemic have been produced and posted on the KOINONIA project page aimed at Young People, Sexuality and Human Rights: Prevention is the word of action! #HIV and #Coronavirus are very different viruses that require similar attitudes: information and prevention!
- Prevention is the pathway! For HIV, other STIs or CORONAVIRUS: PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT WE FEEL IS ESSENTIAL FOR AVOIDING PANIC AND BURN OUT:
- Avoid leaving home unless you really need to. Social isolation is the best prevention.
- People living with HIV and Coronavirus: There is no evidence that people living with HIV are at greater risk of contracting COVID-19
- How to access medication #antiretroviraldrugs and #PrEP?
POLITICAL ADVOCACY
Ecumenical diakonia with gender justice is an approach based on the assertion and implementation of human rights and environmental justice. The national policy of social assistance and the lives of poor people have been disregarded by constitutional amendment EC 95. Our commitment is to the struggle to overturn this deathly amendment and our participation is based on advocacy and direct action in the territories, support to organizations and social movements. In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, ecumenicalism denounces structures of violence accentuated by racism, sexism and the perverse faces of fundamentalism.
Violence against women has to stop! Black women lead some of the movements and organizations supported by CESE, including the Movement of Artisanal Fishermen and Women of Bahia (Movimento de Pescadoras e Pescadores Artesanais da Bahia) and the Rio dos Macacos Association of Quilombo Remnants.
LIVE STREAMING EVENTS
Platforms for online transmission have become strategic spaces for organization, dialogue, meetings and public celebrations.
FLD-COMIN-CAPA have participated in and contributed to the organization of live streaming events aimed at responding to the challenges that have emerged or intensified because of the pandemic.
> LIVE STREAMING EVENTS ORGANIZED WITH FLD SUPPORT
An Inter-religious and Ecumenical Celebration in the Defence of SUS and in solidarity with health professionals was promoted by the Inter-religious and Ecumenical Forum (Fórum Inter-religioso e Ecumênico: FIRE) of Rio Grande do Sul on 7 April, with support and logistical help from the FLD
· KOINONIA: PARTICIPATION IN LIVE STREAMING EVENTS
· Live Streaming Event QUILOMBOLA RIGHTS IN TIMES OF COVID-19–22/04
On Instagram @mawete_ngola_oficial and @koinonia_pes
· Live Streaming Event: The Amazon in Quarantine #05 — Ana Gualberto (KOINONIA-Salvador) — 08/04 YouTube Nuhpam Unir
The Centre for the Public History of the Amazon (Núcleo de História Pública da Amazônia: NUHPAM) discusses the coronavirus pandemic in Salvador (Bahia) with Ana Martins Gualberto Adufé — Coordinator of activities for traditional black communities at KOINONIA Ecumenical Presence and Service/Researcher at UniPeriferias/Member of the Nzinga Collective of Black Women (Belo Horizonte)/Member of the Network for the Black Women of Bahia /Member of the Network for Women of Afro-Brazilian Religious Houses in Bahia/Iyá Ojù Omò of the Ilê Adufé House — Omorixá Oxum.
FEACT-Brazil — The Ecumenical Forum ACT Brazil is made up of 23 faith-based organizations including 7 churches. It has existed under this name for 18 years and promotes activities for the Secular Rule of Law from an ecumenical perspective in which our planet and our causes cannot leave anyone behind, we are all part of the same future and Common House.
FEACT is a member of the ACT Alliance, a global coalition of 151 faith-based organizations and churches that work together in more than 125 counties.
