FEMUCADI (Federación de Mujeres con Capacidades Diferentes, Federation of Women with Different Capacities) is a federation of some 3,000 disabled women and was set up in 2002.
FEMUCADI is a One World Action partner in the Regional Disability Rights Programme. It advocates and lobbies for disabled women’s rights with government bodies and legislators. It also carries out media campaigns around the need to implement Law 202 (the national disability legislation).
Fundación Solidez runs advocacy, organising, and workplace integration programmes. It has been a partner of One World Action since 1989.
As part of the Regional Disability Rights Programme, Solidez supports 18 local disabled women’s groups to organise effectively, lobby local governments and raise gender awareness. It has also set up a national support network for disabled women experiencing violence.
INMUN ( Instituto Nicaragüense de Mujeres No Videntes or the Nicaraguan Institute of Blind Women) is a membership organisation representing some 500 blind and visually impaired women who campaign and lobby for their rights. They have a strong women’s rights focus and work closely with feminist organisations in Nicaragua. They also provide literacy programmes in Braille.
One World Action supports two projects with INMUN: The first project focuses on the distribution of auxiliary aids (white sticks, talking clocks etc) to 300 women and training in their use.
The second project focuses on their national campaigning work on the rights of blind women, as well as campaigning with the national women’s movement on areas such as sexual and reproductive rights.
The Procuradora Especial para Personas con Discapacidad, Procurator for Disabled People’s Rights) in Nicaragua was mandated by the Nicaraguan Government in 2005. It advocates for the rights of disabled people with the central government, state institutions and civil society. It also monitors human rights violations by state bodies and local governments against disabled people and takes cases forward through legal channels.
Programme activities include forums and seminars to raise awareness on disability legislation, monitoring violations of disabled people’s rights as laid down in national and international legislation, setting up of a network of disability rights to receive complaints of violations and the promotion of disabled people’s rights.
Grupo Venancia was established in 1991 and works with local women’s organisations and with various women’s regional and national networks to advocate for women’s political and sexual and reproductive rights. They carry out educational and advocacy programmes, in particular with young women, as well as public campaigns, and cultural events.
Two current projects with One World Action:
As part of the Regional Gender and Governance Programme, Grupo Venancia is running a campaign to promote the defence of the secular state, trains women on gender budgeting, and is pushing the municipality of Matagalpa to enact the municipal gender equity policy.
OWA is also supporting a project with 12 local networks of young women to promote their leadership and advocacy skills, in particular in order for them to effectively lobby for their sexual and reproductive rights.
The Regional Gender and Governance Programme
The Regional Gender and Governance Programme unites five feminist organisations in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. The programme aims to strengthen the political participation of marginalised women so that public policies, services and legislation reflect women’s rights. Work is being carried out in four Central American countries in 61 rural and urban municipalities: Nicaragua (17 municipalities), El Salvador (24 municipalities), Honduras (7 municipalities) and Guatemala (13 municipalities) and is benefitting approximately 1,500 grassroots women from 27 women's organisations and 155 women councillors and mayors.
The Regional Disability Rights Programme
The Regional Disability Rights Programme focuses on transforming legislation & policy from the national to the local level in favour of disabled women, and training & organisational support to enable disabled women to propose and negotiate in regulatory bodies and state-citizen interfaces (national inter-institutional commissions, municipal development committees, local community councils etc), and hold them accountable. Through regional and national exchanges the disability movement in Central America will be challenged to approach issues in a gender-sensitive manner, whilst campaigning and strategic alliance building with students, trade unions etc will mobilise public support to demand that the rights of disabled people are upheld by the State. Four One World Action partners are involved: ASCES, COMUS, Fundación Solidez and FEMUCADI.
You can visit the programme’s website (in Spanish) here.
