Partner Organisation: DEMUS
DEMUS is a national women’s rights organisation focusing on media campaigns and legal services
Areas of work: Violence against Women
Femicide is the most extreme manifestation of violence against women, and the way such incidents are reported in the press sets the social tone for understanding their significance. Working with a group of sympathetic journalists DEMUS have ensured that the reports are less sensationalised, not recounted as expressions of extreme passion, where sympathy is aroused for the murderer, but as acts of inexcusable violence. Arising from this work, the national press commissioned a series of articles giving a women’s rights perspective on a range of issues.
Sexual and reproductive rights
Access to contraception is a right in Peru, but abortion is illegal. DEMUS carried out research into the number of women dying as a result of illegal abortions, often the result of women’s inability to access the contraceptives they have a legal right to. DEMUS then carried out an e-mail campaign through its mini-campaign network, ensuring that the figures become more widely known and that the issue of illegal abortions and the damage they cause is not swept under the table. DEMUS also supports women’s leadership programmes through the Community Kitchens network.
WOMANKIND focus
Working with local and national media to raise awareness of women’s rights issues in Peru. As many powers traditionally associated with central government are being decentralised, it is important that women’s rights issues are understood and acknowledged at a local level, so that they become part of the framework of local lawmaking and service provision. Media work to raise women’s status at all levels of society is a vital part of this process.
Partner workers: Romy Garcia and Jessenia Cassani
DEMUS has a staff of 19 paid workers (5 work on administration, 5 work on communications and 9 work on services) and 30 volunteers. They also run a legal help-line (which WOMANKIND helped them set up 10 years ago) led by 3 lawyers but backed up by a team of volunteers, many of them law students. Their team of lawyers takes test cases to court to try and bring about changes in the law and are currently working on the case of Ursula Mallqui who was murdered by her husband.
Other Womankind partners in Peru:
AURORA VIVARCALANDRIA
CADEP