Chairperson’s Address to the Opening Session of CAFRA’s Fifth General Assembly

The story is told of the young man who came to an old woman with a bird in his hand. In an attempt to test her wisdom, he said “Tell me, Mother, is the bird living or dead?" After thinking for a while, she said, “The power is in your hands whether the bird lives or dies”. Well she knew that if she said “the bird is alive"he would kill it; and if she said, “the bird is dead”, he would let it fly.

In the lecture on the occasion of her acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Toni Morrison interpreted this analogy as “language that has been lost to women, and the continuing attempts to deny women their voice”.

In the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, there has been m any manifestations and facilitation of that voice, both at individual and organizational level. Such a manifestation and facilitation is the Caribbean Association for Feminism Research and Action (CAFRA).

Over the years, on this journey to social justice, from all walks of life, we are re-discovering language and using our voice.

CAFRA is a regional network of feminists, individual researchers, activist and women’s organization, which define feminist polities as a matter of both consciousness and action. Our membership spans the English, Dutch, French and Spanish Speaking Caribbean.

We are committed to understanding the relationship between the oppression of women and other forms of oppression in the society, and we are working actively for change.

CAFRA’s mission is to celebrate and channel the collective power of women for individual and societal transformation, thus creating climate in which social justice is realized.

Programs, throughout the years were sustained by our Partners HIVOS, OXFAM, UNIFEM, Heinrich Boll Foundation (HBF), Women in Development Europe (WIDE), Inter-American Development Bank, British Department for International Development (DFID), the Caribbean Development Bank, and KULU Women in Development.

The challenges over the years remained:

• Accessing necessary human financial, technical and physical resources

• Harnessing the expertise of the membership and enhancing their capacity

• Identifying and implementing projects for social transformation

• Establishing strategic linkages at national, regional and international levels.

CAFRA can be justly proud of the boundaries it has crossed, by its very formation. Women did not see language, geography, geopolitical situations, culture or colonial status as barriers to women working together. They saw these challenges as reasons to work together.

To address language, a Translation Technician is on staff, and the organization has just acquired the translation equipment you are now using. Our magazine is published in Spanish and English. Efforts are being made to include the other languages, Dutch and French. Progress is being made as the website is in the four languages.

I was extremely proud when in March of this year at Florida Atlantic University, where I had gone to read a paper at the 4th Women’s Studies and Graduation Conference, the other presenter, Professor Lynn Bolles of Maryland University in support of her paper on “Terror of Terrorism” Impacts on women’s lives in the Caribbean quoted from CAFRA News, and even had a copy with her.

This General Meeting will review and celebrate the several projects undertaken to address the challenges stated and which were implemented at National, Regional and International levels. Outstanding among these are:

 research on Tourism and the Sex Trade,
 capacity Building for NGOs,
 Trade,
 Economic Literacy,
 HIV/AIDS Prevention,
 Domestic Violence
 Intervention/Prevention Training Program for Police and Social Workers and
 the NGO Alternative Report on the Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.

As the 21st century unfolds, so do the critical issues affecting women and their communities. The social economic framework built by male-dominated structures is giving birth to cures that affect humanity, and an environment in which the male feels threatened. This has given rise to a backlash on women’s advancement.

In addition to misinterpreting gender mainstreaming, women’s bureaus are undertaking work, which should be done by women’s NGOs, instead of focusing on policy matters.

It is therefore critical that the Regional Women’s Movement be vibrant and focused, an herein lies the challenge Joann Kerr of AWID put it very clearly “The women’s movement has never been one singular movement, but multiple movements based in different realities, with their own local struggles. In an era of globalization, widening disparity and loss of local control, women are faced with the prospect of finding common solutions and creative models to advance women’s human rights.

Despite the studies we have made and the successes we have achieved, there is a tremendous amount of work to be done in order to ensure the enjoyment of equal rights and justice by all women, because men are even more jealously guarding the corridors to power now, because of what we have gained to date.

We need to attract strong and committed young women into the movement and particularly into CAFRA to carry on the struggle into the future.

We need to rejuvenate ourselves to re-commit our energies to the Organization and its goals and with greater maturity and a higher sense of responsibility to meet the requirement of our membership.

We as members must not ever seek to stand by the sidelines and then engage in negative criticisms of other roles and activities. Critical analysis with positive suggestions should, of course, always be the hallmark of responsible membership.

We must continue to engage in all issues in the governance of our countries and within the region, our human and legal rights, our economic policies, budgetary allocations, conflict resolutions, health, crime and violence in all their forms, etcetera, etcetera. And most particularly, we must engage in the issue of the rights, care and protection of the children of the region, who we must ensure are socialized, educated and sensitized with a deeply embedded sense of respect for each sex. We must do this in order to break the cycle of the continuing discrimination and endemic violence in our societies.

We must not be despondent about our roles and the demands made on our time, we should rather, look forward with enthusiasm to each challenge. There is not much time left for a lot of us, so let us try to make each day count in our commitment to the goals of our Organization and thereby effect the individual and societal transformation which we seek for to create a just and peaceful world.