Inter Pares
Inter Pares –which means among equals– is a feminist social justice organization based in Ottawa that believes in solidarity, not charity, as an approach to international cooperation. For 50 years, they have worked closely with courageous activists and more than a hundred inspiring organizations throughout the world to build peace, advance justice and globalize equality.
Inter Pares programs largely focus on five global issues: food sovereignty, gender justice, peace and democracy, economic justice, and health. They work with long-term counterparts –local and national activist organizations– in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Canada.
Throughout their longstanding collaborations with Inter Pares, La Colectiva Feminista para el Desarrollo Local (El Salvador), Nijera Kori (Bangladesh) and Likhaan Center for Women’s Health (the Philippines) have worked within their local communities and national contexts to address issues related to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), including sexual and gender-based violence, access to contraceptives and abortion, and child marriage.
Likhaan Center for Women’s Health
Likhaan is a national women's health organization that develops alternative, community-based sexual and reproductive health services and education in impoverished urban and rural communities. Through a network of non-profit clinics, it provides free reproductive health care services to marginalized girls, women, and LGBTQI+ clients in metro Manila and Eastern Samar. Likhaan uses its 30 years of experience with service delivery and community organizing to advocate at the national and local levels for changes in health policy. Their work encompasses issues of women’s health and well-being, including women’s rights, family planning, adolescent health, maternal mortality, universal healthcare, and the social determinants of health.
Nijera Kori
Nijera Kori is an organization in Bangladesh working to empower rural women and men through the formation of autonomous local groups. The group of activists who formed Nijera Kori in 1980 recognized the importance of empowering marginalized communities. They saw that patriarchy, poverty, and discrimination were rooted in unequal distribution, power dynamics, and social norms—not due to a lack of resources, as was commonly believed. Nijera Kori believes that citizens have rights and the state has obligations – to provide health services and education, to ensure justice. The local groups learn about their rights and then take action to defend them. As Nijera Kori puts it, we work with the poor and not for the poor. As part of Buil-Mo, Nijera Kori expanded beyond the women and men in the local groups to involve youth in addressing sexual and reproductive health and rights.
La Colectiva Feminista para el Desarrollo Local
La Colectiva Feminista para el Desarrollo Local (Feminist Collective for Local Development), better known as La Colectiva, is a feminist organization in El Salvador that works in alliance with other key organizations to build organizational and advocacy capacities to individuals and groups fighting gender-based violence and the criminalization of reproductive health. They provide legal and psychological accompaniment to women and girls who have faced gender-based violence and engage local and national institutions to ensure a gender-approach to basic services like health and education. Importantly, and despite long term and mounting challenges, the organization has worked steadily to incorporate comprehensive sexual education into the school curriculum through educators and by conducting advocacy with different government departments. With 20 years of experience in advocacy and public awareness campaigns, La Colectiva has become a Salvadorian reference for the feminist movement across Latin America.