CADF 2023 Wrap-up Report

Authoritarianism

Authoritarianism in Central America: Challenges & Opportunities from Exile

This panel opened a conversation about the increase in (self) censorship and the (self) exile of dozens of journalists, independent justice operators and human rights defenders. Panelists analyzed the common pattern of authoritarianism in Central America, and the impact of denouncing and monitoring violations of human rights, corruption and impunity.

Through the experiences of exiled professionals, this session offered the international community a regional and multidisciplinary analysis using a gender focus to identify the needs and opportunities for support, as well as pathways for cooperation that contribute to the creation of improved outcomes for the freedom of expression and human rights.

Education

Confronting Educational Inequity Post-Pandemic

This breakfast gathering was open to CADF participants addressing educational inequity, whether funders, NGOs or advocates. In much of the region, educational access and quality, as well as attendance, continue to lag, with insufficient political will to “build back better” from the pandemic. This generational crisis has fallen hard on girls, Indigenous, Afro-descendant, rural and peri-urban students in particular, and it is linked to other issues like economic insecurity, migration, health, and violence. This space enabled participants to share their work, learning and ideas related to education.

Work groups emphasized that alliances can help address the current crisis. Advocacy with governments for greater investment and efforts to address gaps and blind spots, such as the socio-emotional and mental health needs of students, are critical. Small initiatives can lead to big change.

Race, Climate & Migration

Race, Climate & Migration Justice as Opportunities for Solidarity

In Central America, it is estimated that 73% of the population in some countries lives below the poverty line. These realities do not affect everyone equally, and speakers in this session highlighted various problems facing indigenous regions and rural areas where, when confronting threats from public and private institutions, people have been forced to abandon their territory due to climate disasters. Meanwhile, other challenges have also led to the expulsion from lands and forced migration.

To create a more equitable future, several strategic recommendations should be considered, such as valuing ancestral knowledge and the roots of indigenous peoples, working together with communities through their local leaders, and generating resources to strengthen sustainability and stability.

Indigenous women

Indigenous Women’s Leadership: A Pillar for Development

What does being an indigenous woman mean in Guatemalan society? This panel featured a conversation between five Guatemalan indigenous women who shared their paths, contributions, challenges and sources of inspiration in confronting unequal power relations and promoting leadership, which ultimately reduces inequality.

This session included a call to international agencies and civil society organizations to recognize that indigenous women can and do make positive contributions to economic, health, and the formative and political conditions, allowing for a greater level of personal, family and community development.

Nicaragua and forced displacement

The Situation of Forcibly Displaced Nicaraguans

Democratic backsliding and the human rights crisis in Nicaragua are the primary reasons for 57% of Nicaraguans hoping to leave their country for the United States. Over 550,000 Nicaraguans have suffered forced displacement and 3,400 civil society organizations have closed. Social displacement presents many challenges: changes in migration flows across countries, particularly for refugee cases; policies that criminalize citizens and negatively affect fundamental rights; and an increase in hate messages through digital media that affect the social fabric.

The session analyzed the obstacles impeding institutional frameworks that create freedom of movement and improve the refugee application process. Panelists recommended working alongside returned migrants and investing in resources for their integration.

Afro-descendant, Garifuna and Indigenous peoples

The Resistance & Fight of the Invisible Majority: Keys to Building a Just Future

This panel addressed the main challenges to constructing a just and inclusive future, including effective development for Afro-descendant, Garifuna and Indigenous peoples in the region, with an emphasis on women who suffer from layered discrimination of their intersecting identities.

Panelists discussed the oppression and structural violence that these populations have historically faced in an effort to build an agenda for reparations and restorative justice. They shared experiences of struggle and strategies for resistance from the perspective of community organizations, international groups and the State. In short, speakers articulated how to implement and advance racial justice for the defense of the speakers’ territories and for conditions of development that lead to dignified and fulfilling lives.

Refugee Response

Closing the Gap: The Socioeconomic Potential of a Comprehensive Refugee Response

One-fifth of the world’s 110 million forcibly displaced people are hosted in the Americas, a region marked by violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and a deteriorating human rights situation in Nicaragua that has uprooted over 1 million people. Mexico and Costa Rica recorded 118,800 and 129,500 new asylum claims respectively. Significant cross-border movements of Cubans, Haitians and Venezuelans continue to be reported, further straining asylum systems.

This panel invited representatives from different sectors of society to discuss the potential of and challenges to including refugees in the Costa Rican labor market. Speakers shared insights from local pilot programs modeling the power of socioeconomic inclusion, and changing the refugee narrative toward that of catalytic potential for host societies and global development in a world short on peace. Additionally, they discussed the potential of women, the need for digital training, the creation of an integrated strategy, and the need for multisectoral dialogue as central reflections to the topic of refugees, inviting participants to view human mobility not only as a moment of crisis, but as an opportunity.

Feminism & Climate

Body, Land & Territory: Youth Feminism & Climate Justice

What does it mean to be a woman, a feminist and young in Central America? Solving, resisting and reflecting. This session brought together young and diverse women who shared their areas of work, organizational challenges and motivation for seeking climate justice and positioning the issue as a gender and human rights issue.

Defending territories, bodies and the environment crosses into multiple types of violence that ultimately try to break the social fabric and identities of community. This session opened a space for youth feminists to talk about their experiences, actions and strategies to defend their bodies and territories, as well as share their critical and creative proposals to confront the climate crisis, gender-based violence, machismo and adultcentrism.

Narratives

Weaving Dreams, Building Bridges: The Transformative Power of Narrative Work

Narrative is the aggregation of stories about the world and our place in it, and directs us to how we should feel, think and act. Doing narrative work means expanding the social imagination and inspiring collective action. Since narrative work seeks to create meaning at scale, it is essential that we learn how to build narrative communities and reach new audiences to broaden the base of those who agree with the worldview we want to promote.

The challenge for human rights and social justice movements in Central America is to go beyond denouncing injustices and inspire people to use their individual and collective power to create a world that is centered around dignity, interconnections and care—a world that is both desirable and possible.

Journalism & Nicaragua

Journalism as the Last Democratic Avenue for Access to Information in Nicaragua

This panel explored the challenges faced by independent journalists who, in the face of exile, seek to promote democracy both in Nicaragua and throughout Central America. Some of the challenges highlighted included economic sustainability, the quality of journalism in the face of blockades by the Ortega regime, the permanent condition of exile, generational change and artificial intelligence.

This situation has led journalists to seek out fissures within the regime in order to continue providing information to citizens, such as setting an agenda within the country, protecting anonymous tipsters, international cooperation as a means of financing and generating alliances within media.

Legal empowerment

Advancing Legal Empowerment to Address Systemic Injustices & Protect Rights

Legal empowerment is a powerful strategy that seeks to put the law in the hands of the people both to meet the needs of their communities and to promote lasting social justice. This session explored the debate on access to legal knowledge and how people in Central America, notably within indigenous populations, lack the knowledge to seek out solutions to their legal challenges.

Speakers not only discussed legal empowerment as a concept, but gave examples as a tool to transcend political, economic, social and even linguistic gaps. Topics related to legal empowerment, such as gender-based violence, the right to healthcare, migration and labor rights were featured. Considering the scope of such issues, panelists noted that access to information and legal pathways is on method to bring about solutions to some of the most pressing issues facing Central American societies.

Closing civic space

Closure of Civic Space: When Censorship Reaches All of Us

Censorship is often an outcome that manifests prior to imprisonment or physical violence, and it has a profound impact on society as a whole.

Speakers in this session reflected on the freedom of expression and the types of censorship Central America is experiencing today in art, activism and journalism. From judicial persecution in Guatemala to digital militias in El Salvador, censors operate to inhibit conversation and public criticism. The region is experiencing common strategies of censorship, including the concentration of power, imprisonment, restructuring of elites and the criminalization of social voices.

Censorship is a challenge requiring collective solutions via local, regional and global networks.

Climate Justice

Climate Justice in Central America? Challenges & Responses of Local Stakeholders in Building Resilience

In Central America, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants and local communities are the most affected by the impacts of climate change due to their high levels of vulnerability. These communities are not responsible for global warming; rather, the territories they manage are already contributing to climate resilience, and are essential for a just, equitable and democratic transition thanks to their community governance systems.

Sadly, these governance systems are threatened by democratic decline and the deepening of extractivist development models that put these communities on the front line and undermine adaptation capacities in the region. This panel analyzed the factors that undermine climate resilience in the territories (Young Voices) of the Afro-descendant and indigenous peoples of the region who resist and build equitable, democratic and sustainable alternatives.