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In recent years, different groups in Latin America—including nongovernmental organizations, women’s groups, men’s groups against violence, academies, governments and international cooperation—have been making diverse efforts to ensure that violence against women is recognized as a public health problem and a human rights violation.

Despite their successes, these initiatives have been dispersed and there have been limited opportunities to exchange experiences. As a consequence, many of us have duplicated efforts, reproducing materials and tools that already exist but have never been evaluated to demonstrate their effectiveness in our particular contexts. This results in an avoidable waste of time, effort and resources.

The lack of coordination between organizations in the same country or in the region as a whole has also made it impossible to promote reflection on what has been learned. Meanwhile limited collaboration between the government and civil society has hindered the monitoring of compliance with government agreements in the area of violence and human rights.

There has not even been much dialogue between the different governments and their respective civil societies. This means that lessons learned from pilot initiatives implemented by nongovernmental organizations are not always exploited and transferred to the public sector, which is essential to ensuring that more women survive violence and that the models produced are institutionalized.

Although certain studies and national surveys conducted in some countries in recent years have increased the available data on the prevalence of this problem in the region, information is still scant and dissemination limited. Very little work has been done, for example, in the area of sexual violence, particularly against adolescents.

The following problems have been identified:

• Limited accessibility of data on gender-based violence (also known as violence against women and gender violence).
• Lack of recording systems.
• Dispersed and duplicated efforts.
• Lack of arenas to reflect on lessons learned.
• Limited opportunities to use the results of research studies and therefore improve interventions.
• Limited health sector implementation of public policies on gender-based violence.
• Lack of accountability and of monitoring mechanisms, including limited efforts to ensure the quality of materials and services.
• Lack of information on and attention to areas such as sexual violence, sexual trafficking, child pornography and violence against adolescents.

Coordination efforts
In recent years, various attempts have been made to increase the visibility of the issue, improve the health sector response and promote arenas in which organizations dedicated to fighting violence can exchange experiences.

In 1998, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the women’s movement, governments and other sectors organized the first joint campaign, titled We Have the Right to a Life without Violence.

The campaign highlighted violence against women as a human rights violation and called on states to ratify existing international instruments and comply with their obligations. In 1996, UNIFEM also created a fiduciary fund to support innovative projects aimed at eliminating violence against women.

Since June 2000, the Inter-American Coalition for the Prevention of Violence (IACPV) has provided a coordination arena in which a number of different agencies promote a prevention- and human development-based approach in their work in the Americas.

Participants in the Coalition include the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Organization of American States (OAS), the World Bank (WB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United States Agency for International Development (AID), which joined recently.

While the Coalition has helped develop technical cooperation among agencies, its membership has so far been limited to the above-mentioned groups.

New opportunity
In June 2001, a Symposium on Gender Violence, Health and Rights in the Americas was held in Cancun, Mexico. The event was organized by the PAHO-coordinated ICPV secretariat, in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), UNIFEM and the OAS’ Inter-American Commission of Women.

The aim was to strengthen both the health sector’s role in the fight against gender-based violence and compliance with international agreements that have declared it a violation of women’s human rights and a public health problem.

The launch of the World Report on Violence and Health by the World Health Organization (WHO) in October 2002 was a historic event in that it strengthened and promoted more in-depth work on the issue of gender violence.

InterCambios is born
In March 2003, the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF/WHR) held a workshop in Antigua, Guatemala, to promote best practices in the context of its regional gender violence project. It was during this workshop, following the signing of the Declaration of Antigua, that the idea of creating the Latin American Alliance for the Prevention of Gender-based Violence from a Health Perspective (InterCambios) was born.

The workshop brought together a number of different organizations that had collaborated at different moments. As well as sharing and discussing lessons learned, the participants reviewed the document "Improving the Health Sector Response to Gender-based Violence: A Resource Manual for Health Care Professionals in Developing Countries," published by IPPF/RHO in 2004.

In October 2003, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) took the initiative of inviting various organizations to meet and discuss strategies to address existing gaps and enable greater collaboration and coordination among different institutions.

The two-day meeting was held in PATH’s Washington DC offices and involved the following organizations: Armonie (Costa Rica), CDC (USA), CLADEM (Brazil), IPAS (USA), PATH (Nicaragua and USA), PAHO (Washington), Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium (RHRC-Global) and UNIFEM (USA). Sarah Bott and Alessandra Guedes participated as advisors.

IPPF/RHO and the Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network (LACWHN) also contributed to the meeting.

A second meeting was held in February 2005 with the participation of representatives from the following organizations:

Puntos de Encuentro (Nicaragua), LACWHN (Peru/ Mexico), IPPF/RHO (USA), Ipas (Mexico/ Nicaragua/ North Carolina, USA), Family Violence Prevention Fund (San Francisco/ Boston, USA), Promundo Institute (Brazil), PATH (Nicaragua/ Washington, USA/ Seattle, USA) and Armonie (Costa Rica). The following UN agencies also took part: PAHO (Costa Rica/ Washington, USA), UNIFEM (New York, USA) and WHO (Geneva).

It is important to stress that the organizations that participated in both processes have developed state-of-the-art initiatives, as well as materials and instruments that have significantly contributed to work in the area of health and violence.

Both meetings discussed the past and present initiatives developed by the participating organizations in the area of violence against women and the advantages of collaborating and coordinating work. This led to approval of the idea of creating a technical exchange group with arenas and mechanisms for systematic collaboration among the participating organizations for specific ends.

InterCambios proposes joint work to influence the following:

• Situation analyses in different areas such as research, training and public policies.
• Exchanges and reflections on lessons learned
• Joint production and dissemination of materials
• Scaling up of successful practices

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Secretaría Técnica de InterCambios. Apartado Postal 2233, Managua, Nicaragua.
Teléfonos: (505) 268 0718 - 268 1991 - 266 9675 / Telefax: (505) 268 50 84
(c) 2007 Alianza Intercambios - Todos los derechos reservados