Antigua, Guatemala, February 15th to 17th, 2018

The Driving Group met in person to review the preliminary results of its External Assessment and make decisions about ongoing work.

The External Assessment –prepared with the assistance of our consultant Cristina Safa-, is a long-term process that began in March 2016 and will end next June when we issue the Annual Tetra Operating Plan for the 2017-2022 period, centered on the analysis of the strengths and challenges of our organizational structure.

We came together with the intention of strengthening, broadening and consolidating services and resources for the comprehensive feminist protection of women defenders wh are at risk in the Mesoamerican Region in an increasingly worsening context.

For three days, the full Driving Group reflected on the plan and made decisions to improve the financing, communication, accountability, and coordination of the regional structure, the collegiate coordination and support structure, and the strength of the national networks in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, México and Guatemala that make up the group.

We concluded by endorsing the pact and our values: highlighting the central role of women defenders of the Mesoamerican Region, visibilizing their work, the conditions in which they carry it out, and acknowledging, systematizing and fostering diverse strategies that favor their accompaniment and empowerment to better confront, respond to or recover from attacks perpetrated against them due to their human rights activisim and to the discrimination they experience simply for being women.

With women defenders at the center of our political action, we reinforced our will to concentrate all possible resources in order to maintain their work, make an ongoing contribution to stronger democràtic processes in the region, and foster the sustainability of the struggles in the front lines of the defense of all human rights

Very shortly, we hope to be able to share more of the results of this important meeting and in working together, feel the strength of the union that comes from recognizing that security and self-care are a priority agenda for our societies.