Northeast Pará State Women’s Movement (MMNEPA)

Breaking the Barriers of Silence towards Violence against Women and Crying out for Women’s Rights in Northeast Pará is a project that will promote valuing women as human beings, guaranteeing their space in society with respect and dignity.

Collaborative action and networking will be promoted with women’s groups and other organizations to discuss women’s living conditions in the cities and countryside.

The Movement’s proposal is to fight violations of rights that become invisible or are taken for granted, void of public meaning and therefore of political significance.

The old popular saying, “Never interfere when a husband and wife fight,’’ should be changed to “Interfere” through capacity-building and training of women’s groups in Northeast Pará on the gender violence issue, and by raising and systematizing data on spouse violence.

The goal is to implement the Network to Deal with Violence. As part of this process, the Movement will hold information and awareness-raising campaigns on violence against women and will create an informational folder on the issue, based on the collected data.

The idea is to conduct debates, research, seminars, and workshops on women’s condition in political, socioeconomic, environmental, and cultural life, including on facts that shape existing discrimination, in order to eliminate all identifiable forms of violations of women’s rights, and guaranteeing the effective enforcement of public policies.

The Movement defends women’s rights from the perspective of struggling for society and government to acknowledge these rights and to guarantee the conditions for full exercise of citizenship.

MMNEPA holds training meetings on women’s health and sexuality; public and participatory budgets; gender and public policies; combating human rights violations; and the provisions of the Maria da Penha Act.

The Movement also advises urban and rural women’s groups, encouraging them to participate in the Municipal and State councils to guarantee public policies.

The Movement participates in Municipal, State, national, and international events and other collectives, like the World Social Forum, celebration of International Women’s Day, Grito do Campo (Cry from the Country) Day, and Terra Brasil (Brazil Land) Day, the Women’s Marches in Belém and Brasilia, the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting against Sexual and Domestic Violence, and the Campaign to Fight Violence against Women.