The webinar starts after the introduction of the RED network by its chair Tatiana Retamozo Quintana. One can find this introduction here: http://redlatinas.blogspot.com/
The webinar shared common experiences of migrant women and girls -refugees, domestic workers, those part of family reunification, undocumented, etc.- coping under COVID measures in Europe. It will highlight how migrant women have worked together to provide essential support, safe spaces, and collective action through campaigning and advocacy. It will outline experiences in Germany, Spain, Serbia and Belgium and Europe, including providing political recommendations, such as for the EU recovery fund.
The following speakers presented their experiences and work.
Tatiana Retamozo Quintana, Chair of the Latin-American and Caribbean women’s network (RED), Spain
Tatiana Retamozo Quintana is a founder of the NETWORK of Latin American and Caribbean Women, and currently its president. She is a migrant women’s human rights activist and lawyer specialized in development cooperation and migration issues. Peruvian by origin, she focuses all her feminist energies on defending the right to a life free of violence and free of all discrimination against women, especially migrant women in the Spanish State. She currently works in the coordination Unit of the NGO AIETI.
Oluwakemi Oyewole Kimi Advocacy group of NGO Atina, Serbia
Oluwakemi Oyewole Kimi is an activist, advocate and public speaker promoting women’s rights globally. Nigerian by origin, Kimi is actively engaged in building capacities of professionals within institutions and CSOs in Serbia on gender-based violence, gender equality and migration as well as anti-discrimination standards and policies. She is actively involved in supporting migrant girls and women, especially those suffering different forms of violence. She will be speaking on behalf of the Advocacy Group of young women supported by NGO Atina, a feminist organization with the aim to support independence, empowerment, and full social inclusion of women and girls.
Silvia Zúñiga Feminists for Nicaragua, Basque country, Spain
Silvia Zúñiga is a feminist activist volunteering with the group “Feminists for Nicaragua” in the Basque Country, Spain. She will speak on their experience coordinating the Resistance Emergency Fund ‘I don´t leave them alone’ for supporting migrant women who work as domestic workers and are in a vulnerable situation in the context of the pandemic. This has been an effort shared with other three women migrant groups in the Basque Country. She will also address the issue of the current situation of Nicaraguan migrant women.
Nurhidayah Hassan, WIDE+, France
Nurhidayah Hassan will present a new WIDE+ study assessing EU funds to migrant women’s associations before and in the context of COVID19. She concludes that the very necessary work of migrant women’s groups and association to promote gender equality and women’s human rights is often overlooked. Next to writing this study for WIDE+ in collaboration with the WIDE+ gender and migration Working Group, Hassan is completing her second master in ‘International Development’ from the University of Grenoble, France, after a career doing research, teaching and working for civil society in Singapore.
The webinar is supported [in part] by a grant from the Foundation Open Society Institute in cooperation with the Human Rights Initiative of the Open Society Foundations.