The Vision, AWHRC and El Taller International

The Courts of Women

AWHRC and El Taller International

The Vision

this eye
is not for weeping
its vision must be unblurred
though tears are on my face
it’s intent is clarity
it must forget
nothing

Let us tell you the story of the Courts of Women:

It was a dream of many years ago; a dream to break the silence that enshrouds the violence; to rewrite women’s histories, to reclaim our memories; to find new visions for out times. To tell our stories not only of pain, but also of courage and survival; to find another logic; another way to know.

It began in Asia through the Asian Women’s Human Rights Council who together with several other women’s rights groups across the Asia and the Pacific has held nine Courts in the region; El Taller International, a sister organisation based in Tunisia has taken these Courts to the other regions of the world- Africa, Arab, Central and Latin America.

The Courts of Women are an unfolding of a space, an imaginary: a horizon that invites us to think, to feel, to challenge, to connect, to dance, to dream. It is an attempt to define a new space for women, and to infuse this space with a new vision, a new politics. It is a gathering of voices and visions of the global south, locating itself in a discourse of dissent: in itself it is a dislocating practice, challenging the new world order of globalisation, crossing lines, breaking new ground: listening to the voices and movements in the margins.

The Courts of Women seek to weave together the objective reality (through analyses of the issues) with the subjective testimonies of the women; the personal with the political; the logical with the lyrical (through video testimonies, artistic images and poetry); the rational with the intuitive; urging us to discern fresh insights, offering us other ways to know, inviting us to seek deeper layers of knowledge; towards creating a new knowledge paradigm. The Courts of Women are public hearings: the Court is used in a symbolic way. In the Courts, the voices of the victims/ survivors are listened to. Women bring their personal testimonies of violence to the Court: the Courts are sacred spaces where women, speaking in a language of suffering, name the crimes, seeking redress, even reparation.

While the Courts of Women listen to the voices of the victims/ survivors, they also listen to the voices of women who resist, who rebel, who refuse to turn against their dreams. They hear the voices of women from the women’s and human rights movements; they hear of survival in the dailiness of life; they hear of women and movements resisting violence in their myriad forms- war, ethnicity, fundamentalism; they hear of women struggling for work, wages, their rights to the land; they hear of how they survive- of their knowledges, their wisdoms that have been inaudible, invisible. They hear challenges to the dominant human rights discourse, whose frames have excluded the knowledges of women. The Courts of Women hear of the need to extend the discourse to include the meanings and symbols and perspectives of women.

It speaks of a new generation of women’s human rights.

It is an expression of a new imaginary that is finding different ways of speaking truth to power; challenging power, recognising that the concepts and categories enshrined in the ideas and institutions of our times are unable to grasp the violence; violence that is not only escalating, but is also intensifying, the forms are becoming more brutal.

The Courts of Women also speak truth to the powerless, seeking the conscience of the world, creating other reference points than that of the rule of law, returning ethics to politics. It invites us to the decolonisation of our structures, our minds and of our imaginations; subsumed cultures, subjugated peoples, silenced women reclaiming their political voice and in breaking the silence refusing the conditions by which power maintains its patriarchal control.

It speaks too of another notion of justice; of a jurisprudence, which bringing individual justice and reparation will also be transformatory for all. A jurisprudence that is able to contextualize and historicise the crimes; moving away from a justice of revenge, a retributive justice, to a justice seeking redress, even reparation; a justice with truth and reconciliation; a restorative justice, healing individuals and communities. The Courts of Women are a step towards reimagining this jurisprudence from within civil society and social movements in which we are able to creatively connect and deepen our collective insights and understanding of the context in which the text of our everyday realities are being written.

Through its very diverse voices, the Courts of Women attempt to speak of equality, not in terms of sameness, but in terms of difference; a difference that is rooted in dignity that comes from depths, from the roots a people who have been dispossessed and denigrated.

The Courts of Women invite us to write another history:

A counter hegemonic history, a history of the margins. The Courts of Women are a journey of the margins: a journey rather than an imagined destination. A journey in which the dailiness of our lives proffer possibilities for our imaginary, survival and sustenance; for connectedness and community. For the idea of imaginary is inextricably linked to the personal, political and historical dimensions of community and identity. It is the dislocation expressed by particular social groups that makes possible the articulation of new imaginaries.  These social groups, the margins, the global south, the south in the north, the indigenous, the blacks, the dalits, the women are beginning to articulate these new imaginaries.

The peasants in Chiapas, Mexico, describing their new imaginary explain their core vision in their struggle for their livelihoods and for retaining their life worlds. And in their profound and careful organisation, in their political imagining and vision that does not offer clear, rigid, universal truths; knowing that the journey is in itself precious, sum up their vision in three little words:

asking, we walk.

The asking in itself challenges master narratives, masters’ houses, houses of reason; universal truths, of power, of politics.  The Courts of Women invite us to dismantle the master’s house; for as the poet Audre Lorde says the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. There is an urgent need to challenge the centralising logic of the master’s narrative implicit in the dominant discourses –of class, of caste, of gender, of race. This dominant logic is logic of violence and exclusion, a logic of civilised and uncivilised, a logic of superior and inferior.

This centralising logic must be decentered, must be interrupted, even disrupted.

The Courts of Women speak to this disruption; to this trespass. The Courts of Women are about crossing lines, about breaking new ground, about finding new paradigms of knowledge and of politics.

The Courts of Women are our dreams of trespass.

The Praxis:

Only by questioning the light
in my eyes can I refuse to be
dazzled by the lie in yours

Each Court receives the testimonies through a Jury of wise women and men. The testimonies and judgements that emerge from the Courts of Women offer a valuable input into local, national and international campaigns against the different forms of violence like war and militarisation, mono- culturalisation and the feminisation of poverty; They contribute to a growing body of knowledge that will help to question, transform and initiate alternative thinking, institutions and instruments which seek to address the violation of women’s human rights at regional, national and international levels. They create possibilities for exchange among women’s and human rights groups and organisations in the regions.

For the Courts of Women are rooted in and draw their strength from the local organisations that work in close cooperation with us in conceptualising and holding them. In every region they are held, the Courts of Women are like burst of light that gather in conversations across cultures, the knowledges and wisdoms of women in the region; entering into a dialogue of transformation that challenges the dominant world view, creating a new discourse, moving towards a new generation of women’s human rights.

Every Court therefore has a different ethos, each a different emphasis; sometimes determined by the local and partner organisations; sometimes by the themes of the World and Regional Social Forums; sometimes by the coordinating team; that then take forward the analyses and perspectives of the Court.

What connects these diverse Courts of Women is the methodology that challenges the dominant ways to know, to knowledge; a methodology  being woven into the priorities and perspectives of diverse partner organisations. For instance local groups from Palestine, Columbia, South Africa and North Korea are preparing and holding Courts in the region that are ridden with conflict and suffering, creating spaces of listening with healing seeking redressal and reparation. The Courts of Women have also become spaces for deepening the process of networking at global fora like the World Social Forum gatherings in Latin America, Africa and Asia where Courts have been held in cooperation with several organisations on issues related to wars; the wars of poverty, the wars against women.

Over the years the Courts have grown into a movement that has gathered momentum from the time of its inception in 1992 to the over 30 Courts held in the global south; deepening its vision of politics and power, justice and transformation and the making of violence against women unthinkable.

Corinne Kumar
International Coordinator
Courts of Women