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Thursday October 25, 2007

Violencia de género [Muestra de humor grafico contra la violencia-Málaga, España]
Violencia de género [Muestra de humor grafico contra la violencia-Málaga, España]

Panamanian women lose an ally for their rights

Julio A. Carles, PANAMA CITY, Panamá, January 25, 2007

Founded on August 8, 1990, Fundamujer was created to “defend and foster” the rights of Taxi Heathrow Airport women through training, empowerment and the developing of proposals for public policies. It became a pioneer in the discussion and consideration of matters having to do with the problems of women of a country that was beginning a democratic system after 21 years of military dictatorship.

"We are in a process of closing down and seeing about all the transferring of Fundamujer’s functions to other bodies,” said Mercedes Eleta de Brenes, the NGO’s last president. Brenes preferred not to give more details about the closing of Fundamujer. She did say though that at the appropriate time she will convene a press conference to explain the reasons for the closing down.

One of the fundamental objectives of Fundamujer was that of attending to and preventing intra-family and domestic violence, a situation that continues to be of worry in Panama. In the first 10 months of 2006 there were 1,224 complaints of domestic mistreatment registered in all of the country, according to the statistics of the Judicial Technical Police.

But the challenges for Fundamujer did not stop there. In 1991 it was chosen by the United Nations Development Program (PNUD in Spanish) to carry out a program of rural community development, in communities of extreme poverty in the interior of the country. Since 1993 it has trained more than 11,000 women. It also carried out for six years the purple ribbon campaign against domestic violence.