Raising Women's Voices for Immigrant Justice

While NNIRR has organized and advocated for immigrant and refugee women's rights for many years, Raising Women's Voices for Immigrant Justice will help to nurture our longterm work in this area.

Through this project we hope to build connections, engage immigrant and refugee women’s groups, raise the profile of the impacts of restrictive and discriminatory immigration enforcement policies and practices on immigrant women, and strengthen alliance building with key groups in the women’s movement. It will help to bring a new voice--that of unified women‐‐to the table to push for fair and just immigration policies and practices.

The project also brings together the "intersections" of our work: supporting organizing and leadership development at the grassroots level, and advocacting for the rights of migrant women at the global level.

One of the first tasks of the project is a "mapping" of organizing and advocacy groups, projects and campaigns "at the intersection" of migration and women, or gender, to better understand where work is already progressing.

The project will work hand-in-hand with other NNIRR programs. For example, the HURRICANE human rights documentation project has uncovered many cases of abuse and discrimination of immigrant women due to U.S. enforcement programs; these cases have been profiled in a special HURRICANE report to help draw attention to these disturbing trends. We have also found that immigrant women are among our most active human rights promoters!

We are also fortunate to work with a growing circle of migrant women's rights groups at the international level. Through workshops and caucuses at international events, including activities at the United Nations, we are helping to build an active network of global partners on the frontlines of organizing and advocating for the rights of migrant women, men and children. Through our involvement in the People's Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights, a "parallel" event to the intergovernmental Global Forum on Migration and Development, we are also helping to convene the new "Global Network on Women and Migration."

For more information about the Raising Women's Voices Project, please send an email to ctactaquin@nnirr.org.

Hands That Shape the World was produced by NNIRR in 2000, to provide an overview of issues concerning immigrant and refugee women in the U.S. for "Beijing +5", the 5th anniversary of the UN World Conference on Women.