Building a future free from sexual violence: reflections from a regional training cycle with young activists in Latin America and the Caribbean

Strengthening the capacities of the movement to promote access to justice without discrimination for all survivors.

In each country, conversations begin in different ways. Sometimes, with a round of introductions where names resonate in Indigenous languages, other times with an exercise of collective memory about how we arrived here, or with a playful activity to share the paths of each activist’s journey. Yet across all spaces, there is something in common: a deep desire to transform how justice listens to, understands, and supports survivors of sexual violence.

Between October and December 2025, I helped lead and accompany, alongside the Equality Now team and partner organisations, a regional training cycle for young activists, lawyers, psychologists, and women’s rights defenders in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Bolivia. These encounters, carried out in partnership with feminist organisations, Indigenous networks, and community-based groups, were conceived as spaces to connect experiences, share legal, political, and communications tools, and strengthen the networks that are already challenging State responses to sexual violence across the region.

This training cycle was designed as part of a broader regional strategy to strengthen the capacities of young activists and support the adotion of international standards on sexual violence. In practice, it also became an opportunity to look at those standards in the context of very diverse local realities, and to work with young activists on how to use them as concrete tools for advocacy in their own territories. This meant connecting international law, strategic communications, and action planning with the day-to-day work they are already carrying out at the local level.

Mexico: learning from community justice

In Oaxaca, more than twenty Indigenous women lawyers and defenders came together for the training we organised with the National Network of Indigenous Women Lawyers (RAI). Over the course of two days, participants shared their knowledge and experiences of advocacy within both community-based and State justice systems.

Conversations focused on the need to name lived experiences, to be heard, and to demand justice without fear, particularly in contexts where Indigenous women face multiple barriers to accessing effective protection systems. From community justice to State justice, the importance of working with gender-responsive and intersectional approaches that engage with cultural and territorial realities became clear.

During the training, my colleague Elizabeth C. Plácido, Advocacy Officer at Equality Now, emphasised how these spaces help connect legal analysis with the concrete defence practices that already exist within communities. “They are essential for linking legal work with the strength of communities,” she noted. “Indigenous women defenders are showing that justice can also be collective, culturally grounded, and deeply transformative.”

Argentina: young feminist responses to escalating violence

In Córdoba, the training conducted in collaboration with Fundación Vivir Libres brought together young professionals from various fields, including law, psychology, medicine, and the social sciences. Through theoretical modules, collective debates, and care-centred spaces, the training fostered critical reflection on the role of activism in addressing sexual violence and on institutional responsibilities in responding to it.

During the training, Natalia López, a psychologist at the Specialised Prosecutorial Unit on Violence against Women (UFEM), offered key insights into the role of testimony in judicial processes and the subjective impact of narrating an experience of sexual violence. Her intervention opened a necessary conversation about the gap that often exists between the timelines of the justice system and the timelines of trauma.

“The words spoken by a victim are often heard by someone who does not fully understand what it means to testify about a traumatic experience,” she explained. “Those of us who work on sexual violence confront the most unsettling aspects of our culture. Understanding the impact of trauma not only improves responses but also improves listening. Every institutional gesture can either contribute to repair or cause further harm.”

In a context of democratic backsliding and escalating gender-based violence, collective reflections repeatedly returned to the role of feminist training as a political practice. Not as the accumulation of knowledge, but as a space for encounter, shared reflection, and the construction of strategies to sustain this work in increasingly hostile environments.

“Training together is also a form of resistance,” shared Yohana Artico, one of the participants. “Critical thinking becomes action when it is put in dialogue with other journeys, territories, and struggles.”

The training sought to support young participants in recognising themselves as multipliers of good practices, with the capacity to influence their professional and community spaces to transform institutional responses to sexual violence from within.

Colombia: bringing activists together to defend the rights of girls, adolescents, and women survivors of sexual violence

In Cali, Colombia, the training took the form of a national gathering, co-organised with Justicia para Todas, that brought together activists, lawyers, and community leaders from across the country, with regions selected intentionally based on high rates of sexual violence. The space was designed from an interdisciplinary and intersectional perspective, acknowledging that barriers to accessing justice are intensified at the intersections of racism, ableism, age, and poverty.

Participants exchanged experiences around the main obstacles faced by girls, adolescents, and women survivors of sexual violence within the justice system, as well as the persistent gaps between existing legal frameworks and their practical implementation.

In response to a demand from participants, the program included a session on strategic communications and digital communication trends for advocacy. This space addressed how to challenge dominant narratives in increasingly hostile digital environments, how to protect survivors and defenders, and how to plan politically intentional campaigns and assess their impact.

From the outset, it became apparent that many of the organisations present shared similar diagnoses and challenges, yet had rarely had the opportunity to engage in direct dialogue with one another, even when working in the same regions of the country.

Bolivia: building a future free from sexual violence

In Cochabamba, we conducted the final training of the cycle in collaboration with our partners from Comunidad de Derechos Humanos. The gathering focused on the everyday work of organisations engaged in preventing sexual violence and carrying out advocacy, the concrete difficulties they face when accompanying survivors, and the need to update strategies in response to forms of violence that continue to evolve.

The discussions also addressed the specific nature of barriers in rural contexts with a high proportion of Indigenous populations, and the challenges of working from an intercultural perspective that respects ancestral knowledge while refusing to naturalise or justify the systematic sexual violence against girls as something “cultural.”

As Amparo Choquehuanca Limachi, a participant in the training, shared, “We see that violence is changing spaces. Today, there is also a lot of violence in the virtual sphere. These kinds of trainings help us stay updated and to stand together with compañeras in our territories and at the national level, so that the movement becomes much stronger.”

The space also opened a collective reflection on care as a central dimension of work against sexual violence. In the words of Grethel Ruiz Casso, “this gathering was important mainly because it allowed us to get to know one another, those of us who are confronting the system daily. We looked at litigation strategies, communications, and advocacy,” as well as “the importance of collective care to remain strong and to continue supporting survivors, with attention to mental health and self-care.”

Reflections

Leading this training cycle across different countries in the region reaffirmed a core principle of Equality Now’s work. Strengthening access to justice in cases of sexual violence does not end with legal reform. It requires sustained investment in the capacities of the women’s movement and of young activists who, from their territories, confront every day the gap between laws and their implementation.

In each encounter, organisations and activists came with practices, knowledge, and strategies shaped in complex contexts, often marked by fragmented or insufficient State responses. The purpose of this cycle was not to “transfer” international standards, but to place them in dialogue with existing work, to critically engage with them, and to use them as tools for advocacy and for supporting survivors.

The process also deepened an idea that runs through our work today: advocacy cannot be understood as taking place only within traditional institutional spaces. Sexual violence shifts, takes on new forms, and moves into new arenas, including digital environments. Integrating strategic communications into the trainings responded to a need articulated from the grassroots themselves, linked to challenging dominant narratives, protecting survivors and defenders, and sustaining political agendas in increasingly hostile contexts.

Finally, the cycle brought two inseparable dimensions back to the centre. First, the value of encounters between organisations that, despite facing similar challenges, often work in isolation, and the power of creating spaces for organising and trust. Second, care as a political practice is essential for sustaining work against sexual violence over time and for confronting persistent barriers to access to justice.