International Indigenous Women’s Forum -FIMI

• Indigenous Women’s
  Movement
• Indigenous Women and
  International Law

Mission

The International Indigenous Women’s Forum (best known as FIMI, by its
Spanish initials) is a network of Indigenous women leaders from Asia, Africa,
and the Americas. FIMI’s mission is to bring together Indigenous women
activists, leaders, and human rights promoters from different parts of the world
to coordinate agendas, build unity, develop leadership and advocacy skills,
increase Indigenous women’s role in international decision-making processes, and
advance women’s human rights.

FIMI’s work aims to:

• Amplify Indigenous women’s voices in the international arena;
• Strengthen local Indigenous women’s organizations; and
• Promote collaboration between the Indigenous women’s movement and the
  non-Indigenous global women’s movement.

History

The seeds of FIMI were planted in 1995, at the UN Fourth World Conference on
Women (often called Beijing, after its host city). More than 30,000 women
attended the conference, in what was one of the most broadly participatory
United Nations conferences ever held.

Indigenous women’s organizations were some of the most active and effective
participants at the Beijing conference, and in subsequent follow-up processes.
As a result of Indigenous advocacy, the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA)
specifically addressed the role of Indigenous women. Paragraph 32 of the PFA
reads:

“The past decade has also witnessed a growing recognition of the distinct
interests and concerns of indigenous women, whose identity, cultural traditions
and forms of social organization enhance and strengthen the communities in which
they live. Indigenous women often face barriers both as women and as members of
indigenous communities.”

The Beijing conference was one of the first times that Indigenous women were
able to come together at the international level to articulate their needs as
Indigenous women, distinct from those of Indigenous Peoples as a whole. At the
end of the conference, Indigenous women issued their own declaration, firmly
asserting their identity and their struggle as Indigenous women. In the
declaration, Indigenous activists praised the PFA for recognizing poverty as a
central barrier to realizing women’s human rights, but challenged conference
participants to take their conclusions one step further and “acknowledge that
this poverty is caused by the same powerful nations and interests who have
colonized us and are continuing to recolonize, homogenize, and impose their
economic growth development model and monocultures on us.”

Five years later, many of the participants in the Beijing conference gathered
in New York for follow-up meetings, known as Beijing +5. This time, before
returning to their homes around the world, Indigenous women decided to create an
organization that could continue the international advocacy and organizing work
that began there. The result was the International Indigenous Women’s Forum, or
FIMI.