Women's artisan cooperatives throughout the world that provide safe and sustaining ways to earn a living, and how to contact them to purchase their beautiful crafts!
SG's Spotlight this month is focused on Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network. Below is a description of the organization and its crafts program for women.
The article was provided by Binalakshmi Nepram, founder of Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network as well as a poet and author (her books "Poetic Festoon"; and "South Asia's Fractured Frontier: Armed Conflict, Narcotics and Small Arms Proliferation in India's Northeast" respectively). She is also co-founder of the Control Arms Foundation of India.
THE MANIPUR WOMEN GUN SURVIVORS NETWORK by Binalakshmi Nepram
The Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network is based in the Northeast Indian state of Manipur (bordering with Myanmar) and empowers Manipuri women survivors of armed violence, and also works to eventually end conflict in northeast India.
Northeast India has experienced ethnic armed conflicts for over 60 years now. Over 50,000 people have been killed in the last five decades. According to the Indian Government today more than 60 armed groups operate in Manipur-ranging from small outfits to organizations with several thousand members. Beside them, around 60 battalions of the Indian Army and several units of Indian paramilitary forces are stationed throughout the state at the Indo-Burma-border.
Women and children of Manipur suffer most in this conflict, even when they are not targeted directly. They are traumatized by the deaths of family members. They bear the brunt of the emotional and socio-economic impacts of violence. So many women have become impoverished after the killings of male relatives, who have been working for the survival of the family. According government data there are 20,000 registered widows in 2014.
Amid the entrenched armed violence, the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network empowers Manipuri women survivors of armed violence to thwart growth of the small arms trade. Manipur Women was founded in 2004 by noted feminist activist Binalakshmi Nepram. With many women in Manipur trying to cope with life under the shadow of the gun, Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network attempts to make them economically independent. The Network is working towards building sustainable livelihood measures for women affected by violence. Thousands of women are being trained in weaving and bamboo crafts production. For more details of their products of network, please log on to http://womensurvivorsnetwork.org/products.php
Thousands of women and more than 300 villages are covered and so far over 1000 women are getting direct financial assistance as well as legal support for small-scale entrepreneurial work so that they can move on in live with newly found courage. Additionally, network has given legal and government schemes trainings to thousands of women across many remote village in Manipur and Tripura.
For testimonies of women survivors, please log on to http://womensurvivorsnetwork.org/survivor-testimony-detail.php?sid=23
In addition, the network actively lobbies and educates government, civil society, and international agencies about this specific form of violence against women