Ketty Nivyabandi

International Women’s Day: Honouring Resistance, Demanding Equality

Ketty Nivyabandi, Amnesty Int’l Canada [Photo Credit: Dave Chan]

As we approach International Women's Day, I am called to reflect on the extraordinary courage of women human rights defenders around the world who are leading, organizing, and resisting injustice in the face of unprecedented pressure and risk. Women like Yanar Mohammed, gunned down only last week outside her home in Baghdad.  

As authoritarian practices gain ground globally, we are facing a global, coordinated, and well-funded crackdown against hard-fought human rights gains. History reminds us that gendered violence has so often been used as a political tool to divide society and concentrate power.

Women who speak out face harassment, surveillance, detention and physical harm. Economic exclusion is used to limit their independence, and digital spaces are manipulated to silence their voices.

In Afghanistan, women have been systematically erased from public life. Girls who could attend school only a few years ago are now forbidden to do so. Women working to provide for their families and drive forward progress are now forced to remain at home, venturing out only when a male companion is present.

In Canada, the rights of Indigenous women to live in safety and raise families in traditional manners to keep cultures alive are threatened by apathy and antiquated laws designed to suppress their identities and rights. 

And yet—despite all such odds stacked against us—women remain the most integral of threads in the social, economic, cultural, and political fabric of life everywhere.

Women the world over are pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable. Of what we will tolerate.

In Ecuador, the Guerreras por la Amazonía remind us that women and girls of all ages are fierce defenders of their homes and communities. In Mexico, women have led the search for thousands of disappeared people and continue their pursuit for truth and justice, in the face of unrelenting threat.

I am firm believer in the power of women to reshape our world. To all the women across the globe fighting against immense odds to protect the rights of all, we salute your courage, but we do not salute it from the sidelines. We salute it in solidarity and action alongside you.

-Ketty | Ketty Nivyabandi is the Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada.

Image: Unsplash

To Work Towards Justice is to Persevere

As someone who spent her life in the heart of Africa, where the sun’s warmth lasts throughout the year, I am fascinated by Canadian seasons and the profound life lessons they carry. My work is to look at the state of the world daily and what a sight it is today. From the grueling violence in the Middle East to the threats faced by Indigenous communities and our natural world, it is easy sometimes to feel as though our world is crumbling, and human rights an unattainable quest. Have we not learnt anything about history, one might ask? Is humanity destined to always repeat the same mistakes, and for injustice to prevail?

The fall season with its gorgeous trail of auburn, copper and crimson leaves dropping on the ground, one at a time, giving way to the long silence of winter, and eventually an astounding rebirth in the spring have been a source of deep comfort in my work on human rights. They remind me that like the seasons, injustice comes and goes, and rebirth is always within our reach. The pursuit of justice is demanding. It asks us to be patient and diligent, to cultivate hope against all odds, to never give up. Just as we know with absolute certainty that spring will come, we must trust that a more just world is possible.

This week I was overjoyed to learn that Brazil had finally convicted two former police officers for the murder of Marielle Franco, a prominent young female politician killed in a drive-by shooting in 2018. Our team in the Brazil office has devoted much of its work to this case. Marielle may not be back, and her family remains forever shattered, but this conviction breaks a culture of impunity that had engulfed Brazil for too long. It took six long years of mobilizing, advocating and campaigning in what seemed like an impossible case for this conviction to emerge. My first thought upon hearing the news was the wise words of Martin Luther King, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” What a privilege to bend the arc daily, with the support of so many of you, even in what seems like a cold winter for human rights.

To work towards justice is to persevere, to doubt, to stumble and to get up and start again, always guided by those most impacted, breaking the silence cast around the unheard, and casting light on the most forgotten wrongs. It is to look at the falling leaves, and to trust, without the shadow of a doubt, in the return of the spring.

Guest Blog by: Ketty Nivyabandi, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada