Terms of ReferenceIndigenous People and Gender Justice

Context Analysis

“The idea of intersectionality seeks to capture both the structural and the dynamic consequences of the interaction between two or more forms of discrimination or systems of subordination. It specifically addresses the manner in which racism, patriarchy, economic disadvantages and other discriminatory systems contribute to create layers of inequality that structures the relative positions of women and men, races and other groups. Moreover, it addresses the way that specific acts and policies create burdens that flow along these intersecting axes contributing actively to create a dynamic of disempowerment”

Pragna Patel, Notes on Gender and racial discrimination: An Urgent Need to Integrate and Intersectional Perspective to the Examination and Development of Policies, Strategies and Remedies for Gender and Racial Equality, Background Paper, Commission on the Status of Women, forty-fifth session, (March, 2001).

IntroductionAs a result of our gender process in the South America Region Office, including the ICRW gender assessment of the Indigenous People’s Rights Program, the South America Regional Office (SAMRO) has determined the need to carry out a thorough contextual analysis that would help SAMRO develop an intersectional framework for gender and indigenous people’s rights to serve the development of its programmatic strategies and actions.

SAMRO aims to apply this intersectional approach in order to identify and address the effects of intersectional forms of discrimination, especially on women (as opposed to addressing forms of discrimination in isolation of each other). This approach will help SAMRO to determine specific goals and outcomes that are better aimed at addressing specific indigenous peoples and their rights in each of our programs. It will help us build up a common position on these issues and improve our work on gender justice in the region.

Background

Oxfam AmericaOxfam America (OA) is a private, non-governmental organization dedicated to finding lasting solutions to global poverty and social injustice.

Poverty can be described as a state in which people experience multi-dimensional exclusion from active participation in the public arena and its diverse institutions, and the (absolute or relative) deprivation from access to and control over resources and public services.

A development process is always concerned with changes in existing relations and situations and therefore implicitly or explicitly with changes in power relations. In order to assure an end to hunger and poverty, our development efforts must focus on how whole communities of both women and men can be empowered to find their own solutions. Oxfam America is committed to a vision of the world in which women and men can participate fully in their own development, are recognized for their contributions, and share equally in the benefits.

Oxfam America is cognizant of the multiple layers of discrimination that combine to heighten the vulnerability of women and their experiences of injustice. The South America Regional Office (SAMRO) seeks, through this Terms of Reference, to use an intersectional approach (specifically here around gender and indigenous people’s rights) as an analytical tool that helps provide both a conceptual understanding as well as a framework for action.

An intersectional approach to gender and indigenous people’s rights is needed to understand how multiple systems of discrimination impact on men and women differently. We seek to use an intersectional approach to help us understand:

Compounded discrimination (combined gender and minority/marginalized group status preventing women from accessing opportunities and resources) and how are related to structural discrimination (particular state policies and structural dynamics that increase marginalization of women based on gender, race, poverty status, etc).

This TOR also seeks to understand how gender interacts with ethnicity to make women in Peru face disproportionate levels of discrimination and injustice. This will allow us to develop program strategies and actions in response to particular kinds of discrimination as experienced within a particular context.

Oxfam America, Indigenous People and Gender

Working with indigenous peoples as our primary change subject needs a very thorough approach to gender justice. Working with indigenous peoples means working with the neediest population in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. A gender justice approach may help us make a deeper analysis and take things forward.. SAMRO is promoting work that empowers indigenous peoples, but we still need to go all the way and reach those that are vulnerable within this population.

Trying to address indigenous peoples and gender is not an easy task because there are issues that we have to put into consideration, such as an individual and collective rights approach, and also ways of addressing gender in different cultural contexts, etc.

Indigenous women and gender“Indigenous women stand at the intersection of gender and racial inequality…Greater autonomy for indigenous communities does not necessarily result in ensuring the rights of indigenous women…Failure to recognize the intersectional nature of systems of oppression and integrate a racial and gender perspective when analyzing indigenous women’s status will ultimately result in further reinforcing their subordination to both patriarchy and racism.”

Since the 80’s the demands of indigenous women have intensified, and they became aware of their position of disadvantage. They have being wining broader spaces as the El Cairo Conference in 1994 which includes a specific chapter about Indigenous Peoples. Ten years after the Beijing Conference we find that the Indigenous Women International Forum is stronger and helped them moving their own rights forward. But unfortunately there are vulnerabilities and barriers that keep women from achieving their rights. All this different forums, conferences and spaces have been useful to make recommendations towards overcoming poverty, education, health, and environmental issues, among others.

Indigenous peoples rights, culture and policy

Indigenous Women are immersed in the context of their own culture and communities. Their peoples are pushing forward rights such as access to territory, free prior informed consent, among others. Within this process, women are building up their own agenda so they can address their own needs.

Recent recommendations from the Special Rapporteur on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples (OACNUDH), Children’s rights committee and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (UNIFEM ) have being shared in the “¿Qué está pasando con los derechos de los pueblos indígenas?” report of Bolivia, Perú and Ecuador

Peru has advances with some laws like “The Law of equal opportunities”: indigenous women are being taken into consideration but indigenous women organizations in Peru are not involved in the process.

They start from the collective feeling that it belongs to the peoples’ rights (land, culture, economic and social evelopment), including rights to gender equity (equitable access to health, education, income, MOI to the decision to advocate for policies that affect their lives).

Within indigenous peoples there are groups that are highly vulnerable and are behind in achieving their social, economic and cultural rights. There is no recognition of their right over their own lands, they don’t have the opportunity to decide about the use of resources, and don’t have enough access to essential services like health, education, and they suffer social exclusion and discrimination.

RESEARCH OUTLINEResearch Objectives

Build up a context analysis about indigenous people’s rights with a gender justice focus in Peru.

The Gender Justice Change Goal identifies the need to work externally (external change goals) as well as internally (internal change goals) with the aim of challenging and changing existing:

Social attitudes, beliefs, and norms based on the belief that women are of lesser value. Policies, practices and institutional structures which reinforce and sustain unequal power

relations and unequal access to and control over resources.

Suggested Objectives:

To carry out a thorough contextual analysis that would help SAMRO develop an intersectional framework for gender and indigenous people’s rights to serve the development of its program strategies and actions

Carry out contextual analysis and work with SAMRO staff on developing the framework for gender and indigenous people’s rights.

Inform our PSPs, giving an approach to gender from an Indigenous People scope

Based on the analysis and proposed framework, to develop a set of strategies and actions that inform SAMRO’s current and future programs

Research topics and questions

Indigenous organizations and women organizations can work together? Approach and Agenda´s differences. Women role in indigenous organizations.

Natural resources access like water, land and sustainable development. Extractive Industries impact on indigenous people communities. Relations between state and indigenous people like access to justice,

identity rights, mechanisms like Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), 169th Convention, community justice.

State policies focused on health and education for indigenous people.

Guiding topics around which to ask our core questions: 1) Targeted forms of discrimination (exclusively against women within a

particular indigenous group);2) Compounded discrimination (combined gender and minority/marginalized

group status preventing women from accessing opportunities and resources);

3) Structural discrimination (particular state policies and structural dimensions that increase marginalization of women based on gender, race, poverty status, etc).

Outputs

1. Thorough contextual analysis; 2. Staff training on conducting context analysis;3. Intersectional framework for gender and indigenous people’s rights to serve

the development of SAMRO program strategies and actions4. Recommendations on key strategies and actions for engaging with

particular indigenous groups and addressing specific policies and structural dynamics that reinforce these different forms of marginalization.

5. Inputs to acute our PSPs strategies.

Which work lines and/or areas we have to address in order to make indigenous peoples’ rights be recognized, especially those of indigenous women?

Other topics relevant for our work on this issue will be mentioned in the literature review section.

Theoretical Orientation

OI Gender Justice Framework

OI has a Gender Justice Change Goal that should be the guide to better address other change goals such as economic justice, rights in crisis and essential services.

Gender Justice Change Goal gives us a focused perspective on the definition and application of civil, political, economic and social rights. This specific gender approach can help us build up an understanding on the areas that we have to address and the challenges we have to pursuit. We have to take into consideration the fact that gender equality and women’s rights are goals in themselves and not only an instrumental way of achieving other development goals.

Gender Justice brings work towards gender equity and gender equality into a rights based framework, it implies access to and control over resources, combined with agency (the ability to make choices), and a process that includes accountability, responsibility and answerability of institutions set up to dispense justice.

Research DesignFocus on processes related to indigenous peoples and gender justice in Peru.Consultants Proposal

Research Methodology Consultant proposal Take into consideration work produced in SAMRO as well as our coworkers experience and points of view.

Narrow and define research topics and core questions in coordination with staff involved. Raise context specific questions related to programs topics. Cover, not only our work at the grassroots level, but also our policy approach to indigenous peoples.

Data Collection

BudgetOxfam America will pay a competitive consultancy fee to conduct this analysis. Include consultants’ fee, travel expenses and other in requested proposal.

OUTPUTS Date1. Literature Review and work plan. Research

questions definition.October 2009

2. Research design October 20093. Staff and Consultants Meeting November 20094. First Draft Report December 20095 Staff and Consultants Meeting January 20106 Final Draft Report February 20107 Workshop: Bringing in our findings to our

PSPs / Nurturing our PSPsFebruary 2010

Terms of PaymentThe first installment of 30% of the total sum will be payable at contract signature.The second installment of (40%) of the total sum will be payable on submission of the first draft.The second installment of (30%) of the total sum will be payable when the consultant’s final report has been submitted and when the commissioning manager has

a) Approved that the report has been satisfactorily completedb) Confirmed that full research documentation (as described below) has also been

provided.

Documentation of researchIn order to use the Consultant’s research findings in Oxfam International publications and campaigns, Oxfam America must be provided with full information and documentation to substantiate those findings.

The consultant’s final report(s) must provide endnote references for all specific facts and statistics used. The report(s) must also include a bibliography of all references mentioned.

Primary sources must be used wherever possible over secondary sources (for example, the Consultant should provide documentary evidence of a fact or statistic as written in its original report, not as cited by a newspaper)

If internet sources have been used, a printed out page from the website showing the cited facts and statistics must be submitted. The consultant must ensure that the date on which it was printed out is written on the page.

If Oxfam discovers any discrepancies with the figures or facts, the consultant will work with Oxfam to resolve the discrepancies.

Professional expectations

Two or more consultants with expertise in gender and indigenous people

Consultants’ proficiency in English desirable

Consultants will write the report with the style guide provided by Oxfam America.

Consultants will work with Oxfam to determine the appropriate research methods and exchange learning.

Consultants must make assumptions in research design explicit.

Work must undergo a review process that includes internal Oxfam review and external peer review.

Work is subject to progress or development review and project can be terminated by Oxfam, if the project is not progressing in line with the terms of reference. For example, the submission of a outline or storyboard in the beginning of the project and a draft report at a subsequent point are checkpoints to asses the project of the research.

Consultant is expected to make deadlines outlined above, unless the consultant negotiates alternative deadlines with Oxfam, in which case Oxfam will revise the ToR to express the new deadlines.

Desired Qualifications Proven knowledge of various social research methodologies (including qualitative,

quantitative and participatory methods);

Demonstrable experience with gender analysis, and more generally social relations research in rural development and with analysis of institutional dynamics at local, community and national levels;

Experience in the region particularly Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia is an asset;

Ability to travel to the three countries as required

ContactAdelaida Alayza SueiroGender and Policy Officer

South America Regional OfficeOxfam America

Av. Benavides 1130Miraflores, Lima 18, PerúTelefax 51 (1) 7009200aalayza@oxfamamerica.org