News | Inter Pares

Bearing Witness in Bangladesh

At Inter Pares, our role isn’t only to support struggles abroad – but also to bring those struggles back home, to share them with you, with our allies and supporters across the country.

Mae Tao Clinic: Thirty years of building healthy communities

The clinic’s momentous anniversary was celebrated and applauded at home in Mae Sot, Thailand and around the world.

Practicing Recognition

At Inter Pares, we see our role as expressing solidarity with counterparts' struggles. We recognize, and we celebrate together.

Stopping the unstoppable: Citizen resistance to exterminator technology in Burkina Faso

“We will not be your guinea pigs!” Inter Pares counterpart COPAGEN asserted at a press conference denouncing Target Malaria’s plans to release gene

Land is Life

Our counterparts in Burma courageously unite around the guiding principle that ‘land is life’.

Challenging, Confronting and Defying Corporate Power

Inter Pares actively supports organizations and movements that interrogate, challenge, and curb corporate power.

A group of Sudanese women gathered in protest with their backs to the camera

Sudan’s Revolution: The Struggle Within a Struggle

The women’s movement will continue to organize and shape a revolution that recognizes the autonomy and respects the agency of women.

Defending the right to political and social action

For over four decades Inter Pares has been committed to promoting deep and enduring relationships of common cause among civil society organizations.

Women's Equality

“Until We Find Them”: Searching for missing loved ones on the road to the North

When her 18-year-old son Heriberto said goodbye and left for the United States, Maria Elena Larios de Gonzalez had no idea he would vanish.

My dear sangham sisters

Remarks from Shree Mulay, Inter Pares Board member at the twentieth anniversary of the Mobile Biodiversity Festival, Telangana, India.

Defying Dichotomies: People who move

Refugees, migrants, voluntary or forced displacement ... learn more about a reality more complex than it seems.

40 years of social justice action: stories and lessons in new book by PCS

For 40 years, Inter Pares had the honour of working with the international NGO, Project Counselling Service (PCS).

Hope in the Countryside: Abdoulaye’s story

Eight years ago, Abdoulaye Déme left his village in Les Niayes, Senegal, and boarded a pirogue for the Canary Islands.

Genetically modified mosquitoes in Burkina Faso – there is no consent

Gene drive mosquitoes are on the horizon in Burkina Faso as a false solution to eradicate malaria.

In Sudan, Courage Means Women Who Persist

Through every stage of life, the rights and freedoms of women in Sudan are compromised. Our counterparts are part of the courageous women’s rights movement.

Human Rights Defenders: Creating Safe Conditions for Their Work

In Colombia, and many parts of the world, women and men who defend human rights face incredible risks to their physical safety.

What is Courage?

The people with whom Inter Pares works demonstrate profound courage, in their patience, persistence,fearlessness and motivation.

Never has such a tribute been revoked

Aung San Suu Kyi has been silent in the face of genocide. Why revoking her Honorary Canadian Citizenship is right.

Tax Justice and Gender Equality

What does tax justice have to do with feminism and gender equality?

Whose Rights? A Feminist Approach to International Investment Agreements

How power and privilege are distributed and for whose benefit?

Feminism and the Economic System

Feminism is about a transformational change in power dynamics. So it’s essential to examine how wealth is generated and for whose benefit.

The cycle of violence in Burma

Canada must not look at the recent Rohingya crisis in isolation from Burma’s long-standing conflicts.

How the River Grows

It is the tiniest spring and the most modest stream that eventually turn the waterwheel and the turbine.

Inter Pares staff members Samantha McGavin and Rebecca Wolsak (at left and right) with CHRO's Sang Hnin Lian and KDNG's Steven Naw Awng (centre), speaking alongside Chris Lewa to MPs and Senators on Parliament Hill.

Broadening the conversation on Burma

In June 2018, Inter Pares organized a visit to Ottawa of colleagues in Kachin, Chin, and Arakan States, in order to bring their voices to policymakers and promote a comprehensive approach to Burma.

Burma’s Forgotten Wars

Samantha McGavin, Burma Program Manager, shines a light on the country beyond the Rohingya crisis through photos and reflections.

In the Slums of Manila, Spreading Openness and Acceptance

Mark and Vere are Likhaan Community Mobilizers. They both identify as transgender and work in the slum neighbourhoods of metro Manila.

Building an Inclusive Peace in Colombia

Colombia's peace agreement is historic as it is the most inclusive developed to date. Inter Pares' counterparts were instrumental in shaping the agreement.

Mildrey Corrales (PCS), Mauricio Albarracín and Marcela Sánchez (both Colombia Diversa) with Bill Fairbairn.

Connecting Struggles

Bill Fairbairn, Latin America Program Manager at Inter Pares, draws a parallel between his social justice convictions as a gay man and Inter Pares' feminist priorities.

We Are All Fundraisers

Inter Pares staff are co-managers, but we also all consider ourselves fundraisers. While that is a role that makes many people cringe, it’s one we embrace!

Rural Women-to-Women exCHANGEs

An exchange that brought together farmers and rural women leaders from Canada, the West African biodiversity coalition COPAGEN, and the Deccan Development Society (DDS) in India.

Building Solidarity One Conversation at a Time

Raising awareness of other realities, learning from others’ experiences, deepening our solidarity ... this is what Inter Pares seeks to do through our public engagement.

A New Vision for Land in Burma

Land is central to many social justice struggles around the world, and it’s no different in Burma. However, ethnic civil society organizations have a new vision for land use.

Return is Never That Simple

Refugees in camps in Thailand are increasingly worried about their futures since many international NGOs are withdrawing their support.

Countering Dehumanization and Hate

Since October 2016, the Burmese army has unleashed a new wave of violence against Rohingya Muslim civilians in the northwest of the country.

Canadian pension funds grab farmland in Brazil

What are the links between pension funds and landgrabbing? Learn more with this article by David Bruer published in the Monitor magazine.

A critical look at the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Senegal

Presentation of key findings from the evaluation of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Senegal.

Nijera Kori through the eyes of Canadian interns

Between 2012 and 2016 Inter Pares collaborated with Dominique Caouette, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Montreal.

My Retirement, Not at the Price of Human Dignity!

Quebec and BC’s pension funds have land investments in Brazil that are forcing peasants off their land through violence and fraud. Take action now and write to their CEOs.

A work retreat of the Karen Women Organisation. Formed in 1949, with a membership of over 49,000 women, KWO is a community-based organization with which Inter Pares has collaborated for almost two decades.

Feminism Sans Frontières

Feminism is not a worldview invented and held solely by women in the global North. We have found over the past forty years that feminism resonates with social justice activists around the world.

Call for an extractive industry ombudsperson

Op-ed: Enough talk, Canada needs extractive industries ombudsperson

The CNCA has just released proposed legislation that would uphold human rights of communities affected by Canadian extractive industries.

Rita Morbia (third from right) with members of a community women’s organization supported by Likhaan in Quinapondan, Eastern Samar, the Philippines.

What Does it Mean to Be Feminist?

Executive Director Rita Morbia explores how Inter Pares lives out its commitment to feminism, and what the term means to her.

Women's Equality

Flor Salvador: Witness to struggle and triumph in Mesoamerica

Program manager Guillaume Charbonneau tells us Flor's story and how she grew into her role supporting women's rights movements across Central America and Mexico.

Cathleen Kneen engages panelists at Inter Pares’ 2009 AGM.

Cathleen Kneen: Our big sister

Program manager Eric Chaurette shares his ten-year collaboration with Cathleen, a tireless leader for food sovereignty who passed away this spring.

A Model for Peace: Women building peace in Mali

With the support of ACORD, women and men gathered to learn and share ideas of how to transform national conflict into an authentic and sustainable peace.

Colombian government delegates and the FARC initiate talks for ending the conflict, in Oslo, Norway.

No True Peace Without the Voices of Women

In late 2012, when Colombia’s government and its largest guerrilla group, known as the FARC, met in Norway to launch peace talks, the only woman si

The Messy Process of Peace

Peace. The word creates serene images of healthy communities. When countries

Karen refugees from Burma play an active role in managing their own camps.

Inter Pares engages with the Canadian government's development policy review

We offered our views on how Canada can take action on poverty and inequality abroad.

Forced Sterilizations in Peru: Never again

Mamérita Mestanza hadn’t reached her 34th birthday when she died from complications resulting from tubal ligation surgery. Her story is far from unique.

Latin America

From Midwifery to National Healthcare, Step by Step

By Rebecca Wolsak

Controlling Their Own Bodies, Controlling Their Own Lives

The establishment of four reproductive health clinics in the Philippines and the promotion of sexual and reproductive health of women and girls contribute to a better control of their bodies and their lives.