Working on the Pacific coast of Colombia to connect women with legal support

Ilex Acción Jurídica is an organization made up of Afro-Colombian lawyers fighting for racial justice through legal mobilization and research – including working with midwives associations to promote reproductive education, in particular when it comes to a woman’s right to choose (abortion is legally permitted up to the 24th week). 

Alongside midwives associations, the organization works with local organizations, lawyers and members of the community, and integrates women from rural communities into the organization’s advocacy work – in other words, they work with multiple nodes in the information ecosystem, with the goal of building a foundation of both information and trust.  (You can find out more about this work in this audio interview with Ilex Acción Jurídica’s Director, Dayana Blanco Acentra (in Spanish).

Establishing people and places with whom/where women and others can have open and transparent conversations is an important starting point in this work – for Ilex, this includes voice-to-voice communication through Whatsapp chains and community meeting spaces.