gender based violence why are states so bad at making it stop maybe it has to do with the money they get for perpetuating it this week in her st appearance since fleeing brazil a woman's rights advocate speaks and we talk with activism philanthropists about what works and what doesn't when it comes to stopping violence against women and girls that's all coming up on the laura flanders show the place where the people who want to be done to the people who are doing it gender based violence happens everywhere it undermines the health dignity security and autonomy of its victims it knows no social economic or national limits violence against women and girls and anyone perceived as vulnerable on the basis of their gender is as old as the hills even as year after year decade after decade governments and non governmental organizations alike pledged to stop it is it possible that a lot of well funded efforts just don't work might be even be counterproductive it's possible but as they say there is hope somehow against all odds some of the most vulnerable people in the world but doing some pretty effective wor talk about the problem and the possible solutions are key to end ramdass after years of foundation work as well as activism she knows the world of philanthropy from the inside now she currently heads up the women's rights program at the open society foundations mcgovern directs the program on global health justice and governance at the columbia university mailman school of public health she's just back from a fact finding visit to beirut deborah denise is deputy director of the rights and justice for the international planned parenthood federation western hemisphere region she was recently driven into exile after receiving death threats in her home in brazil thank you all for coming in and i pushed to kill you appreciate you deborah for being willing to talk on the program just to clarify for people why did you leave brazil what are you up against when did it start and what was the nature of the threats that you've been facing to understand what is happening with poet is that it's just the number one because human rights it's at the center of his battle it's a cultural battle against democracy and that is a core and gender that  husband my family and they they didn't stop so even not being in brazil anymore i keep receiving them and it's a mix of concrete description of how they will kill me my parents my brothers my sisters husband but also i would say in their language just saying i know where you were working now when we know where you live now so how to handle that a balance that is considering that something serious here but it's not stopping but not paralyzing do you have qualms about coming on the show i before coming here i can sue the group of lawyers and the st time that i'm speaking in public about that you have a hypothesis terry about why violence on the basis of gender continues to be both so rampant so deadly and at the same time so funded kind of talk about it a little bit and what took you to babe ruth so i want to say that it's just thank you for having us but also i just want to express incredible respect for deborah you find people like her all throughout the world working on gender based violence so  although we're going to say a lot of kind of complex difficult things there's also incredible hope in in these these women all throughout the world and girls who are doing this work so you are big  so i think that you know patriarchy is very complicated it's laws it's culture or it's it's manipulation of all kinds of things and there's been kind of a tendency from donors to kind of land on education is the answer or economic opportunity is the answer on the on exactly off in ignoring kind of the structural factors that are affecting women and girls so when you begin to look at what's being funded st of all if you're partnering if you're funding through many governments then you're not going to be funding efforts to change laws why so explain because the n is basically their client is the is the government right so who so that makes it very difficult to do things that are you know going to be difficult for the government so so in many countries you have big problems with law personal status law or religious law and it's it's at the core of kind of some of the issues that are going on so if you just go in and give the girl education or you just go in and  give her a cash transfer right you know it's not fixing the larger set of issues so i think there are some very courageous donors who are actually trying to get at this now and figure out how do we how do we how do we address complex interacting dynamics that produce gender based violence we haven't seen a deep decrease in fact it's worse and worse so it is really important to look at what are we spending huhne why are we seeing changes how do we empower people like deborah on the ground who have amazing ideas what is blocking them from getting resource so you've worked in many foundations you're working at another one agree disagree actually i would distinguish foundations from the the biggest source of quote unquote like the u n transfers and those are much larger in terms of total amounts and actually there is where terri's point about some indications of change most recently the dutch government made a series of investments in was not putting money directly into the hands of small grassroots organizations i work for fourteen years at the global fund for women and it also was created as a response to the fact that in fact many times the kinds of support that an  se which is the organization deborah leads in lead and founded in in brazil don't and can't absorb fifty thousand dollars or two hundred and fifty thousand dollars but me need ten thousand dollars may need twenty thousand dollars and  it in ways that don't limit them from being able to use it in the ways that they think are important so i think the st thing i'd see is that when you can recognize that the best w resources into the hands of activists on the ground is to actually use a much more democratic means of philanthropy of philanthropy then what we currently have which is a very small number of primarily white men who have made fortunes through an extremely unjust and an equal economic system if the remain in control of those resources then no matter how wonderful an individual program officer would be and daddy and i both work prior to this at the ford foundation we need to be able to work with our allies and i might if i'm going to leave in the in trickle up farms and trickle up justice and all of that but what i'm hearing from you terry am from you deborah is if you don't address the superstructure and the rest of these groups are working you could do fantastic work have done drastic funding and still be driven out of the country by absolutely the death threats right so what would be your requests what might have made your situation different arbor i think you have to make a balance here what is happening in latin america in general it's a kind of flab as a response  a wave and the globe it's not just here but it's latin america is a lab also a cause of the response to the nation's decisions in the last decade when we heard that that's actually just the place we're starting because we have a lot of work there already i mean just to say you see the evangelical presence every everywhere i mean i just want to not i you know i was sure i was just in kenya and it doesn't just magically appear i know or i know but i mean it's it's it's across it's across india it's in eighty it's i mean it is a huge and growing presence and they're mobilizing on everything right not just you know against abortion mobilizing against human rights democracy and what they call gender ideology and so if you did a show about they will be there if you're so beirut or lebanon has a personal status law so women and girls they can't get divorced so how do you talk about a strategy around gender based violence where you still don't have basic rights around control and that's an example where you know there have been amazing campaigns and a lot of victories but lebanon right now is has a syrian refugee crisis it's had a palestinian refugee crisis there over ron with talk about where is the money they're overrun by the humanitarian sector coming in to study you know  or or provide relief but are they going to provide safe abortions to women and girls who experience sexual violence these issues are all so connected you can talk about gender based violence and not talk about abortion access to contraception your rights to get divorced so in the workplace right exactly so so i think you know obviously beirut is a very interesting example long history of activism it is caught in this kind of global situation this refugee crisis it's overrun by some new donors who don't know anything about the context so that's a really important point i mean you can't say this works in this country and then slap it into another country you can't use a tool kit for gender based violence that's going to work everywhere and i think that's what some of the funding has been reduced to not all of it you're absolutely right there  brilliant small donors but i mean you can see why i say we have to just quickly do whatever it takes to get people out of immediate threat situation if we have to work with the government to get those refugees into a safe place we will and you can see where people take that of course but i just want to go back to something deborah mentioned about this kind of whole middle income country nonsense you know which is this which is a is a classic thing like oh now countries and middle income status we don't need to worry about them we just fought and  period with small grants to be able to help women organizing and ireland is not a poor country but we know knew that actually if there wasn't support and it was interesting because we really found ourselves the sole support of that work because so many people said well this is not africa this is not india this is not so you know but if that fight had not been fought there are repercussions for many catholic countries all over the world and many not catholic countries would have been profound and so i think deborah's point for us says certainly as private philanthropy to take a step back and to see that there may be opportunities in the so called middle income countries to actually fight and win battles that actually have the potential then to have a huge impact in other parts of the world and i hope more of us can begin to around one point i mean one of the things that occurs to me is most of these countries are not middle what would you see philanthropy a all of us do in a situation like this but i mean i think it's just embrace complexity don't look for a single strategy right don't just say we're to we're going to focus on this and then because that's what happens in philanthropy two years on women for a three year old now we've decided it's economic opportunity no we've decided it's education or we've decided it's cash transfers and everybody moves over to the point being decided well i mean it's a little bit of a pylon when the big donors decide this is the strategy we're going to follow and i just think it's a mix of strategies for sure and the point about it being tied to democracy is critical here but it would add decides knowing that it's complexity in bracing questions that we do not have all the answers but is also questioning where the experts down gender studies program you mention across eastern europe across it's really ironic the open society foundations the st women's rights program was funding gender studies programs in the former soviet union   now many countries across eastern europe are closing down gender studies programs because they feel that it is promoting an anti family ideology one concern i have around the  complexity the unwillingness to embrace complexity and i recently was talking to someone in the business world you know so now you see coca cola and pepsi and u in your for profit company and on the other hand you're running a program to empower them to teach them about being beaten up at home women can see to that in a heartbeat you know you talk to the international  workers federation and they will tell you where are the all these companies do to stand up for decent wages for women so that is also a form of violence which i think we don't often people like to think about violence in but sometimes on the ground that men digging a well or helping a flower by the complexity of so if we were to say where does your where did that fifty dollars go in the campaign against violence against women and girls where would they put it is that what you're talking about yeah yes totally i mean the siloed kind of it's the it's the the standards emanating from the global north frankly is one issue and then secondly it's it's you know it's going to be a whole bunch of different areas that that that need to be impacted that are in play and they've been like oh well that's humanitarian and this is gender based violence and this is development and that's human rights and you know it's just not working so give us a call from your most recent trip and terms of the innovations coming from the ground or the compromises and complexity of the work on the ground well i mean there's there are amazing groups that want to really take on this personal status law they they need funding for for a flexible resourceful campaign that that takes from the work in ireland that looks what has been successful there's you know there they don't want to just work on early marriage or just work on you know the six things you can choose from they actually want to figure it out as they go and have the flexibility  need also to be an eco system mind mindset to change the way that we worked because if that woman decided to have the baby in a talking about choices we need to make a connection with the disability those who sponsor disability groups generally speaking they are faith based groups so how to manage changing the way that we work with groups so how do we manage particularly in a media culture which as you're saying all of this i'm thinking this exact same problem exists in the media we have nice coverage women over here and children over here they will be over here mostly we talk about politicians but not as they relate to any of those etc well laura you'll be amused i've been on a bit of a tear inside the foundation recently talking about how we think about intersection of gender justice and i've been told in a couple of meetings or you're using jargon and my polite responses you know we've been using the jargon of men for some three thousand years if you can learn how to use the word intersectional and this is all that it means it means this what we've been talking about which is or dream lord put it beautifully she said we don't live single issue lives so how could we have single issue movements and i would add how can we have single issue funding it is not possible for those of us who have experienced life in communities to see that a woman who is experiencing a disease caused by a mosquito or is not also a woman who is struggling with unfair wages or a woman who is not struggling with lack of access to health care or a woman who isn't struggling with perhaps intimate partner violence and i think it is when we start being willing to hold that complexity which daddy pointed out that then we get into trouble and i was recently talking to lydia who runs the  mezzo american initiative for women human rights defenders and she gave a painful example of how mean stream human rights protection organizations fail to bring agenda lends to their work so they have picked up a woman from say to save her from the violence she was experiencing as a woman human rights defender in honduras they picked her up and they took her to spin with her family but  she was also a victim of unbelievable violence she was murdered by her husband two months after they arrived in spain terry we often asked people on the show what will be the story of the future tells of this moment i think  i think we are getting smarter and more strategic and if we if we allow the women and girls at the country level to lead and and we use our our best brains we can figure this out but a piece of it is the donor piece but there's many other pieces so i think again i always i always feel a lot of hope but things need to