From the Riverbanks of the Salween and Mekong to the Halls of Justice: Women Challenging Mainstream Assumptions and Asserting Collective Rights
Despite experiencing systematic social, economic and cultural marginalization, women like Noon, Dao Prasuk and Pornpimol remain determined to assert their communities’ rights to existence and to protect rivershed commons for generations to come, contesting the widespread public assumptions that large-scale hydropower and water diversion infrastructure are required to propel the region’s development forward, write Pai Deetes, Phairin Sohsai and Tanya L. Roberts Davis of International Rivers (IR)
This weekend, urban centres across the country and beyond will be the sites of public gatherings commemorating International Women’s Day, celebrating hard-won legal advances while raising collective consciousness of the gendered injustice amidst economic and resource disparities, migration, war and militarization. Less visible yet no less important to highlight are the day-to-day efforts being led by women to challenge violence against the rivers, land, Indigenous Peoples’ cultures, their bodies and their very rights to existence. At a time when we must confront the realities of the climate crisis, compounded by a race to blast, mine and clear sacred lands surrounding the Mekong and Salween Rivers, listening to, learning from and working in solidarity with women of riparian communities is imperative.
Pai Deetes, Phairin Sohsai and Tanya L. Roberts Davis/ IR
