The Philippines: Junice Melgar
In 1999, Dr. Junice Melgar and two colleagues from Likhaan – a national women's health organization in the Philippines – visited Inter Pares' counterparts on the Thailand-Burma border – the Mae Tao Clinic, and the Burma Relief Center. The purpose of the visit was to share with refugee women, health, and human rights organizations their experiences as health activists during the repressive Marcos dictatorship, and to provide training in counselling women traumatized by rape, torture and displacement perpetrated by the Burmese military. What resulted from this exchange were enduring relationships of solidarity and reciprocity.
Since that visit, women from Burma and the Philippines have continued to cooperate on women's health issues, and Likhaan has become engaged in the cause of freedom and democracy for the people of Burma. In 2002, when Dr. Cynthia Maung of the Mae Tao clinic was unable to travel to Manila to receive the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for her work with Burmese refugees, it was Junice she asked to receive the honour on her behalf.
Junice and Cynthia have much in common. Both have a quiet energy, and are more at home working with people in communities than in making speeches at international events. Both women have worked tirelessly to improve the health and lives of women and their families, under the most repressive of circumstances. Most importantly, Junice and Cynthia share a profound ability to listen and to empathize with oppressed people.
Junice joined the anti-Marcos struggle in the Philippines while she was still in high school. During her medical training she spent time in remote areas of the countryside, treating people impoverished by government neglect and traumatized by conflict. Junice realized that women were especially terrorized by the regime, through rape and other forms of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. During her years in the resistance movement, Junice realized that often, beneath the radical discourse of liberation, lay deep-seated patriarchal attitudes.
In the post-Marcos period, Junice and other health activists formed Likhaan, to create new spaces for women to share their experiences and develop and assert their ideas. Through organizing and training women in slum areas to create innovative community-based women's health programs, Likhaan is demonstrating that it is possible to build effective and accessible health services managed by women. By nurturing solidarity and alliances among urban poor women's associations, Likhaan has played a key role in national campaigns for publicly-funded universal health care, women's reproductive rights, and urban land and housing reforms.
Junice knows that sharing experiences and participating in international networks is also an essential part of Likhaan's work. As Junice puts it, "Only by linking our struggles at the international level are women able to challenge global policies that deepen poverty and inequalities within our communities and countries. And only through sharing our local and national visions and initiatives are we able to contribute to the elaboration of an alternative world."
Junice and her Likhaan colleagues, as well as Inter Pares staff members Molly Kane and Karen Seabrooke are featured in a film by Villagers Media Productions, entitled Women Creating Healthy Communities. The film is part of "The Global Villagers" series, aired nationally on Vision TV in the fall of 2003 and the spring of 2004. For a copy of the video version of this film, please contact Inter Pares.
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| Reviewed October 2, 2006 |  |
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