By Naomi Moker
Ford Falcons without license plates slide through the streets like sharks. A fleet of them would park outside an apartment or a home while large groups of armed security forces dressed in plain clothes stormed inside, tying up families, breaking furniture and dishes, pillaging, and ultimately, dragging away a son or a daughter” -Marguerite Bouvard, “Revolutionizing Motherhood”, 1994.
No person should ever be subject to a period of terror and violence, fearing they will be tied up and handed over to government officials, suggests human rights activist, Marguerite Bouvard. However, Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Las Madres or The Mothers) and the Sisters in Spirit (SIS) are two specific non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that examine one single and growing concern worldwide: the disappearances of persons. Las Madres is a group of women in Argentina who developed as a political organization that examines the brutality of abductions and disappearances, advocating for the right of the public to know the whereabouts of people that have disappeared as a result of the Dirty War in Argentina in the late 1970s. SIS is a Canadian national organization that looks at the violence experienced by Aboriginal women across various provinces in Canada, where violence has led to missing women or murdered women. Both groups are examples of two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have risen out of people’s protests against the government’s inaction towards violence, the countless disappeared persons and the right to knowing the whereabouts of their loved ones. Both groups have also been crossing borders advocating and lobbying their governments for change while raising public awareness worldwide. Specifically, the two NGOS operate and unite by using a common language, using the terms “suffrage”, “violence” and “disappearances” to frame and place the severity of this issue on the international and global agenda. Both groups also utilize Amnesty International as a leverage point to propel this situation to the global scale, and SIS even uses the guidance of the National Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), as well.
