I dedicate these photos to all those wonderful, courageous and strong women of the World Courts of Women Against Violence.


The Courts of Women seek to weave together the objective reality (through analysis of the issues) with the subjective testimonies of the women; the personal with the political; the logical with the lyrical (through the video testimonies, artistic images and poetry) moving the Court to connect the rational with the affective, the dancer with the dance, urging the discerning of fresh insights, offering other ways of knowing, seeking deeper layers of knowledge.

The Courts of Women organized by AWHRC (Asian Women Human Rights Center) in the Asia Pacific region inspired courts in other regions particularly in the Arab world, Africa and Central America. These have been initiated by Corinne Kumar, the International Coordinator of the Courts of Women and the Regional Coordinator of AWHRC who is at present the Secretary General of El Taller.

The Courts of Women are a new political space : the ‘Court’ is used in a symbolic way. In the Courts, the voices of the victims/survivors are listened to. Women bring their personal testimonies of violence to the Court. They are ‘sacred’ spaces where women, speaking in a language of suffering; name the crimes, seeking redress, even reparation. While the Courts of Women listens to the voices of the victims/survivors, it also listens to the voices of women who resist, who rebel, who refuse to turn against their dreams. It hears the voices of women from women’s and human rights movements; it hears of survival in the dailiness of life; it hears of women and movements resisting violence in its myriad forms – war, ethnicity, fundamentalism; it hears of women struggling for work, wages, their rights to land; it hears of how they survive – of their knowledges, their wisdoms that have been inaudible, invisible. It hears challenges to the dominant human rights discourse, whose frames have excluded the knowledges of women. It challenges the master narratives of our times.

Click here to see my photo report of Daughters of Fire - the Indian Women's Court on Dowry and Related Forms of Violence Against Women

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