Points of Unity

• Propelled  by international instruments and national commitments that provide direction and standards for addressing violence against women as violations of human  rights as well  as issues of gender equality, health, development, and peace;
• Conscious of explorations into justice and healing modalities in countries that have experienced conflict in structural, institutional, and interpersonal levels.
• Guided by lessons learned from our engagements with survivors of violence,  with perpetrators, with actors in the judicial system, and with providers of psychosocial services;
• Acknowledging that current psycho-social approaches for survivors fall short of ensuring redress for the victims and accountability for perpetrators;
• Challenged by the need for viable justice and healing approaches to violence against women in Philippine communities while changes in systems of  justice and healing are being negotiated;
• Confident in our collective capacities to harness and manage information and knowledge and to channel these to social change, we forge and commit ourselves to these  Points of Unity:

1. We recognize that justice and healing are inseparable imperatives for survivors of gender-based violence; concomitantly, we recognize the need for dealing effectively with perpetrators.
2. We will explore the intersections among judicial practice, psychosocial interventions, and socio- cultural responses to violence against women as well as reconfigure our current frameworks of analysis accordingly.
3. We will make voices of victims/survivors as knowledge resources and as starting points for analysis and action.
4. We will provide spaces for men to articulate their views about violence against women and encourage and promote those that reflect accountability and responsibility for violence and abuse.
5. We will create spaces for questioning cultural constructs that abet abuse and violence against women and enhance those that support justice and healing.
6. We will create spaces for developing justice and healing processes that are socio-culturally sensitive and appropriate.
7. We recognize and welcome shifting responses to gender-based violence, particularly the call for men’s participation in responses to men’s violence against women.
8. We recognize the tensions between approaches that consider family as a unit and those that view the woman within it as a unit; we will revisit the approaches from the perspectives of justice and healing.
9. We will work with duty bearers and stakeholders in developing mechanisms that ensure justice and healing within and outside the judicial system.
10. We will pay special attention to discourses that promote justice and healing as well as challenge those that do not, in various social sectors and levels.
11. We will encourage social institutions – families, churches, schools, media, local government units, and business corporations — to develop justice and healing responses to violence against women.
12. We will promote collaborative learning as means of empowering individuals, families, and communities.
13. We will be sensitive to unanticipated results of our interventions and address emerging issues appropriately.