"Feminist Community Journalism Builds Hope": How Women Communicators in Guatemala and Colombia Are Defending Human Rights**

This Women's Month, WOLA launched a special podcast series to amplify feminist voices fighting for human rights in Latin America.

Our second episode was our first-ever Spanish-language episode. Our president, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, spoke with Quimy de León (Guatemala) and Sofía López Mera (Colombia), two feminist communicators and human rights defenders.

We explored the crucial role of communication in human rights advocacy and how to approach it from a feminist perspective. We also discussed the additional challenges women in this field face, from gender-based violence to censorship.

This episode is an English recap of that conversation. 

Our Guests

Sofía López Mera is a journalist, lawyer, and human rights defender in Colombia. She works at the Corporación Justicia y Dignidad and is a member of the National Movement of Mothers and Women for Peace. Her work focuses on supporting grassroots communities affected by armed conflict, using popular communication as a key tool for organizing, mobilizing, and raising awareness about human rights. As a mother, she deeply understands the challenges women face in human rights advocacy and therefore embraces a feminist approach in her work.

Quimy de León is a journalist, doctor, and historian from Guatemala with over 20 years of experience. She is the founder and director of Prensa Comunitaria, an alternative media outlet covering environmental issues, human rights, and the impact of extractivism on Indigenous communities in Guatemala. She also founded La Ruda, a feminist digital magazine focused on sexual and reproductive rights. In 2024, she was awarded the Press Freedom Prize by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) for her bravery and commitment to community journalism in Guatemala.