Who are the Women of Courage? - Vernie Yocogan
Vernie Yocogan-Diano
An Indigenous woman (Kankanaey-Bontoc), Vernie Yocogan-Diano is a human rights and community activist from the Cordillera region of the Philippines. She has a long history as a community development worker for Indigenous women. She worked with the Cordillera Resource Center as staff for children’s research and human rights, volunteered with the Cordillera Peoples Alliance and the Ifugao Resource and Development Center. She served as secretary-general (and is now chair) of Innabuyog, an alliance of indigenous women’s organizations.
In June 2009, Vernie became Executive Director of the Cordillera Women’s Education Action Research Center where she started as a networking staff in 1989.
Vernie’s involvement at a national level includes membership in the National Council of the GABRIELA (2000-2009) and national coordinator of BAI, a network of Indigenous women’s organizations in the Philippines (2004 to the present).
In the wider Asia-Pacific region, Vernie has been a member of the Women and Environment Task Force of Asia Pacific Women Law and Development, the Asian Indigenous Women’s Network, the International Network on Women and Mining (RIMM), the Gender Committee of the Asia Indigenous People’s Pact and coordinator of RIMM’s Asia group.
Vernie is passionate about Indigenous women’s rights. Her interests also include militarization and globalization issues (land, food and resource concerns), particularly related to Indigenous women. She has written extensively on Indigenous women in the Cordillera region.
Chantal Mayanga Bilulu
Born in Bujumbura, Burundi, Chantal Bilulu holds a BA in sociology from the University of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). She has worked with Héritiers de la Justice in the DRC for eight years as Program Coordinator for Women and Children, focusing on the defense, protection and promotion of human rights.
Chantal has training in advocacy and conflict resolution and has participated in several advocacy efforts by civil society groups to urge governmental authorities to implement policy changes with respect to human rights.
Chantal has organized several training courses on women’s rights and raised popular awareness of laws and other legal instruments designed to protect women’s and children’s rights. She has been trained in the documentation of human rights violations and has developed a monitoring approach for use in issues of sexual violence. She has accompanied victims of sexual violence and organized the training for sexually violated women to become paralegals so that they can more effectively defend their rights.
Chantal coordinates peacebuilding and human rights promotion among marginalized women and children within several Héritiers de la Justice networks.
Rebecca Nyagai Kafi
Rebecca Nyagai Kafi is an ethnic Nuer from Renk in the northern part of Upper Nile State, now located in the newly independent Republic of South Sudan. Currently living in Khartoum, the capital of the Republic of Sudan, Rebecca is an ordained Deaconess of the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church. Since 2008, she has been chair of its General Women’s Group Office.
The General Women’s Group Office organizes such activities as conferences, workshops, seminars, opportunities for spiritual growth, visitations to prisons and hospitals, HIV/AIDS health awareness and adult education for women, especially encouraging young women and girls who had to leave school because of war to resume their education.
The Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church is a member denomination of the Sudan Council of Churches. Rebecca serves on its Peace Committee, working to ensure the full implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the north and south.
