Two decades of achievement.

In 2004 the Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network celebrates 20 years since its creation in Tenza, Colombia to coordinate the efforts of groups working in women's health throughout the region, a role that LACWHN has fulfilled with passion, commitment and enthusiasm. Over the years, a Coordinating Office has been consolidated to implement the strategies defined by the Network's board of directors and the thousands of groups and networks throughout the region and around the world that identify with LACWHN'S mission to promote women's health and the full exercise of women's human rights and citizenship through the cultural, political and social transformation of our region and the world from a feminist perspective.

How have we advanced towards this goal? Through a range of initiatives including one of LACWHN's priority focuses: the coordination of and support for campaigns of activism promoting women's health and rights, May 28, International Day of Action for Women's Health, and November 25, International Day Against Violence Against Women. Since 1996 these campaigns have been taken up throughout our region by hundreds of organizations, especially grassroots groups.

The Network has also placed special emphasis on human resources training, primarily through the International Courses entitled "Gender Perspectives in Health," more widely known as the Itinerant University. Since 1996 the Itinerant University has been held in several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in an effort to promote women's leadership in decision-making in health policy and services.

Another key area of work, developed with the support of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), has been the monitoring of the implementation of the Programme of Action from the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in seven countries of the region: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Surinam. One of the results of this project is the "Atenea" database that systemizes the findings on the seven priority issues monitored through the application of indicators developed with a gender perspective, which has proven to be particularly useful in the ICPD+10 process currently underway.

In the area of communications and publications, LACWHN continues to provide members and other allies around the world with useful information on women's health and the endeavors of the movement through our quarterly magazine, the Women's Health Journal/Revista Mujer Salud, and our annual publication, the Women's Health Collection/Cuadernos Mujer Salud. Recently redesigned to meet the Network's growing communications needs, the LACWHN website also provides a virtual window on our activities, news of interest and calls for action. The Spanish-language Boletina Mujer SaludHable is another new addition to the Network's communications efforts.

Another priority area of action for the Network is citizen monitoring of Health Sector Reform processes with special attention to the impact that these new policies will have on women's health. LACWHN is also alert to the need to forge new alliances to strengthen our efforts on decriminalization of abortion and the defense of women's reproductive freedom; support for the regional campaign promoting separation of Church and State and against fundamentalisms; promotion of the campaign for the Inter-American Convention on Sexual Rights and Reproductive Rights; and the international campaign for Women's Access to Health.

These are the main but by no means the only activities in which the Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network is involved today, a chronicle of experiences which clearly shows that these past twenty years have been two solid decades of shared commitment and achievement.