We Will Flourish, Because War Cannot End Our Roots

From Abya Yala to Kurdistan, 400 women from different continents, countries, languages, movements, and struggles — but with the same dreams and desires for justice and flourishing — participated, from February 11 to 15, 2026, in a Women’s Conference held in Bogotá, Colombia.

The event, organized by the Network of Women Weaving the Future, was emotional, profound, and grounded in sisterhood. It provided space to debate, inform, and exchange ideas and strategies to combat extractivist and land-destroying colonialism; to reclaim women’s body-territory in the face of attacks; to call upon the spirit of ancestral women — past, present, and future — to flourish through resistance; to reclaim enduring meaning in the face of the destruction of life; to explore common ground and challenges along the way; and to conclude by debating the search for collective solutions to weave the future.

The first day of work began on February 11 with a ceremony invoking the spirits of smoke, water, sun, wind, and fire through a collective offering — filled with grief and pain, but also joy. Participants brought symbolic objects, photos of their disappeared or murdered loved ones, sacred seeds, candles, flags, woven textiles, and essential oils, asking permission from the goddesses so that the conference could unfold harmoniously and productively.

In the various working groups, testimonies were shared about repression, assassinations, imprisonment, dispossession, wars, and imperialist attacks in different territories around the world by transnational corporations — along with complicit governments — seeking to steal communities’ common goods, memory, the circular transmission of knowledge, language, communal life, and life itself.

The second day featured 10 simultaneous workshops to exchange experiences and proposals more directly through the voices of the protagonists themselves. The results were shared in plenary on February 13.

On February 14 and 15, further sessions were held to share perspectives and formulate strategies. Discussions focused on struggles and knowledge as acts of resistance against threats and war; the need to build narratives of hope and culture to re-signify memory through collective internationalist history and struggle; and the importance of protecting life against death-driven projects that destroy the land, contaminate water, violate Indigenous communities through financial strangulation (such as in the cases of Venezuela and Cuba), and sow death with toxic substances that cause various illnesses.

Finally, participants emphasized the need to organize anger, for women to learn self-defense to prevent femicides and violence; the necessity of political organization and education; the recovery of art; continuing to plant ancestral foods with native seeds; recognizing nature and biodiversity as beings of the territory with rights; and resisting with the joy of life, guided by the moon that governs women and is our elder.