The AWID board has taken the difficult decision to cancel the 14th AWID International Forum which had been scheduled to take place from September 20-23, 2021, in the City of Taipei.
This is the first time that AWID has had to cancel a Forum since the first convening was held in 1983. As always, the wellbeing and safety of Forum participants remains our highest priority.
In 2018, AWID began a Feminist Realities journey to showcase and amplify the solutions, alternatives and propositions that feminists are building towards a better world. Although, the Feminist Realities train will no longer be stopping physically in Taiwan, the journey of nurturing and strengthening feminist proposals, models and solutions continues. The world needs this more than ever.
Keeping the magic going
As board members and staff of AWID, we continuously hear from our members and partners how vital the Forum is as a space where feminists gather to replenish energies, and to build vital connections with groups, networks, and movements across the globe co-creating feminist solutions towards a better world. There is a magic that occurs at the AWID Forum. It’s in the connections that feminists make across movements. It’s the conversations that happen over shared meals. It’s in dancing and celebrating our wins, and the work we do together towards a better world.
The AWID Forum is a deeply collaborative process that involves partners from across feminist movements, including women with disabilities, labor activists, sex workers, migrant workers, trans and gender non conforming people, and Black and Indigenous feminists. These historically oppressed people already faced challenges with international travel due to ableism, racism and transphobia and have been hit the hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the socio-economic consequences of the failures of capitalism and the privatisation of health care. They are also the ones creating Feminist Realities - those alternative ways of living and working in synergy with people and planet.
The current state of travel regulations increases the difficulty for all these people to travel and an AWID Forum cannot happen without those who advance feminist solutions.
“This is a weighty decision for us organizationally: it is the first time an AWID Forum, our flagship event, has been cancelled since 1983 when the Forums began. It is also a huge decision for the feminist movements that we serve: for many in our movements the AWID Forum is the first space where they experience global feminisms; for others, it is a place they return every four years. So we make this decision with sadness, but with conviction, knowing that it is the right decision at this time” said Cindy Clark, AWID’s co-Executive Director.