Advancing Universal Rights and Justice
Uprooting Fascisms and Fundamentalisms
Across the globe, feminist, women’s rights and gender justice defenders are challenging the agendas of fascist and fundamentalist actors. These oppressive forces target women, persons who are non-conforming in their gender identity, expression and/or sexual orientation, and other oppressed communities.
Discriminatory ideologies are undermining and co-opting our human rights systems and standards, with the aim of making rights the preserve of only certain groups. In the face of this, the Advancing Universal Rights and Justice (AURJ) initiative promotes the universality of rights - the foundational principle that human rights belong to everyone, no matter who they are, without exception.
We create space for feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements and allies to recognize, strategize and take collective action to counter the influence and impact of anti-rights actors. We also seek to advance women’s rights and feminist frameworks, norms and proposals, and to protect and promote the universality of rights.
Our actions
Through this initiative, we:
- Build knowledge: We support feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements by disseminating and popularizing knowledge and key messages about anti-rights actors, their strategies, and impact in the international human rights systems through AWID’s leadership role in the collaborative platform, the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs)*.
- Advance feminist agendas: We ally ourselves with partners in international human rights spaces including, the Human Rights Council, the Commission on Population and Development, the Commission on the Status of Women and the UN General Assembly.
- Create and amplify alternatives: We engage with our members to ensure that international commitments, resolutions and norms reflect and are fed back into organizing in other spaces locally, nationally and regionally.
- Mobilize solidarity action: We take action alongside women human rights defenders (WHRDs) including trans and intersex defenders and young feminists, working to challenge fundamentalisms and fascisms and call attention to situations of risk.
Related Content
Our values - Human Rights
Human rights
We believe in a full application of the principle of rights including those enshrined in international laws and affirm the belief that all human rights are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible. We are committed to working towards the eradication of all discriminations based on gender, sexuality, religion, age, ability, ethnicity, race, nationality, class or other factors.
Moushmi Narain
FR Editor's note
Editor's note
Feminist Realities is a warm and caring invitation, a kind of en masse-care (versus self-care) act of preservation, an invitation to archive, to take stock of all the work lest it disappear. (...)
Nuala Fennell
FRMag - Between Two Worlds
Between Two Worlds: The Double Consciousness of Women in The Gambia
by Haddy Jatou Gassama
The Mandinka tribe of The Gambia has a custom of measuring the first wrapa used to carry a newborn baby on its mother's back. (...)
artwork: “Sacred Puta” by Pia Love >
Ana Fabricia Cordóba Cabrera
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Esther Chávez Cano
Editor's Note | Lost For Words
Editor's Note
Lost For Words
When our embodied labor becomes profit in the hands of the systems we seek to dismantle, it is no wonder that our sexualities and pleasures are once again relegated to the sidelines – especially when they are not profitable enough. In many instances during the production of this issue, we asked ourselves what would happen if we refused to accommodate the essential services of capitalism.
Elena Gastaldo
Festival Film Club: Leitis in Waiting & Latin/Central American Program
In this selection of films you will find the voices of filmmakers who are not content with simply recording the feminist realities that palpitate in every corner of this vast and diverse territory. These are works that from their very conceptualization are questioning for what, by whom, and how films and videos are made. They understand film to be an instrument of struggle, something more than images to be enjoyed on a screen. These are individual or collective filmmakers who see film and video making as an instrument to promote discussion, open a debate, and thus serve as a resource for popular and feminist pedagogies.
#1 - Sexting like a feminist Tweets Snippet EN
and my number 1... Because you know it’s gotten real when higher powers are invoked.

Islam Bibi
Snippet FEA São Paulo City Center (EN)
São Paulo’s City Center
Source: Centro de população de rua da cidade de São Paulo
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Manal Tamimi | Snippet EN

Manal Tamimi is a Palestinian activist and human rights defender. She is a mother of four who holds a master’s degree in international humanitarian law. Due to her activism, she was arrested three times and got wounded more than once, including with live explosive bullets which are banned internationally. Her family is also a target: her children have been arrested and wounded with live ammunition more than once. The last incident was an assassination attempt of her son Muhammad who was shot in the chest, near the heart, a few weeks after his liberation from the occupation prisons where he had spent two years. Her philosophy on life: if I have to pay the price for being a Palestinian and not for a crime I have committed, I refuse to die in silence.
Norma Angelica Bruno Roman
Snippet FEA Metzineres activists (EN)
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Metzineres activists in action
Mariam Mekiwi | Snippet EN

Mariam Mekiwi is a filmmaker and photographer from Alexandria and living and working in Berlin.






