Nadine Gordimer
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.
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مع استمرار الرأسمالية الأبوية الغيريّة في دَفعِنا نحو الاستهلاكية والرضوخ، نجد نضالاتنا تُعزَل وتُفصَل عن بعضها الآخر من خلال الحدود المادّية والحدود الافتراضية على حدٍّ سواء. ومع تحدّياتٍ إضافية يفرضها علينا وباءٌ عالميٌّ علينا تجاوزه، أصبحت سياسة فرِّق تَسُد مواتية للاستغلال المتزايد في مجالات عدّة.
ومع ذلك، أخذَنا «ابدعي، قاومي، غيٍّري: مهرجان للحراكات النسوية»، الذي نظّمته جمعية «حقوق المرأة في التنمية» AWID في الفترة ما بين 1 أيلول/ سبتمبر وحتى 30 أيلول/ سبتمبر 2021، في رحلةٍ حول ما يعنيه تجسّد حيواتنا في المساحات الافتراضية. اجتمعَت معنا في المهرجان ناشطات نسويات من حول العالم، لأجل مشاركة خبراتهن حول المقاومة والحرّيات المُنتَزَعة بصعوبة، والتضامن العابر للحدود، وكذلك لتوضيح الشكل الذي يمكن أن يبدو عليه التكاتف العابر للحدود القومية.
يحمل هذا التكاتف إمكانية مقاومة الحدود، ناسجاً رؤية لمستقبل تحويلي، لأنه سيكون إلغائيًا ومناهضًا للرأسمالية. على مدار شهر، وعبر البُنى التحتية الرقمية التي احتللناها بكويريّتنا ومقاومتنا وخيالاتنا، بيّن لنا المهرجان طريقةً للانحراف عن الأنظمة التي تجعلنا متواطئات في قهر أنفسنا وأخريات/ آخرين.
بالرغم من أن أودري لورد علّمتنا أنّ أدوات السيّد لن تهدم أبدًا منزله، بيّنت لنا سارة أحمد أنه بإمكاننا إساءة استخدام تلك الأدوات عن سبق إصرار. أصبح من الممكن تخيّل خلخلة في واقع الرأسمالية الأبوية الغيريّة، لأننا خلقنا مساحة للاحتشاد، بالرغم من كلّ الأشياء الأُخرى التي تتطلّب وقتنا.
إذا أدركنا الاحتشاد باعتباره أحد أشكال التمتّع، عندها سيصبح من الممكن خلق الرابط بين المتعة المتجاوزة والمقاوَمة العابرة للحدود القومية/ الرقمية. بين أنواع التمتّع التي تتحدّى الحدود من ناحية، والكويرية والبهرجة والأرض ونضالات السكّان الأصليين ومناهضة الرأسمالية والتنظيم المناهض للاستعمار من ناحية أخرى.
حاول هذا العدد التقاط كيفية اتخاذ ممارسة الاحتشاد في المهرجان لأشكالٍ وتخيّلات متعدّدة. إلى جانب التعاون المباشر مع بعض الحالمات/ين والمتحدّثات/ين في المهرجان، دعَونا عدداً كبيراً من أصوات أخرى من الجنوب العالمي لنكون في نقاش جماعي حول الكثير من الثيمات والموضوعات المرتبطة بالجنوب. فيما يلي خريطة لبعض جلسات المهرجان التي كانت أكثر إلهامًا لنا.
Rahma Abdulkadir
#8 - Sexting like a feminist Tweets Snippet AR
الغزل عند اللقاء الأول
دعونا لا نتسرّع فالوصول الى الرعشة الجنسية تشبه مسار الحركة النسوية: طويل وبحاجة إلى قليل من النباهة
Dorothy Musakanya Mapulanga
Transnational Embodiments | Small Snippet HOME
Explore Transnational Embodiments
This journal edition in partnership with Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research, will explore feminist solutions, proposals and realities for transforming our current world, our bodies and our sexualities.
Rocío Mesino
Snippet Organising to Win_Fest (EN)
Plenary session:
Organising to Win
Margarita Salas, AWID
Nazik Abylgaziva, Labrys
Amaranta Gómez Regalado, Secretariado Internacional de Pueblos Indígenas frente al VIH/sida, la Sexualidad y los Derechos Humanos
Cindy Weisner, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Lucineia Freitas, Movimento Sem Terra
Roberta Galler
Snippet Love Letters Intro (EN)
Love Letters to Feminist Movements
As you may or may not know, AWID is celebrating its 40th Anniversary in 2022 - around the themes of “Gather, Seed, and Disrupt.” To honor this occasion we have invited AWID members, partners and staff to write their own “Love Letter to Feminist Movements”. Together, we have sparked a constellation of feminist movements. Stay close as we forge on the journey ahead and continue to Gather, Seed, and Disrupt.
A note about Our Collection Of Love Letters:
All of these letters are written by activists who are sharing their diverse experiences in feminist movements. Some of them may include difficult or challenging content about abuse, sexual violence, conflict, exclusion and other potential triggering or upsetting pieces. While these letters are filled with love, please take care of yourself when reading the letters.
Mia Berden
Snippet FEA ASOM (EN)
Association of Afro-Descendant Women of the Northern Cauca
Black women community organizing in the Cauca Valley in Colombia can be traced back to the country's colonial past, which is marked by the racism, patriarchy, and capitalism that sustained slavery as a means to exploit the region’s rich soils. These organizers are the heroines of a broad movement for black autonomy - one that fights for the sustainable use of the region's forests and natural resources as vital to their culture and livelihood.
For 25 years, the Association of Afro-Descendant Women of the Northern Cauca (Asociación de Mujeres Afrodescendientes del Norte del Cauca, ASOM) has been dedicated to bringing power to Afro-Colombian women’s organizing in northern Cauca.
They became established in 1997 as a response to ongoing human rights violations, the absence of public policies, inadequate management of natural resources, and the lack of opportunities for women in the territory.
They have forged the struggle to secure ethnic-territorial rights, to end violence against women, and gain recognition of women’s roles change-making peace-building in Colombia.
Saskia Poldervaart
Diana Staubli
Maria Margarita Che Chub
Betu Singh
2019: Feminist Realities in a changing world
AWID began preparing this annual report just as the global pandemic began to unravel how we gather, organize and live our lives. It is impossible to review what we have done without COVID-19 tinting our assessment.
Download the full 2019 Annual review
Co-Creating Feminist Realities is no longer just an AWID Forum theme - it is a rallying cry in response to a pandemic that has laid bare the failures of social, political and economic systems.
It is an urgently needed affirmation that there are other, more just ways of organizing our lives. During 2019 hundreds of groups shared their experiences and proposals for feminist realities with us, ranging from radical networks of community support in Latin America facilitating self-managed abortion, to practices of community-centered economies in Indonesia and community-centered food systems in India and the US, to a re-imagination and new practice of harm-free rites of passage in Sierra Leone. These are the experiences that will chart a path forward for a “new normal”.
Yet long histories of oppression and violence can make it difficult to imagine the possible. A key part of our work in 2019 was to spark these explorations through a toolkit AWID launched to support groups interested in unearthing the stories and aspirations that are the building blocks of feminist propositions.
While we focus on our proposals for a different world, we recognize the challenging context around us.
Through the Observatory on the Universality of Rights, Feminists for a Binding Treaty, Count Me In! and other alliances, AWID has continued to push back against unfettered corporate power and fascist and fundamentalist agendas that undermine women’s rights and gender justice. With dim prospects for transformative change through multilateral processes and limited responsiveness from most states, we are redoubling our efforts to ensure that feminist movements, in all their diversity, are resourced in ways that match the critical roles they play - supporting their communities, demanding rights and responding to crises. In 2019 we introduced feminist principles and approaches to ground-breaking funds like the Spotlight Initiative and the Equality Fund, and succeeded in leveraging resources through feminist reality seed grant funding from feminist funders.
As we look ahead, it is clear that the context is calling for a transformation of our organizing strategies:
- we are learning to navigate global advocacy confined to online channels,
- we grapple with the uncertainty of when and how we can convene in person, and
- we use the tools at our disposal to tighten connections across local to global spheres.
AWID is embarking on a new membership model that lowers barriers to access and emphasizes opportunities for engagement and cross-member connection. We will continue to experiment with different online tools and processes for building community. Cross-movement engagement will stay at the center of our work. AWID’s actions in solidarity with oppressed movements and identities, even and especially where these are marginalized in feminist movements, are important to drive change and support broad and inclusive movements for all.
Crisis is not new to feminist and social movements.
We are resilient, we adapt, and we show up for each other. And we have to keep doing better. Thank you to all who are part of the journey with us.
Download the full 2019 Annual review
Sabi Beriani
Sara AbuGhazal
Biography
Sara AbuGhazal is a Palestinian feminist living in Beirut. She is a co-founder of Sawt al-Niswa, a collective that produces knowledge in Beirut. She is the co-director of The Knowledge Workshop, a feminist organization based in Beirut that works on feminist oral history and archiving. Sara is currently the Regional Coordinator of the Regional Coalition for Women Human Rights Defenders in the Middle East and North Africa.
Sara strives to help create spaces of feminist transformation and solidarity. Her work is mostly centered on building sustainable movements in the MENA region. She is invested in knowledge production, feminist transformation, and Palestine. She publishes regularly in sawtalniswa.org and her fiction also appears in Romman e-magazine.
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