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
Privacy and cookies - before 25 Apr 2023
AWID Privacy Policy, Your rights to privacy and cookies
This policy governs all pages hosted at www.awid.org, and any other websites under the control of the AWID (the “Website”) and registrations for these sites. It does not apply to pages hosted by organisations other than AWID, to which we may link and whose privacy policies may differ. Please read the following policy to understand our privacy policy regarding nature, purpose, using and sharing of your personal identifiable information that is collected via this website.
1. Types of information collected on this site
Generally, you can browse this website without submitting your personal information to us. However, in some circumstances, we will ask for your personal information.
1.1 Information you provide to us
When you are on the website and are asked for personal information, you are sharing that information only with AWID.
1.1.1 The information you provide to get updates from AWID:
When you register to use the website – for example, subscribe to receive emails from us or apply to become a member - you provide us with the mandatory information about you like Name, country, language to receive email updates and email address. This information is provided by you through secure forms and is stored on secure servers.
1.1.2 The payment information you provide to become member or registering for a paid event:
Also, while becoming a member or registering for events, you may need to provide payment information. AWID doesn’t store any credit card information on its servers and uses payment gateway to process the payment information.
1.1.3 The optional information you chose to give us as AWID member (with consent)
When you communicate with AWID, provide optional information through forms on the website or use the site to communicate with other members, we collect information about your communication and any information you choose to provide.
1.1.4 Information you provide us through contact forms or when you directly communicate with us
When you communicate with us, we collect your communication and any other information you choose to provide us.
1.2 Information that is automatically collected (third party cookies)
In addition, when you interact with the Website, our servers may keep an activity log that does not identify you individually (“Non-Personal Information”). Generally, we collect the following categories of Non-Personal Information:
- We may collect certain demographic data such as age and gender as part of collecting personal information;
- We collect and store certain device information about your computer, mobile device, or other device that you use to access the Website. This information may include IP address, geolocation information, unique device identifiers, browser type, browser language, and other transactional information;
- We automatically log certain usage information about your use of the Website. This information includes a reading history of the pages you view. We use this information to provide you with a more customized experience on the Website;
- We collect and store additional “traffic data” such as time of access, date of access, software crash reports, session identification number, access times, and referring website addresses; and
- We collect and store your search terms and search results.
- We also collect and store certain other information regarding our users’ use of the Website so that third parties may provide us with reports and analysis regarding usage and browsing patterns of the Website.
For more information about cookies, please see www.allaboutcookies.org.
If you do not wish to receive cookies you can easily modify your web browser to refuse cookies, or to notify you when you receive a new cookie, see how here.
2. Use of information collected on this website
AWID uses the information we collect about you to:
- Better understand how you are using our website and what we could do to improve your experience.
- Communicate with you via email to share resources and analysis in the field of women's rights, connect with you and provide opportunities to engage with our work, keep you updated about developments at AWID and with our partners.
- Comply with our legal obligations to:
- Detect and prevent fraud, spam, abuse, security incidents, and other harmful activity.
- Conduct security investigations and risk assessments.
- Verify or authenticate information provided by you (such as to verify your authorization to act as an agent on behalf of a nonprofit organization).
- Conduct checks against databases and other information sources, to the extent permitted by applicable laws.
- Resolve any disputes with any of our users or customers and enforce our agreements with third parties.
- Enforce our Terms of Use and other policies.
3. Distribution of information
If you have subscribed to AWID´s e-newsletters or email updates or you have become a member, we will send you regular communications as specified in the relevant area of the website. You are able to unsubscribe from any of the e-newsletters or email updates at any time by using the unsubscribe information provided in our emails.
4. Accessing, changing and removing information
The accuracy of your individual identifying information is important to AWID. We are always looking for ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that AWID maintains about you through our website. If you change your email address, or if any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please write to us here.
- Where you have provided AWID with consent to use your personal data, you can withdraw it any time by sending us a communication and specifying which consent you are withdrawing. Please note that the withdrawal of your consent does not affect the lawfulness of any processing activities based on such consent before its withdrawal.
- Where applicable, you may also have a right to receive a machine-readable copy of your personal data. If you would like to have a copy of the personal data we hold on you or if you think that we hold incorrect personal data about you, please write to us.
- You also have the right to ask us to delete your personal data or restrict how it is used. There may be exceptions to the right to erasure for specific legal reasons which, if applicable, we will set out for you in response to your request.
- At any time, regardless of applicable law, you may object to us processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes. You may, at any time, ask AWID to cease processing your data for these direct marketing purposes by Contacting Us.
5. Sharing information
Except as explained below, AWID will not disclose any of your personally identifiable information, and will not sell or rent lists containing your information to third parties. AWID may disclose information when it has your permission to do so or under special circumstances, such as when it believes in good faith that the law requires it.
6. Information security
We are continuously implementing and updating administrative, technical, and physical security measures to help protect your information against unauthorized access, loss, destruction, or alteration. Some of the safeguards we use to protect your information are firewalls and data encryption, and information access controls. If you know or have reason to believe that your AWID membership credentials have been lost, stolen, misappropriated, or otherwise compromised or in case of any actual or suspected unauthorized use of your AWID membership account, please contact us through on Contact Us.
7. Changes to this policy & Contacting us
This policy may change from time to time. The changed policy will be posted on this website and Last updated date at the end of the policy will be updated. There will be an email update sent to you for the revised policy and if you do not agree with the revised policy, you will have the option to cancel you registration(s) with us. You can also write to us here. We welcome your feedback!
Last updated: May 2019
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TRAVESTI
A latin-american gender identity
The term travesti is often mistakenly translated as "transvestite" in English. However, it is a Latin American gender identity with no equivalent in other languages, and exclusively female. It is a person designated male at birth who identifies as female. They may or may not undergo bodily changes, and should always be addressed with she/her pronouns.
Travesti is not only a gender identity located outside of gender binarism, it is also a cultural identity rooted in Latin American movements. The term was initially pejorative, but it was later re-appropriated as a symbol of resistance and dignity.
Every travesti is trans because she does not identify with the gender designated at birth, however not every travesti considers themselves as a trans woman, since travesti is already a gender identity on its own.
Source: Berkins, Lohana. (2006). Travestis: una Identidad Política [Travestis: a Political Identity]. Trabajo presentado en el Panel Sexualidades contemporáneas en las VIII Jornadas Nacionales de Historia de las Mujeres/ III Congreso Iberoamericano de Estudios de Género Diferencia Desigualdad. Construirnos en la diversidad, Villa Giardino, Córdoba, 25 al 28 de octubre de 2006.
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