Mass demonstration in Madrid on International Women's Day
Multitudinaria manifestación en Madrid en el día internacional de la mujer
Priority Areas
Supporting feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements to thrive, to be a driving force in challenging systems of oppression, and to co-create feminist realities.
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
Snippet FEA Principles of Work S4 (EN)
HORIZONTALITY
Administrative Office
For administrative purposes you can contact our office at:
Benoîte was a French journalist, writer, and feminist activist.
She published more than 20 novels as well as many essays on feminism.
Her first book “Ainsi Soit-Elle” (loosely translated as “As She Is”) was published in 1975. The book explored the history of women’s rights as well as misogyny and violence against women.
Her last book, “Ainsi Soit Olympe de Gouges,” explored women’s rights during the French Revolution, centering on the early French feminist Olympe de Gouges. De Gouges was guillotined in 1793 for challenging male authority and publishing a declaration of women’s rights (“Déclaration Des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne”) two years earlier.
Snippet - That Feminist Fire Podcast Trailer (EN)
Вместе под Зонтом: Феминизм и Права Секс-Работниц/ков
Ассоциация «Права женщин в развитии» и Фонд «Красный зонт» приглашают Вас принять участие в диспуте-семинаре на тему феминизма и секс-работы.
Вместе под Зонтом: Феминизм и Права Секс-Работниц/ков
В рамках данной сессии, сотрудницы (-ки) Ассоциации «Права женщин в развитии» будут делиться своими знаниями и опытом работы в условиях виртуального общения. Мы поговорим об основных сложностях и интерсекциональности в работе секс-работниц (-ков) и феминисток (-ов).
Подумайте над своими вопросами!
Для участниц (-ков) будет предоставлен перевод на испанский, французский и русский языки.
Спикеры
Кей Тхи Вин
Кей Тхи является секс-работницей и с 2007 года лоббирует вопросы здоровья и прав секс-работниц (-ков). За последние девять лет она участвовала в программе по предупреждению ВИЧ среди женщин, работающих в секс-индустрии, и мужчин, имеющих половые связи с мужчинами, в Мьянме. В настоящее время Кей Тхи является региональной координаторкой Азиатско-Тихоокеанской сети секс-работниц (-ков) (АТССР) и работает с партнерами по всему Азиатско-Тихоокеанскому региону.
Гитанджали Мишра
Гитанджали является соосновательницей и исполнительной директоркой организации CREA (Нью-Дели). Она феминистка и любительница кино, работала по вопросам сексуальности, репродуктивного здоровья, гендера, прав человека и насилия в отношении женщин на различных уровнях - в качестве активистки, грантодательницы и на директивном уровне.
Вера Родригез
Вера присоединилась к фонду «Красный зонт» в августе 2017 года в качестве сотрудницы по программам. Вера родилась в Испании, где окончила факультет журналистики Университета Сан Пабло в Валенсии. Последние 7 лет она является активной участницей организации «X-talk», очень вовлечена в работу Коллектива Стриптизерш (-ров) Восточного Лондона, а также является участницей съемочной группы «Опера секс-работниц (-ков)».
Заинтересованы в том, чтобы вскоре стать частью этого диспут-семинарa и других обучения?!
Ana was a strong advocate of women’s rights and worked with a broad cross-section of women, from those in grassroots networks to those in the private sector.
She believed in building bridges across sectors. Ana was a member of the National Network for the Promotion of Women (RNPM), and was active in developing many social programs that address issues such as sexual and reproductive health and rights.
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Want to build the Forum with us?
Join as an AWID member now and participate in our next member event: “Forum Dreaming” on June 20th.
Ika Vantiani
Bunga or flower in English is something that is often associated with women in Indonesia. Meaning, a flower can also be associated with transgender women. Because transgender women are women. As beautiful, as strong, and they both lived not only waiting to be 'picked' but instead grew and bloom and died as they pleased. This work is a tribute to my transgender women friends on The International Transgender Day of Visibility.
About Ika Vantiani
Ika Vantiani is an Indonesian artist, curator and crafter based in Jakarta. Her works explores the idea of being a woman in today’s society with the intertwined between media and consumption. Ika uses the discipline of collage and expands it into workshop, installation, and street art. Ika is the member of artist collectives including Micro Galleries, The Collage Club and It’s In Your Hands Collective.
“But when was the master
ever seduced from power?
When was a system ever broken
by acceptance?
when will the BOSS hand you power with love?
At Jo’Burg, at Cancun or the U.N? – Molara Ogundipe
In an interview at the 2010 Ghana International Book Fair, Molara Ogundipe introduced herself with the words: “...I’m a Nigerian. I’ve lived possibly all over the world except for the Soviet Union and China.”
Across the different continents and countries, Professor Ogundipe taught comparative literature, writing, gender, and English studies using literature as a vehicle for social transformation and re-thinking gender relations.
A feminist thinker, writer, editor, social critic, poet, and activist Molara Ogundipe succeeded in combining theoretical work with creativity and practical action. She is considered to be one of the leading critical voices on African feminism(s), gender studies and literary theory.
Molara famously coined the concept of “stiwanism’ from the acronym STIWA – Social Transformations in Africa Including Women recognizing the need to move “away from defining feminism and feminisms in relation to Euro-America or elsewhere, and from declaiming loyalties or disloyalties.”
In her seminal work ‘Re-creating Ourselves’ in 1994, Molara Ogundipe (published under Molara Ogundipe-Leslie) left behind an immense body of knowledge that decolonized feminist discourse and “re-centered African women in their full, complex narratives...guided by an exploration of economic, political and social liberation of African women and restoration of female agency across different cultures in Africa.”
In speaking about the challenges she faced as a young academic she said:
”When I began talking and writing feminism in the late sixties and seventies, I was seen as a good and admirable girl who had gone astray, a woman whose head has been spoilt by too much learning".
Molara Ogundipe stood out for her leadership in combining activism and academia; in 1977 she was among the founding members of AAWORD, the Association of Women in Research and Development. In 1982 she founded WIN (Women In Nigeria) to advocate for full “economic, social and political rights” for Nigerian women. She then went on to establish and direct the Foundation for International Education and Monitoring and spent many years on the editorial board of The Guardian.
Growing up with the Yoruba people, their traditions, culture, and language she once said :
“I think the celebration of life, of people who pass away after an achieved life is one of the beautiful aspects of Yoruba culture.”
Molara’s Yoruba ‘Oiki’ praise name was Ayike. She was born on 27 December 1940 and at the age of 78, Molara passed away on 18 June 2019 in Ijebu-Igbo, Ogun State, Nigeria.
How does the AWID Forum connect to regional and other spaces?
We are in communication with regional, thematic and funder convenings planned for 2023-2024, to ensure flow of conversations and connections. If you are organizing an event and would like to make a connection to the AWID Forum, please get in touch with us!
Celluloid Ishtar
Hind and Hind were the first documented queer couple in Arab history. In today’s world, they are a queer artist from Lebanon.
Sequence 1
When I was 6, I learned that my grandfather owned a movie theater. My mother recounted to me how it had opened in the early 1960s, when she was also about 6 years old. She remembered that they screened The Sound of Music on the first night.
I would pass by the theater every weekend and watch my grandfather play backgammon with his friends. I didn’t know he was living in the theater, in a room right under the projection booth. I later learned that he moved there after he and my grandmother separated and after the theater closed, in the 1990s, shortly after the Lebanese civil war had ended.
For years and until he passed away, I would mostly see my grandfather play backgammon in the unmaintained reception area of the movie theater. Those repeated scenes are all I remember of him. I never got to properly know him; we never talked about cinema, even though he spent all his time in a run-down movie theater. I never asked him what it was like to live in a place like this. He died when I was 12, on Christmas Eve, from a fall down the spiraling steps that led to the projection booth. It is almost poetic that he passed away in movement, in a house where moving images are perpetually suspended in time.
Sequence 2
In the spring of 2020, my cousin called me to say he had cleaned up my grandfather’s movie theater and asked me to meet him there. The two of us had always dreamed of renovating it. I got there before he did. In the reception area, the film poster frames were still there but the posters were gone. I knew there must have been some ticket stubs left somewhere; I found them stacked away in a small rusty tin box, on a shelf in the ticketing booth, and I pocketed some.
I began to walk around. On the main stage, the projection screen was quite dirty and a little torn on the side. I glided my index finger on the screen to remove a patch of dust and noticed that the screen was still white underneath. The fabric seemed to be in good shape too. I looked up to see that my grandmother’s curtains were still in place. They were made of white satin with a little embroidered emblem over the bridge of the curtain, representing the theater. There was a main seating area and a gallery. The chairs seemed to be very worn out.
I noticed the projector peeking out of a small window at the very end of the balcony seating area. I led myself up the spiraling steps of the projection booth.
The room was dark, but a source of light coming from the dusty windows revealed a stack of film reels tossed in a corner. Lifeless celluloid strips were tangled up against the foot of the film projector. The dusty reels were all Western, Bollywood, and Science-Fiction genre films with bad titles like The Meteor that Destroyed Earth, or something of the sort. My attention was caught by the dusty film strips – mostly snippets cut out from reels. One by one, the short strips depicted different kissing scenes, what seemed like a suggestive dance, a nondescript scene of a gathering, a close-up of a woman lying down with her mouth open, opening credits to a Bollywood film, and a “Now Showing” tag that went on for several frames.
The Bollywood film credits reminded me of my mother. She used to tell me how they would hand out tissues to audience members on their way out of screenings. I kept the kissing scene and suggestive dance strips; I assumed they had been cut out for censorship reasons. The close-up of the woman reminded me of an excerpt from Béla Balázs’ Visible Man, or The Culture of Film, The Spirit of Film, and Theory of the Film. He said that close-ups in film provided a
silent soliloquy, in which a face can speak with the subtlest shades of meaning without appearing unnatural and arousing the distance of the spectators. In this silent monologue, the solitary human soul can find a tongue more candid and uninhibited than any spoken soliloquy, for it speaks instinctively, subconsciously.
Balázs was mostly describing the close-ups of Joan in the silent film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. He pointed out how, “...in the silent (movie), facial expression, isolated from its surroundings, seemed to penetrate to a strange new dimension of the soul.”
I examined the film strip further. The woman looked dead, her face almost mask-like. She reminded me of Ophelia by the painter John Everett Millais. In her book On Photography, Susan Sontag says a photograph is “a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.” These death masks are like a presence that reminds of an absence.
I remembered encountering a discourse between death and photography in Roberto Rossellini’s forgotten film The Machine that Kills Bad People. In this film, a cameraman goes around taking photographs of people, who would in turn freeze, and are later suspended in time. French film critic André Bazin used to say that photography snatches bodies away from the flow of death and stores them by embalming them. He described this photographic mummification as “the preservation of life by a representation of life.”
This projection booth, its whole layout, all the things that looked like they were moved, the celluloid strips on the ground, everything my grandfather left a mark on – I felt very protective of.
Underneath the strips was an undone dusty film reel. It seemed like someone had been watching the reel manually. At that moment, my cousin made his way up the spiraling steps to find me examining it. He rubbed his fingers along his chin and, in a very-matter-of-fact way, said, “You found the porn.”
Sequence 3
I looked at the film strip in my hand and realized it was not a death scene. The strip was cut out of the porn reel. The woman was moaning in ecstasy. Close-ups are meant to convey feelings of intensity, of climax, but I had never really used Balázs’ theories to describe a porn scene. He wrote how “the dramatic climax between two people will always be shown as dialogue of facial expressions in close-up.” I pocketed the film strip and I named the woman Ishtar. She has lived in my wallet ever since. It seemed strange to compare the close depiction of Joan’s fears and courage with Ishtar’s facial expression in ecstasy.
According to my cousin, my grandfather’s brother would wait until my grandfather left the theater and, instead of closing, invite his friends for some after-hour private screenings. I didn’t think much of it. It was a common practice, especially during and after the Lebanese civil war. After the war, television sets were almost in every Lebanese household. I even remember having one in my bedroom in the late 1990s, when I was around 6 years old. I was told that buying porn films on VHS was popular at the time. Mohammed Soueid, a Lebanese writer and filmmaker, once told me that movie theaters used to screen art films and pornography from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, so that they could survive. I also heard that projectionists would cut up porn reels to make different montages, so that they could screen something different every night. Eventually, people stayed within the comforts of their homes to watch VHS tapes on their televisions, and movie theaters began to run out of business.
Sequence 4
My cousin went back downstairs to go through an archive of paperwork in the office space. I stayed in the booth and began to slip the film strip between my index and middle finger, sliding it up with my thumbs and slowly running the frames through my hands. I lifted the strip against the dusty window and squinted to make sense of the monochrome vignettes. In this series of frames was an extreme close-up of a dick shoved into a vagina. It went on for several frames until I came across a knot in the film, and I imagined the rest.
Sequence 5
Hank is showcasing his hard-on in front of Veronika who is lying in bed across a Louis XIV secrétaire knockoff. She gets up slowly and slides the thin strap of her see-through négligé off her left shoulder. Hank unties her veiled robe, turns her around, slaps her ass, and pushes her down against the secrétaire. He thrusts his dick inside her pussy repeatedly as the back of the furniture bangs against the wallpaper-adorned wall.
Sequence 6
I was always attentive to the interior décor, ever since I was told by my Women in Porn Studies professor that the largest porn archives in North America are interestingly used to examine the middle-class furniture of that epoch. So, while Veronika is bending over and being taken from behind by Hank, a university research assistant could very well be trying to guess the design of the gold motif on the secrétaire, or study the rococo relief on a wooden chair in some corner.
For a moment, the booth became a space for female sexual imagination, disrupting a space otherwise promised for the freedom of male sexuality. I was sure that only men were able to access movie theaters that screened porn films. The film reel was too entangled to undo in a projection booth where dust had accumulated for over a decade, so I stuffed it into my duffle bag and walked out of the theater.
I am not sure what came over me, but I felt compelled to keep it. I wanted to feel the thrill of safeguarding something mysterious, something unorthodox. In my mind, I was sure people knew I was hiding something as I walked down the street. A feeling of guilt intertwined with pleasure came over me. It felt kinky.
Sequence 7
I got into the house, preoccupied with the thought of having a porn reel in my duffle bag and the stream of thoughts that had unfolded on my walk home. I immediately went to my bedroom. In some distant part of my mind, I remembered that I shared a wall with Layla’s room next door. She was probably not home, but the possibility of being heard excited me. I closed my bedroom door and I took the film strip of Ishtar out.
I imagined her dressed in a light green veiled dress, dancing seductively in front of me, swinging her hips sideways and smiling with her eyes. I got onto my bed. I slipped my fingers into my panties. I lifted my hips. I trailed my hand down my thighs to part them, and slid two fingers in. I tensed up as I palpated my various creases. I moaned before I could stop myself. I panted and swayed. The rays of sun coming through my window planted reluctant kisses onto my skin. I held my breath in and my limbs quivered. I swallowed my breath and laid flat on the mattress.
Sequence 8
When I was an undergraduate student, I had taken an introductory film class and Professor Erika Balsom had scheduled a screening of Bette Gordon’s Variety. I was excited to watch producer Christine Vachon’s first film before she moved onto producing films that are now part of the New Queer Cinema movement. Variety was described as a feminist film about Christine, a woman who begins to work as a ticketing clerk in a porn movie theater in New York city called The Variety Theater. Christine overhears the films at the theater but never goes in. Eventually, she becomes interested in a regular customer, whom she watches closely. She follows him to an adult shop where she stands aside and flips through adult magazines for the first time.
Christine’s voyeurism was displayed in different ways throughout the film. The script was also ridden with excess, and erotic monologues that would be considered obscene or vulgar.
In a scene set in an arcade, she reads erotica to her boyfriend. The camera goes back and forth between a close-up of her boyfriend Mark’s butt as he was playing pinball, swinging his hips back and forth against the arcade machine, and a close-up of Christine’s face as she recited her monologue.
Sequence 9
“Sky was hitchhiking and he got a ride from a woman in a pick-up truck. It was late at night and he needed a place to stay, so she offered him her place.
She showed him to his room and offered him a drink. They drank and talked and decided to turn in. He couldn’t sleep, so he put on his pants and walked down the hall to the living room. He was a stop short of being seen, but he could see. The woman was naked and spread on the coffee table with only her legs dangling over. Her whole body was excitingly white as if it’d never seen the sun. Her nipples were bright pink, fire-like, almost neon. Her lips were open. Her long auburn hair licking the floor, arms stretched, fingers tickling the air. Her oiled body was round with no points, no edges. Slithering between her breasts was a large snake curving up around one, and down between the other. The snake’s tongue licking toward the cunt, so open, so red in the lamp light. Hot and confused, the man walked back to his room, and with great difficulty, managed to fall asleep. The next morning, over strawberries, the woman asks him to stay another night. Again, he couldn’t sleep […]”
Sequence 10
When I was 23, Lynn, the girl I was dating from film class, surprised me by taking me to watch erotica short films on Valentine’s Day. The event took place at The Mayfair Theater, an independent old movie theater. The architecture of the theater recalled North American Nickelodeons, but with a campy touch. Its balconies were decorated with life-size cardboard cutouts of Swamp Thing and Aliens.
That year, the festival was judged by adult star Kacie May and the program consisted of an hour and a half of short films. The content ranged from soft-core machismo-ridden shorts to scat fetish films. We watched a few minutes of what seemed to be heterosexual soft porn. It followed a couple who start making love in a modern living room space, then move to the bedroom. It was mostly footage of them kissing each other, touching each other, and making love missionary-style. Then a woman with a short brown bob crawled onto the bed, licking the back of her own hand in short strokes. She meowed and crawled over the unconcerned couple. They continued to make love. She crawled out to the kitchen, picked up her empty bowl with her teeth, and placed it onto a pillow. She kept walking over them until the end of the short. It seemed quite absurd. I began to laugh, but Lynn looked a bit uncomfortable. I then looked to our left, watching other audience members chugging beers and inhaling popcorn while laughing hysterically. Their uninterrupted laughter and loud comments really set the tone of the festival. Watching the audience became more interesting than watching the erotic films. The Mayfair Theater often showed cult films, and watching cult films is a communal experience.
It’s not exactly how I imagined my mother’s uncle watching porn in my grandfather’s theater. Movie theaters were openly screening porn films at that time, but I could not picture it happening within my mother’s hometown. I pictured him watching the film from the projector in the booth, so he could quickly stop the screening in case any unexpected guests decided to stop by. His friends sat on the balcony in the back. No one could get in from there unless they had a key, so it was safe. They had to think of everything. It was a conservative Christian neighborhood and they would not want to cause any trouble. They were most likely overcome with excitement and guilt. The voices of loud homoerotic banter merged with sound bites of grunting and moaning, but they reminded each other to keep it down every few minutes. They took turns to check the windows to make sure the sound was not loud enough to alarm any neighbors. Sometimes, they would turn off the speaker and there would be no sound.
Sequence 11
After a political protest in 2019, I came across a bookstand on Riad El Solh street, close to Martyr’s Square in downtown Beirut. Towards the end of the table, past the copies of Hugo and de Beauvoir, I found a stack of erotica novels and adult magazines. They were all translations of Western publications. I really did not care which one I picked; I just knew I wanted to own a copy for the thrill of it. I looked for the most interesting cover art.
As he was giving me my change back, the vendor asked me, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
He scanned my breasts, gliding his eyes downwards. He probably assumed I worked in the porn or sex industry. I looked into his eyes and said, “No.” I turned around, ready to walk away with my magazine. He then stopped me to say that he had a large archive in his basement, and that he regularly sold porn collections and publications on EBay, to Europe and the USA. Although I was interested in rummaging through that archive, I was not comfortable enough to take his offer. It did not feel safe. I asked him where he found these novels. To my surprise, they were produced in Lebanon.
Walking towards the Riad El Solh statue, I read through the journal I had bought and found the format of the text somewhat canted; the font was a bit smudged, making it illegible. The photographs inside were comprised of faded pornographic collages. It looked raw; I liked that. The title of the novel read, Marcel’s Diaries.
The cover art was clearly a magazine cut-out pasted over a blue sheet. In the picture, a shirtless woman is grabbing her lover’s head, digging her fingers in his hair, while he is kissing her neck from behind. Her skirt is zipped down. Her lover has his hand on her lower right hip. She has her hand over his. Her lips are puckered up and open, almost like she is moaning with pleasure, her 1970s straight blonde hair running down her chest and partially covering her nipples.
I opened the first page. The preface read
شهوات”
“وشذوذ
which either translates to
“Desire
and deviance”
or to
“Desire
and kink”
I read through the first chapter and I found that whoever translated the text had changed the main character’s name to Fouad, an Arabic name. I assumed they wanted their Lebanese male audience to identify. As I read through, I found that all of his lovers had foreign names like Hanna, Marla, Marcel, Marta.
Sequence 12
I realized on page 27, chapter four, that Marcel was one of Fouad’s lovers.
Sequence 13
The scene took place in a movie theater. Movie theaters were often spaces for sexual freedom in North America, especially since the 1970s after the sexual revolution.
I also assumed they kept all the other foreign names so that it sounds exotic and less taboo. Pornography and erotica were attributed to West Hollywood, despite the fact that the Arab world historically produced erotic texts. Erotica became taboo, and the only way to safely produce it was to market it as foreign, as exotic.
It is interesting how the exotic covers for the erotic. The difference between the two adjectives is rooted in their Greek etymologies: exotic is from exo, “outside,” meaning alien or foreign. Erotic is derived from Eros, the god of sexual love. So, what’s exotic is mysterious and foreign – what’s erotic is sexy.
In Lebanon there is a thin line between the exotic and the erotic in cinema, like the thin line between art films and porn films. In 2015, during a conversation with filmmaker Jocelyne Saab in a Vietnamese restaurant in Paris, I learned that she had to shoot her art film Dunia a second time to change the dialect from Egyptian to Lebanese. She told me that her actors were Egyptian, and that she wasn’t strict about the script. She was not allowed to use Egyptian dialect. It had to be in Lebanese because the producers were concerned about the borderline erotic scenes in the film. So, they made it foreign.
Maritza Quiroz Leiva was an Afro Colombian social activist, a community leader and women human rights defender. Among the 7.7 million Colombians internally displaced by 50 years of armed conflict, Maritza dedicated her advocacy work to supporting the rights of others, particularly in the Afro Colombian community who suffered similar violations and displacement.
Maritza was the deputy leader of the Santa Marta Victim's Committee, and an important voice for those seeking justice in her community, demanding reparations for the torture, kidnapping, displacement, and sexual violence that victims experienced during the armed conflict. She was also active in movement for land redistribution and land justice in the country.
On 5 January 2019, Maritza was killed by two armed individuals who broke into her home. She was 60 years old.
Maritza joined five other Colombian social activists and leaders who had been murdered just in the first week of 2019. A total of 107 human rights defenders were killed that year in the country.
Clone of CFA 2023 - Intro 2 - EN
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” - Maya Angelou
AWID Forum
Welcome to the 15th International AWID Forum!
The International AWID Forum is both a global community event and a space of radical personal transformation. A one-of-a-kind convening, the Forum brings together feminist, women’s rights, gender justice, LBTQI+ and allied movements, in all our diversity and humanity, to connect, heal and thrive. The Forum is a place where Global South feminists and historically marginalized communities take center stage, strategizing with each other and social justice movements, in order to shift power, make strategic alliances, and usher in a different, better world. When people come together on a global scale, as individuals and movements, we generate a sweeping force. Join us in Bangkok, Thailand in 2024. Come dance, sing, dream and rise with us.
Love letter to feminist movements: A goodbye from Hakima and Cindy
Dear feminist movements,
You welcomed us with open arms when it was announced during the 2016 AWID Forum in Bahia that we would be AWID’s new Co-EDs. It was a moment that felt full of possibility, we were building a feminist oasis that would help sustain our collective struggles forward. We left Bahia with a sharp sense of responsibility, to do our best in your service and to lead AWID in ways that would be most supportive and impactful for you.
It is now time for us to step aside for new leadership!
Over five years into our journey, we are stepping down as AWID’s Co-EDs. Our decision comes as we wrap up the current strategic cycle. We see this as an ideal moment to step aside and support a leadership refresh. We believe that transformative feminist leadership is cyclical.
We so appreciate the opportunity we had to play a role in AWID’s 40 year history, holding and shepherding the organization through the difficult context of global pandemic, and so many spiraling crises.
Feminist movements, we know you will be part of our next journey, whatever that may be. You have consistently taught us about strength and resilience. We may move to different roles, but we will collectively continue to move together.
How We Moved
We have vivid memories of those of you in Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand, Taiwan and beyond who met us to co-create the AWID Forum with so much generosity and spark. Without a doubt, our greatest regret from the last five years is that we could not give you an in-person Forum.
Once we came to the difficult (albeit necessary) decision to cancel the AWID Forum, we focused on grappling with the existential questions so many of our organizations were facing: how do we shift our ways of working to be relevant, account for the exhaustion, sickness, and grief affecting all of us in different ways? How do we build meaningful relationships when we are limited to being online? There are still no straightforward answers to these questions, but feminist movements, you have shown the way.
We were so proud to see the ways feminists were leading responses to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on our communities. Feminists are frontline responders in crisis and we will continue to demand recognition and resources for this work. You often responded enthusiastically to our outreach, showing up in amazing ways in our Feminist Bailout campaign and later in the Crear Resister Transform festival. You jumped into collaborative advocacy with us – whether influencing human rights spaces, policy makers or funders.
Our work with you inspired us at AWID to make an important pivot in expanding opportunities for engagement among our members that is not centralized through AWID. We call this a solidarity-based approach to membership and we are excited to be launching this year the AWID Community platform.
You taught us that, since we can’t count on the system, what is especially important is that we show up for each other. We hope that what we did well over these years was to make space for new and deeper relationships and possibilities of mutual support and collaboration.
We give a special shout-out of love and respect to the current and former AWID team (both our staff and Board members) whom we’ve had the honor to work with over these years. We’ve learned from each one of you and felt deep gratitude for everything you have contributed to AWID over the years.
We came into this role as AWID’s first pair of Co-Executive Directors. We learned from the many activist and community traditions of collective leadership and the feminist organizations who had done this before us. We know that we couldn’t have done this job without each other. We were able to leverage each other’s strengths and have each other’s backs to do the best job we could.
What’s Next
We came into role together and are leaving together, even as we will be staggering our departure dates. We are both committed to supporting a smooth transition and deliberate onboarding of the new leadership this year.
Feminist movements, you are in great hands with the AWID team. They’ve got this. And we are proud to be leaving the organization in such a strong and resilient place. Hopefully, we’ll see many of you at the AWID Forum in 2024 – you’ll recognize us as the kicked back, relaxed folks in the audience!
Love and appreciation for all that you’ve done with and for us. Your impact on our lives stretches well beyond the last 5 years, and no doubt will continue to stretch far into the future.
Leah Tumbalang was a Lumad woman of Mindanao in the Philippines. The story of Lumad Indigenous peoples encompasses generations of resistance to large-scale corporate mining, protection of ancestral domains, resources, culture, and the fight for the right to self-determination.
Leah was a Lumad leader as well as a leader of Kaugalingong Sistema Igpasasindog to Lumadnong Ogpaan (Kasilo), a Lumad and peasant organization advocating against the arrival of mining corporations in Bukidnon, Mindanao province. She was unwavering in her anti-mining activism, fervently campaigning against the devastating effects of mineral extraction on the environment and Indigenous peoples’ lands. Leah was also an organizer of the Bayan Muna party-list, a member of the leftist political party Makabayan.
For almost a decade, Leah (along with other members of Kasilo) had been receiving threats for co-leading opposition against the deployment of paramilitary groups believed to be supported by mining interests.
“Being a Lumad leader in their community, she is at the forefront in fighting for their rights to ancestral land and self-determination.” - Kalumbay Regional Lumad Organization
Being at the forefront of resistance also often means being a target of violence and impunity and Leah not only received numerous death threats, but was murdered on 23 August 2019 in Valencia City, Bukidnon.
According to a Global Witness report, “the Philippines was the worst-affected country in sheer numbers” when it comes to murdered environmental activists in 2018.
I am pleased to share with you one of my remarkable dates as feminist with disability. It was May 30, 2014 when we (the Nationwide Organization of Visually-Impaired Empowered Ladies NOVEL) participated in the Philippine Fashion Week Holiday 2014 for our white cane advocacy campaign. Two ladies who are blind walked down the catwalk to promote the white cane as one of the symbols of gender equality, empowerment, full inclusion and equal participation of women and girls with visual impairment in society.
Their walk in front of the crowd were extremely a nerve-wracking experience for me, as the proponent of our project with the Runway Productions (I enduringly waited for a year for its approval), knowing that they were not models, they were the crowned Ms. Philippines Vision and 1st Runner Up of 2013 Ms. Philippines on Wheels, Signs and Vision by Tahanang Walang Hagdanan, Inc. (House with No Steps). Also, they fell on their orientation and practiced the evening before the event and they didn’t have practice with professional models. Before the show started, I talked to them via mobile phone to boost their confidence and to pray together for God’s guidance. When they exited the catwalk, I breathed deeply while my tears were flowing. I was feeling euphoric because we did it despite the challenges we’ve been through! Our message to the world that women and girls with visual impairment can walk with dignity, freedom and independence on an equal basis with others, with the use of our assistive device - white canes was successfully delivered! We trended in social media and we were featured by television networks.
My life as a feminist with disability started as a means to mend my broken spirit and to see a different path towards finding my life’s purpose after I became victim-survivor to a vicious acid attack in 2007 while I was waiting for a ride going home from office. My eyes were severely damaged, to the point that I became a woman with low vision.
I never knew how joyful and purposeful my life could be again until I met women leaders in the gender and disability movement who influenced me to keep going. Their words of encouragement attracted me and became the sweetest music to my ears. My broken heart leaped like a hummingbird in flight every time I think of them and feminism which stimulated me to partake in making difference for our invisible sisters with disabilities and to those who continue to experience discrimination. To date, I am consumed by the desire to be with the movement. I cannot hide my excitement whenever I submit project proposals to different stakeholders for our sisters with disabilities' empowerment, development and advancement; and to make representations in local, national and international conversations to amplify our voices even at my expense.
Unexpectedly, I was selected as our country’s female representative in the 2012 World Blind Union (WBU) General Assembly in Thailand even though I was a newcomer in the disability movement. In the same year, I was elected as the only woman officer of the Philippine Blind Union (PBU) in its assembly. I was inspired to reach out, gather and empower our sisters with visual impairment on their rights and to know their intersecting issues. In 2013, we officially launched the Nationwide Organization of Visually-Impaired Empowered Ladies (NOVEL) to support the empowerment of our sisters with disabilities, build coalitions with cross-disability and women’s movements and promote gender and disability-inclusive development.
My participation as co-focal person of women with disabilities in our 2016 CEDAW Shadow Report submission convened by Women’s Legal and Human Rights Bureau (WLB) with the marginalized groups of women, opened many doors such as working with various women’s organizations and attending the 2017 Inclusion Days International in Berlin, Germany together with 3 Filipino women leaders with disabilities to share our good practices, mainly our engagement with the women’s movement in our country.
My journey as feminist with disability has been an emotional roller coaster for me. It gave me happiness and a sense of worth when I participated in promoting for our sisters with disabilities full inclusion, equal and effective participation in society, yet I felt frustrated and upset when I gave my all but I received negative remarks. Nevertheless, I feel that way because I am in love with the movement.
I see my future working in solidarity with the movement to ensure that our sisters with and without disabilities can equally and fully enjoy and participate in society.
Love lots,
Gina Rose P. Balanlay
Feminist with disability
Philippines
A Strategy, a Market and New Voices: Indigenous Women and the AWID Forums
The Forum was a key space for the Indigenous Women’s Movement (IWM) in its relationship to feminism. At AWID Forums, they developed engagement strategies that would then apply at other spaces like the United Nations. In that process, both indigenous women and feminists movements were transformed: new voices and issues emerged and feminists started to change their discourses and practices around land rights and spirituality, they understood collective rights better, and included the IWM in their events and agendas. Mónica Alemán and María Manuela Sequeira, from the IWM, shared this story of change.