Giulia Tamayo
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
Isabel Marler
Biography
Isabel is a feminist from the United Kingdom with over a decade of experience in feminist responses to fascisms, fundamentalisms, and anti-rights trends. At AWID, her work centers on knowledge-building and has included leading the production of the Rights at Risk series in collaboration with the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs). She holds a Master’s degree in Gender Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and previously worked with Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML). She is passionate about cross-movement work, movement-centered knowledge-building, and the use of creative expression to disrupt systems of oppression. Outside of work, Isabel is active in various disability justice spaces for collective care, learning, and advocacy.
Position
Advancing Universal Rights and Justice Lead
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Sanyu Awori
Biography
Sanyu is a Pan-African feminist based in Nairobi, Kenya. She has spent the last decade supporting labour, feminist and human rights movements advocating for corporate accountability, economic justice and gender justice. She has worked with the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, IWRAW Asia Pacific and the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. She has a Master’s of Laws in Human Rights Law and a Bachelor’s of Laws from the University of Nottingham. Her writing has been published in the Business and Human Rights Journal, Human Rights Law Review, Open Global Rights, Open Democracy and more. In her free time, she loves walking in the forest and chasing butterflies.
Position
Manager, Building Feminist Economies
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Madelaine Parent
Brenda Salas Neves
Biography
Brenda Salas Neves is a feminist queer strategist born and raised in the southern Andes. They organize to shift narratives and mobilize resources to support racial and climate justice movements around the world. They have produced media projects to uplift migrant power and rise against U.S. military intervention across Latin America, with Deep Dish TV and the Portland Central America Solidarity Committee. They are a proud member of the Audre Lorde Project and a graduate of the United World Colleges (UWC) movement.
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Patrona Benita Sandoval
Can organizations be members of AWID?
Yes, we encourage institutional membership.
AWID currently has hundreds of prominent, innovative organizations working on issues related to women’s rights and development as members. Criteria for membership are the same as for individuals, although membership fees and membership benefits are different, and are geared to address the needs of our member organizations.
Widad Mitri
2009: The UN holds Conference on the impact of the economic crisis
2009 UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impacts on Development
- The 2009 conference was an outcome of the 2008 Doha conference. The Doha Declaration had mandated that the United Nations hold a conference, to be organized by the President of the General Assembly, on the world financial and economic crisis and its impact on development.
- During the conference women’s groups, through the WWG, highlighted the impact of the global financial crisis on vulnerable groups. In their statement to the members, the WWG proposed necessary actions to be taken by member states to redress the effects of the crisis to women. They stated that other social groups affected by the crisis are key to a response that is harmonized with international standards and commitments to gender equality, women’s rights and human rights and empowerment.
Esperanza Pérez Labrador
Piera Oria
What happens to the activity proposals submitted through the CfA?
- Activity proposals will initially be screened by AWID staff.
- Organizers of shortlisted proposals will then be invited to participate in a voting process, to choose among the shortlisted activities. Those with the most votes will be included in the Forum program. AWID may make a few adjustments to the final selection to ensure our program has an adequate balance across regions, constituencies, issues and methodologies.
- Our Forum Content and Methodology Committee will reach out to the organizers of selected proposals to support them in further developing their activities.
We will update the outcomes of this process in the website in due time.
Fidan Dogan
Snippet SM CTA_Fest (EN)
Follow us on social media and share about your favorite moments from our festival:
Facebook: @AWIDWomensRights
Instagram: @awidwomensrights
Twitter ENG: @awid
LinkedIn: Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)
Teresa De Anda
Snippet FEA Introducing Carmen Silva Ferreira (EN)
We have the pleasure to introduce you to Carmen Silva Ferreira.
She was born in Bahia, the Northeastern part of Brazil. She is an immigrant, a social activist and a mother of 8 children.
Carmen experienced homelessness at the age of 35, after migrating to Sao Paulo on her own. This led her to become a fierce advocate for vulnerable, marginalized and invisibilized communities most affected by the housing crisis. She eventually became one of the founders of MSTC in 2000.
As a visionary political organizer and the current leader of the MSTC, Carmen’s work has laid bare the city's housing crisis and provided inspiration to others on different ways to organize and manage occupations. She stood strong on the forefront of several occupations. One of them is the 9 de Julho Occupation, which now serves as a stage for direct democracy, and a space where everyone can be heard, seen, appreciated and work together.
Carmen has been long celebrated for her boldness in giving life back to abandoned buildings in the heart of São Paulo.
To know more about her life, you can follow her on Instagram!
Suzette Jordan
Snippet FEA Care as the foundation (EN)
Care as the foundation of economies
The COVID-19 pandemic put the global crisis of care into sharp focus and demonstrated the failures of the dominant economic model that is decimating essential public services, social infrastructures and systems of care around the world.
Cozinha Ocupação 9 Julho, the Association of Afro-Descendant Women of the Northern Cauca (ASOM) and Metzineres are only some examples of caring economies that center the needs of marginalized people and nature, as well as the reproductive, invisibilized, and unpaid care work required to ensure the sustainability of our lives, societies and eco-systems.