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
CFA FAQ - Other questions - Thai
คำถามอื่นๆ
I can’t attend the Forum in person, how else can I participate?
More than just an event, the AWID Forum is part of our Feminist Realities Journey, with many spaces to come together, online and offline, for sharing, discussing, strategizing and co-creating feminist realities.
Learn more about the Feminist Realities Journey and everything that will happen before the Forum. Join our mailing list to stay tuned for Post-Forum announcements!
We are exploring options to participate virtually at the Forum and we will share information when we know what we can offer.
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Responding to Anti-rights Developments
in Multilateral and Regional Spaces
✉️ By Invite Only
📅Tuesday, March 12
🕒2-3.30pm EST
Organiser: Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs) Consortium
🏢Blue Gallery, 222 E 46th St, New York
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To make the complexity of resourcing diverse forms of feminist organizing visible
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Resources
Tributo: Recordamos a lxs activistas feministas que cambiaron nuestro mundo
En esta galería en línea, rendimos homenaje a más de 450 valientes feministas y activistas de todas las regiones del mundo y 88 países que ya no están con nosotrxs.
Lxs traemos a todxs a nuestra memoria colectiva y llevamos su legado de lucha como nuestra antorcha en los movimientos feministas y por los derechos de las mujeres.
Usa los filtros para refinar tu búsqueda
How many questions are in the survey?
There are 47 questions in total, of which 27 are mandatory* and the remaining 20 are optional. The majority of questions are multiple-choice. We invite you to respond to all the questions.
The Feminist Film Club
As part of AWID’s Feminist Realities journey, we invite you to explore our newly launched Feminist Film Club: a collection of short and feature films selected by feminist curators and storytellers from around the world, including Jess X. Snow (Asia/Pacific), Gabrielle Tesfaye (Africa/African Diaspora), and Esra Ozban (South West Asia, North Africa). Alejandra Laprea is curating the Latin & Central American program, which we’ll launch in September during AWID’s Crear, Résister, Transform: A Festival for Feminist Movements. In the meantime, look out for announcements on special films screenings and conversations with filmmakers!
Can I contact someone if I have questions or concerns?
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us via the form here, indicating “WITM Survey” as the title of your message. You can also write to us at witm@awid.org.
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Чтобы заявить о себе как об эксперте по вопросам ресурсного обеспечения феминистских движений
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Por que devo responder à pesquisa agora?

Os movimentos feministas, de direitos das mulheres, de justiça de género, de LBTQI+ e de aliados em todo do mundo encontram-se num momento crítico, e enfrentam uma forte retaliação contra direitos e liberdades conquistados anteriormente. Os últimos anos trouxeram o crescimento rápido do autoritarismo, a violenta repressão da sociedade civil e a criminalização dos defensores dos direitos humanos das mulheres e de pessoas de género diverso, o aumento da guerra e do conflito em várias partes do nosso mundo, a perpetuação contínua de injustiças económicas e crises de saúde, da ecologia e do clima interligadas.
Before you begin
Before starting the WITM research methodology, it is important you prepare the background and know what to expect.
Capacity
With AWID’s WITM research methodology, we recommend that you first review the entire toolkit.
While this toolkit is designed to democratize WITM research, there are capacity constraints related to resources and research experience that may affect your organization’s ability use this methodology.
Use the “Ready to Go?” Worksheet to assess your readiness to begin your own WITM research. The more questions you can answer on this worksheet, the more prepared you are to undertake your research.
Trust
Before beginning any research, we recommend that you assess your organization’s connections and trust within your community.
In many contexts, organizations may be hesitant to openly share financial data with others for reasons ranging from concerns about how the information will be used, to fear of funding competition and anxiety over increasing government restrictions on civil society organizations.
As you build relationships and conduct soft outreach in the lead-up to launching your research, ensuring that your objectives are clear will be useful in creating trust. Transparency will allow participants to understand why you are collecting the data and how it will benefit the entire community.
We highly recommend that you ensure data is collected confidentially and shared anonymously. By doing so, participants will be more comfortable sharing sensitive information with you.
First step
We also recommend referring to our “Ready to Go?” Worksheet to assess your own progress.
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Ресурсы
(Доступно на английском языке)
Solidarity Economy
Definition
The solidarity economy (including cooperative economy and gift economy) is an alternative framework that is allowing for different forms in different contexts, open to continual change.
This framework is grounded in the principles of:
- solidarity, mutualism (Mutual Aid), and cooperation
- equity in all dimensions
- social well-being
- sustainability
- social and economic democracy
- pluralism
The producers in a solidarity economy develop economic processes that are intimately related to their realities, preservation of the environment and mutual cooperation.
Context
According to feminist geographer Yvonne Underhill-Sem, the gift economy is an economic system in which goods and services flow between people without explicit agreement of their value or future reciprocity.
Behind gifting is human relationship, generation of goodwill, and attention to the nurturance of the whole society and not just one’s immediate self and family, it is about the collective.
For example, in the Pacific region, this includes: collecting, preparing, and weaving terrestrial and marine resources for mats, fans, garlands, and ceremonial items; and raising livestock and storing seasonal harvests.
Feminist perspective
The incentives for women to be involved in economic activities are diverse, ranging from the fulfillment of career aspirations and making money for a long-term comfortable life to making money to make ends meet, paying off debt, and escaping from the drudgery of routine life.
To accommodate the diverse environments that women operate in, the concept of solidarity economy is in continual development, discussed and debated.

Learn more about this proposition
- The networks of organisations gathered within the Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of Social Solidarity Economy (RIPESS) issued a set of recommendations for the post-2015 development agenda that summarizes the key demands of a solidarity economy.
- The “Global Vision for a Social Solidarity Economy: Convergences and Differences in Concepts, Definitions and Frameworks” paper released by RIPESS in 2015 is part of a process of dialogue in which the network has been engaged. The global vision paper lays out the main points of the discussions and identifies areas to explore further.
Part of our series of
Feminist Propositions for a Just Economy