Pat Bellanger
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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Ȃurea Mouzinho
Biography
Ȃurea Mouzinho is a feminist economic justice organizer from Luanda, Angola, with a 10-year career in research, grant-making, advocacy, and movement-building for women's rights and economic justice across Africa and the global south. Currently the Program Manager for Africa at Thousand Currents, she also serves on the Feminist Africa Editorial Board and is a member of Ondjango Feminista, a feminist collective she co-founded in 2016. A new mom to a Gemini boy, urea enjoys slow days with her young family and taking long strolls by the beach.
She occasionally tweets at @kitondowe.
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Snippet FEA Aura Roig (EN)
Meet Aura Roig, the visionary feminist activist, anthropologist, director and founder of the Metzineres cooperative.
She spent the last two decades researching, designing and implementing drug policies from the perspective of harm reduction, human rights and intersectional feminism.
Having experienced and learned from communities who use drugs around the world, she returned to Barcelona and created Xarxa de Dones que Usen Drogues (the Network of Women Who Use Drugs, XADUD). XADUD was a space of mutual support and solidarity with the struggle to secure rights for marginalized groups, which later became the Metzineres cooperative.
Aura is currently working on expanding the Metzineres model to provide support to bigger constituencies, while also extensively documenting their prolific journey and learnings.
How did AWID get started?
AWID began in 1982 and has grown and transformed since then into a truly global organization.
Find out more:
Read From WID to GAD to Women's Rights: The First 20 Years of AWID
Maria Elizabeth Macias Castro
Snippet FEA Ecofeminism (EN)
WEST AFRICA
NOUS SOMMES LA SOLUTION
We are the Solution
ECOFEMINISM:
Respect for all we have around us
I am writing a research paper. Can AWID help me?
AWID provides a wealth of resources to help your research.
We invite you to explore the Priority Areas and Stay Informed sections of our website, or use the search function to find information about the specific topics you are researching.
We particularly recommend that you explore our toolkit “Where is the Money for Women’s Rights” (WITM Toolkit). This is a Do-it-Yourself Research methodology to support individuals and organizations who want to conduct their own research on funding trends for a particular region, issue or population by adapting AWID’s research methodology.
Jacky Sutton
Snippet FEA Audio A Caring Economy (EN)
Listen to the story here:
May 2015: Consultations on the Draft Outcome document are held
Additional consultation sessions on the Draft Outcome Document
- On 7 May, the revised outcome document for the 3rd FfD conference in Addis was released by the co-facilitators
- In support of continued progress on the Outcome Document, ad hoc additional sessions for consultations on the Draft Outcome Document took place from 12-15 May 2015 and 26-29 May 2015 at UN headquarters in New York
Nelly Amaya
Snippet FEA Bauen Hotel (EN)
Only a year after it was founded, the members of Nadia Echazú started to work in haute couture and organized a fashion show in the historic Bauen Hotel.
They showcased five models and some workers of the textile cooperative walked down the runway with their own designs.
This was revolutionary not only because they were designing alternatives to mainstream fashion, but also because they were creating accessible, inclusive clothes for all trans and travesti bodies.
Feminist economies should also be about feeling amazing and comfortable in the clothes we are wearing.
Do I have to be an AWID member to participate in the Forum?
No, you don't have to be an AWID member to participate but AWID members receive a discounted registration fee as well as a number of other benefits.
Dorothy Stang
Snippet FEA collaborator and allies Photo 5 (EN)
Sharmus Outlaw
Snippet FEA WE ARE LEGAL AND ALWAYS WERE (EN)
SPAIN
Sindicato OTRAS
WE ARE LEGAL AND
ALWAYS WERE
Rebecca Masika Katsuva
