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
Является ли мое участие конфиденциальным?
Да. Ваши ответы будут удалены по окончании обработки и анализа данных и будут использованы исключительно в исследовательских целях. Данные НИКОГДА не будут переданы за пределы AWID и будут обрабатываться только сотрудниками AWID и консультантками(-тами), работающими с нами над проектом «Где деньги?». Для нас ваша конфиденциальность и безопасность– приоритет. С нашей политикой конфиденциальности можно подробно ознакомиться здесь.
How can I fund my participation in the AWID Forum? Many activists will not be able to afford the cost of the Forum – is AWID doing anything to provide assistance?
Please visit the "Funding ideas" page to get some ideas and inspiration for how you can fund your participation at the next Forum, including the limited support AWID will be able to provide.
Desejam recolher quantas respostas ao questionário?
O nosso objetivo é alcançar um total de 2000 respostas, quase o dobro do último questionário WITM em 2011.
Snippet - CSW69 - OURs & friends - EN
OURs & friends at the Feminist Solidarity Space
✉️ By invitation only
📅 Tuesday, March 11, 2025
🕒 2.00-4.00pm EST
🏢 Chef's Kitchen Loft with Terrace, 216 East 45th St 13th Floor New York
Organizer: Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs) Consortium
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If you’re looking to have an impact through your work in feminist, social justice and other non-profit organizations, we hope this page provides a start.
Here you will find open vacancies and call for applications from AWID and the Alliance for Feminist Movements, when available. Follow us on social media to be in the loop.
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With smart filtering for Who Can Fund Me? Database, you can search for funders based on:
Snippet - WITM Infographic annual budget - EN
In 2023, feminist and
women's rights organizations
had a median annual budget of $22,000
In contrast, over $1 billion went to three anti-rights groups 2021-2022, with funding for anti-gender networks still rising.1
1 Global Philanthropy Project, 2024
English article
English article created from Spanish site
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International Eco-Socialist Encounter
Panels, workshops, plenaries and spaces for exchange between collectives, activists and organizations in struggle to collectively walk the path towards an agenda and a program of struggle for ecosocialism.
📅 November 8 - November 11, 2025
📍 Buenos Aires, Argentina
2. Frame your research
A framework for your research will guide throughout your research process, and the framing document you develop can also serve as a concept note to advisors and partners, and a funding proposal to potential donors.
Before conducting any research:
- Set the goals of your research
- List the key questions you want your research to answer
- Write out the type of data you will need to obtain and review to answer your key questions
- Define the final products you will produce with your research
Your research framing may evolve over time as you refine your questions and gather new information. However, building an initial research framing will allow you to work from a solid foundation.
Goals
To create a strong foundation for your WITM research, it is important to clarify what you hope to accomplish.
For example, one goal of AWID’s WITM global research was to provide rigorous data to prove what we already knew anecdotally: that women’s rights organizations are discrepantly underfunded. With this data, we felt we would be better positioned to influence funders in their decision-making.
Your goals could be to:
- Generate hard data on funding realities and trends to prove or disprove existing myths.
- Gain deeper insight into differences between the perspectives of donors and women’s rights organizations.
- Influence donors in grant-making.
- Add crucial input to key funding debates.
- Explore collaboration between donors and women’s rights organizations on issues that emerge from the research.
Key questions
Frame your research process with key questions that only your research can answer and limit those questions to a specific time frame (e.g. past five years, past year, etc.).
Consider the following points:
- What exactly do you want to learn more about and what is the hypothesis you would like to test? Writing this out will assist you in your thought process.
- Is there existing research on this? If research already exists, it may not make sense to conduct new WITM research unless you feel like the existing research is not extensive or specific enough.
- What time frame do you want to cover in your analysis? For example, will your research analyze only the past year, or several previous years, such as the past five years?
- Are you planning to repeat your survey to collect data in the future?
Choosing a specific timeframe for your research can result in more precise findings than working with an open-ended timeframe. Also, deciding whether you will repeat this research at regular intervals will allow you to set up data collection benchmarks for easy replication and comparison over time.
These were the key questions that guided AWID’s WITM research process:
- What is the current state of women’s organizations’ financial sustainability across the world?
- What external and internal trends are impacting donors’ funding decisions to support women’s organizations and movements?
Type of data
Now that you determined your key questions, you can determine what kind of data will help you answer your key questions. This will allow you to plan the rest of your schedule for your WITM research.
For example, will you conduct a survey that covers an extensive portion of your priority population? Will you analyze the applications that funders are receiving from a certain region? Will you also conduct interviews (recommended)? By determining the types of data you need, you can reach out to external parties who will provide this data early on, and plot out your full schedule accordingly. Some suggested sources of data could be:
- Surveys you create for women’s rights organizations and donors
- Application and grantmaking data from donors funding cycles
- Interviews of prominent activists, organizations, and donors
- Donor data from membership organizations and networks, such as the Foundation Center, regional or national donor affinity groups.
Diverse data sets are a great way to create robust and rich analysis.
The data from AWID’s 2011 Global Survey formed the backbone of our analysis in Watering the Leaves, Starving the Roots report. However, we also collected data from interviews and interactions with several actors in the field, ranging from donors to activists and women’s rights organizations.
Final products
In addition to allowing you to set your schedule, creating an initial plan of what products you will develop will also allow you to work out what resources you need.
For example, will you only produce a long research report or will you also create infographics, brochures and presentations? Depending on your products, you may need to hire a design firm, plan events and so on.
These products will also be the tools you use to achieve your goals, so it is important to keep those goals in mind. For example, is your WITM research exclusively intended as an advocacy tool to influence funders? In that case, your products should allow you to engage with funders at a deep level.
Some sample products:
- Long report for dissemination with key funders and organizations.
Historically, AWID WITM research has centered on a long report, from which AWID distilled other smaller products - see rest of list. - Infographic for viral distribution online
- Short animation demonstrating key findings
- Short brochure(s) distilling your findings and messages
- Articles and blog posts on key findings to draw interest to your larger report
- Seminars or webinars presenting key findings.
Conclusion: Framing your research will give you the big picture
Framing your research to cover goals, key questions, types of data, and final products will allow you to create a well-planned schedule, prepare your resources in advance, and plan a realistic budget.
This will make interactions with external partners easier and allow you to be nimble when unexpected setbacks occur.
Previous step
Next step
Estimated time:
• 1 month
People needed:
• 1 or more Research person(s)
Resources available:
• AWID Research Framing: sample 1
• AWID Research Framing: sample 2
Previous step
Next step
Ready to Go? Worksheet
Our Vision: Economic Justice in a Feminist World
As feminists struggling for gender, peace, economic, social and environmental justice, we know there is no single recipe for success but an array of possibilities that can and are making change happen. The menu of options is as diverse as our movements and the communities in which we live and struggle.
Before we dare to present some of the feminist imaginations for another world, here are the principles around which we base our propositions:
1. Self-determined development from the local to the global
We believe there is no one model for all and that everyone has a right to claim and contribute to building another world that is possible, as the World Social Forum motto puts it.
This includes the right to participate in democratic governance and to influence one’s future – politically, economically, socially and culturally.
Economic self-determination gives peoples the ability to take control over their natural resources and use those resources for their own ends or collective use. Furthermore, women’s economic agency is fundamental to mitigating the often cyclical nature of poverty, denial of education, safety, and security.
2. Rights, substantive equality and justice are at the core of the economy
The principle of substantive equality is laid out in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and other international human rights instruments. This principle is fundamental for development and achieving a just economy as it affirms that all human beings are born free and equal.
Non-discrimination is an integral part of the principle of equality that ensures that no one is denied their rights because of factors such as race, gender, language, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property or birth.
The inherent dignity of all persons without distinction must be upheld and respected. While States are responsible for ensuring the use of maximum available resources for the fulfilment of human rights, reclaiming rights and dignity is fundamentally a key space for civil society struggle and popular mobilization.
3. Just distribution for all, without monopolization (the anti-greed principle)
This principle, exercised through organized efforts to transform unjust institutions, guides the restoration of balance between "participation" (input) and "distribution" (output) when either principle is violated.
It puts limits on monopolistic accumulations of capital and other abuses of property. This concept is founded on an economy model that is based on fairness, and justice.
4. Feminist and cross-movement solidarity is key
In order to make change happen, we need strong and diverse feminist networks. We need movements building solidarity from the personal to the political, from the local to the global and back.
Building collective power through movements helps convert the struggle for human rights, equality and justice into a political force for change that cannot be ignored.
“Only movements can create sustained change at the levels that policy and legislation alone cannot achieve.”
See more on this at Batliwala, S: 2012 “Changing Their World. Concepts and Practices of Women’s Movements” 2nd Edition. AWID
See also
Young Feminist Activism
Organizing creatively, facing an increasing threat
Young feminist activists play a critical role in women’s rights organizations and movements worldwide by bringing up new issues that feminists face today. Their strength, creativity and adaptability are vital to the sustainability of feminist organizing.
At the same time, they face specific impediments to their activism such as limited access to funding and support, lack of capacity-building opportunities, and a significant increase of attacks on young women human rights defenders. This creates a lack of visibility that makes more difficult their inclusion and effective participation within women’s rights movements.
A multigenerational approach
AWID’s young feminist activism program was created to make sure the voices of young women are heard and reflected in feminist discourse. We want to ensure that young feminists have better access to funding, capacity-building opportunities and international processes. In addition to supporting young feminists directly, we are also working with women’s rights activists of all ages on practical models and strategies for effective multigenerational organizing.
Our Actions
We want young feminist activists to play a role in decision-making affecting their rights by:
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Fostering community and sharing information through the Young Feminist Wire. Recognizing the importance of online media for the work of young feminists, our team launched the Young Feminist Wire in May 2010 to share information, build capacity through online webinars and e-discussions, and encourage community building.
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Researching and building knowledge on young feminist activism, to increase the visibility and impact of young feminist activism within and across women’s rights movements and other key actors such as donors.
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Promoting more effective multigenerational organizing, exploring better ways to work together.
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Supporting young feminists to engage in global development processes such as those within the United Nations
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Collaboration across all of AWID’s priority areas, including the Forum, to ensure young feminists’ key contributions, perspectives, needs and activism are reflected in debates, policies and programs affecting them.
Related Content
TEST - MAP
WHRD Tribute - 2017
We can have an intro here
And maybe a little bit more text here