Adolfo Lujan | Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
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.

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

What will be different about this Forum?

We have always worked towards ensuring that our Forums are co-developed with partners, movements and our priority constituencies.

For our upcoming Forum, we aim to deepen and strengthen that spirit and practice of co-creation and collaboration. We also recognize the need to improve the balance between the inclusion of many voices and experiences with room for participants and staff to breathe, take pause and enjoy some downtime.

This Forum will be different in the following ways: 

  • We will have far less organized Forum activities because we want people to have time to engage, experience, process, talk to each other, etc.  This is key to communicate: you can come to the Forum, be very engaged and active and not facilitate any organized activity (or “session”).
  • We will have Open Spaces - at least one whole afternoon without any organized activities - but also physical spaces available throughout the Forum for people to self-organize meetings, etc.
  • We have a Content and Methodology Committee made up of feminists from different regions with expertise on participatory methodologies to support us and all those leading activities at the Forum to use creative and engaging  formats for the Forum activities. 

 

На каких языках проводится опрос?

На данный момент опрос в KOBO доступен на арабском, английском, французском, португальском, русском и испанском языках. В начале опроса у вас будет возможность выбрать нужный вам язык.

Devo fazer alguma preparação para responder ao inquérito?

Tendo em conta que o inquérito WITM foca-se nas realidades do financiamento de organizações feministas, a maioria das perguntas aborda o tópico do financiamento do seu grupo entre 2021-2023. Será preciso ter essas informações facilmente acessíveis para preencher o inquérito (por exemplo, os seus orçamentos anuais e as principais fontes de financiamento).

هل مشاركتي سريّة؟

أكيد. سيتم محي اجوبتك بعد عملية معالجة المعطيات وتحليلها وسيتم استعمالها لأهداف بحثية فقط. لن تتم أبداً مشاركة المعطيات خارج AWID وسيتم معالجتها فقط عن طريق طاقم AWID والمستشارات/ين اللواتي/ اللذين يعملن/وا في مشروع "أين المال" معنا. خصوصيتكم/ن وسرّيتكم/ن هي في أعلى سلم أولوياتنا. سياسة الخصوصية متواجدة هنا.

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Как долго будет доступен опрос?

Опрос будет доступен до конца августа 2024 года. Пожалуйста, заполните его в течение этого срока, чтобы ваши ответы были включены в анализ.

Snippet - Home page promo WITM - EN

"Where is the money for feminist organizing?"

Building on our 20-year history of mobilizing more and better funding for feminist-led social change, AWID invites you to complete the new iteration of our flagship survey, WITM.

START THE SURVEY Learn more

Snippet - Rights and Resources - EN

Rights and Resources:
Getting Ready for the Next 30 Years

✉️ In-person registration is now closed. Sign up for the livestream here

📅 Wednesday, March 12, 2025
🕒 12.00-1.30pm EST

🏢 UNDP, 304 E 45th St. Doha Room, 11th Floor (FF Building)

Organizers: UNDP, Femena, SRI and AWID

Remembering: A Tribute to WHRDs no longer with us

AWID honors feminists and Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) who have died and whose contributions to the advancement of human rights are very much missed.


Celebrating Activists and WHRDs

AWID’s WHRD Tribute is a photo exhibition featuring feminist, women’s rights and social justice activists from around the world who are no longer with us. 

The Tribute was first launched in 2012, at AWID’s 12th International Forum, in Turkey. It took shape with a physical exhibit of portraits and biographies of feminists and activists who passed away. The initiative was described by Forum participants as being a unique, moving and energizing way to commemorate our collective history.

At the 13th International Forum in Brazil, we honored activists and WHRDs with a mural unveiling ceremony in four languages, a dance performance and a Brazilian ritual.

In between the events, the Tribute lives as an online gallery that is updated every year as part of the 16 Days Campaign Against Gender Based Violence (25 November – 10 December).

Contributions from all over the world

Since 2012, through our annual Tribute to Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) no longer with us, over 400 feminists and WHRDs from 11 regions and 80 countries have been featured. 

AWID would like to thank the families and organizations who shared their personal stories and contributed to this memorial. We join them in continuing the remarkable work of these women and forging efforts to ensure justice is achieved in cases that remain in impunity.

Visit the WHRD Tribute online exhibit

The violence and threaths against WHRDs persist

In addition to paying homage to these incredible activists, the Tribute particularly sheds light on the plight of WHRDs who have been assassinated or disappeared.

One third of those featured in the Tribute were activists who have been murdered or disappeared in suspicious circumstances. They were specifically targeted for who they were and the work they did to challenge: 

  • State power
  • Heteronormativity
  • Fundamentalisms
  • Corporations
  • Patriarchy
  • Organized Crime
  • Corruption
  • Militarization…

Women like Agnes Torres, from Mexico, was killed because of her gender identity and sexual orientation; or Cheryl Ananayo, an environmental activist from the Philippines was assassinated as she struggled against a mining company; or Ruqia Hassan, a Syrian independent journalist and blogger killed for her criticism of ISIS. And so many others.

With the WHRD Tribute, we bring them all into our collective memory and carry their legacy of struggle as our torch in the feminists’ and women’s rights movements. We recognize that security, safety and self-care must be a priority in all our political agendas. And we call on to governments and international bodies to collectively address violence against feminists and WHRDs.

We believe this is a critical step to ensure the sustainability of our movements for gender equality, women’s rights, and justice for all.

Visit the WHRD Tribute online exhibit

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Snippet - GenderJobs.org

Logo for website GenderJobs.org

GenderJobs.org: This is a platform with a comprehensive list of job opportunities to work on gender equality and LGBTQI+ rights, curated by gender professionals and intersectional feminists who intimately know the sector and are extremely passionate about supporting other gender professionals and anyone who is aspiring to become one! (source: https://genderjobs.org/about)

Advancing Movements

6 Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) across Western and Southeastern Europe have in their lifetime researched, campaigned, participated in and advanced peace and women’s rights movements be it through political and social activism or through dance. We are grateful for the legacy they have left. Please join AWID in honoring these women, their activism and legacy by sharing the memes below with your colleagues, networks and friends and by using the hashtags #WHRDTribute and #16Days.


Please click on each image below to see a larger version and download as a file

 

Snippet - WCFM Database blurb 2 - En

Know a Funder? Add them to the Database!

Are you a funder? Or do you know funders that support feminist and gender justice movements? Apply to be a part of the Who Can Fund Me? Database now!

Join the database

Where does the project come from?

We believe that the economy, the market, the financial system and the premises upon which they are built are critical areas of feminist struggle. Thus, our vision for a just economy goes beyond promoting women’s rights and empowerment in the market, to evaluating the role of gendered oppressions in shaping economic arrangements and transforming these to ensure gender and economic justice.


Process

We are neither starting from zero, nor alone in this attempt to put forward feminist propositions for a just economy.  Many of the propositions herein have been advanced or exist in practice within diverse communities challenging and resisting the mainstream market and growth-based economic systems.

It is also very important to note that there is growing awareness of the fact that micro solutions are not always the answer to macro problems, even if they represent important spaces for resistance and movement building and that there may be limitations to particular alternatives to address the injustices of the current capitalist system at a global scale.

Goals

However, feminist alternatives for a just economy are critical to create dents in the system and draw lessons for transformative systemic change. Here we cannot presume to offer a comprehensive nor a complete account on how to create a just feminist economic model, or even models. But we can, but rather draw from cross-movement dialogue with trade unions, environmental, rural and peasants movements, to articulate the propositions for the journey towards this vision.

What do we want to change?

The neoliberal model driving the global economy has repeatedly demonstrated its inability to address the root causes of poverty, inequalities, and exclusion. Neoliberalism, and has in fact contributed to the very creation and exacerbation of these injustices.

Characterized by globalisation, liberalization, privatisation, financialisation and conditional aid, mainstream development policies over the past 3 decades have wreaked havoc on livelihoods over the past 3 decades. These policies have also sustained a trajectory of deepening inequalities, gendered injustices, and environmental destruction that the world can no longer afford to endure.

While there are people those who assert that economic growth, facilitated by giving free reign to corporations and businesses, can sustain a tide that will (eventually) raise all boats.

However, the notion of development that has prevailed for the past decades, built for the most part upon the premise of limitless economic growth, is going through an ideological crisis.

The myth of economic growth as a panacea for our problems is being debunked.


See also

Our vision

5 Major Threats

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Key factors impacting 
budget size

→Region
→Level of organizing
→Registration status
→Priorities and Agendas

 

Read and download the insights here