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Guatemala - Rural Women Diversify Incomes and Build Resilience
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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.

Building Feminist Economies

Read in: English French Spanish

Building Feminist Economies is about creating a world with clean air to breath and water to drink, with meaningful labour and care for ourselves and our communities, where we can all enjoy our economic, sexual and political autonomy.

In the world we live in today, the economy continues to rely on women’s unpaid and undervalued care work for the profit of others. The pursuit of “growth” only expands extractivism - a model of development based on massive extraction and exploitation of natural resources that keeps destroying people and planet while concentrating wealth in the hands of global elites. Meanwhile, access to healthcare, education, a decent wage and social security is becoming a privilege to few. This economic model sits upon white supremacy, colonialism and patriarchy.

Adopting solely a “women’s economic empowerment approach” is merely to integrate women deeper into this system. It may be a temporary means of survival. We need to plant the seeds to make another world possible while we tear down the walls of the existing one.

We believe in the ability of feminist movements to work for change with broad alliances across social movements. By amplifying feminist proposals and visions, we aim to build new paradigms of just economies.

Our approach must be interconnected and intersectional, because sexual and bodily autonomy will not be possible until each and every one of us enjoys economic rights and independence. We aim to work with those who resist and counter the global rise of the conservative right and religious fundamentalisms as no just economy is possible until we shake the foundations of the current system.

Our Actions

Our work challenges the system from within and exposes its fundamental injustices:

  • Advance feminist agendas: We counter corporate power and impunity for human rights abuses by working with allies to ensure that we put forward feminist, women’s rights and gender justice perspectives in policy spaces. For example, learn more about our work on the future international legally binding instrument on “transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights” at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

  • Mobilize solidarity actions: We work to strengthen the links between feminist and tax justice movements, including reclaiming the public resources lost through illicit financial flows (IFFs) to ensure social and gender justice.

  • Build knowledge: We provide women human rights defenders (WHRDs) with strategic information vital to challenge corporate power and extractivism. We will contribute to build the knowledge about local and global financing and investment mechanisms fuelling extractivism.

  • Create and amplify alternatives: We engage and mobilize our members and movements in visioning feminist economies and sharing feminist knowledges, practices and agendas for economic justice.

“The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing”.

Arundhati Roy, War Talk

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Реалии обеспечения ресурсами и состояние финансирования феминистских движений быстро меняются – является ли этот опрос единичным?

Нет, не является. Он основан на 20-летней истории AWID по мобилизации более объемного и качественного финансирования для социальных изменений под руководством феминисток(-ов) и является третьим этапом исследования «Где деньги для феминистских организаций?». Наша цель – проводить опрос «Где деньги?» каждые 3 года.

Questions (Forum page)

Questions?

Do you have questions regarding the AWID Forum or related activities? We have answers!

Find answers

Posso entrar em contacto se tiver dúvidas ou questões?

Se tiver alguma dúvida ou questão, entre em contacto connosco através deste formulário, indicando "Inquérito WITM" (WITM Survey) no título da sua mensagem. 

FRMag - Mainstreaming The Invisible

Mainstreaming The Invisible Feminist Realities

by Dr. Pragati Singh

In 2019, I was invited by the BBC to speak at the 100 women conference in Delhi, India, on the subject of ‘The future of love, relationships, and families.’ The audience seated in the large hall consisted mostly of young Indians- college students, professionals, activists etc (...)

Read

artwork: “Angels go out at night too” by Chloé Luu >

Snippet - CSW69 Image - EN

Image promoting AWID's participation at CSW69

Crear Resistar Snippet

Crear | Résister | Transform

Crear | Résister | Transform is for you and all the amazing feminist and social justice activists that you know. Let’s come together to share our resistance strategies, co-create some feminist magic, and transform this world together.

 A Festival for Feminist Movements!

Snippet - CSW69 - Where will the money be - EN

Where will the money be for feminist organizing?

Activists reflection & solidarity circle

✉️ By registration only. Register here

📅 Friday, March 14, 2025
🕒 12.00-2.00pm EST
🏢 Blue Gallery, The Blue Building, 222 East 46th Street

🎙️Facilitated by: Gopika Bashi, AWID Director of Programs

Organizer: Count Me In! Consortium

Rights at Risk: The Observatory on the Universality of Rights Trends Report 2017

Report:

Rights at Risk - OURs Trends Report 2017

The first report from the Observatory on the Universality of Rights acts as a compendium of information on anti-rights trends in international spaces. Find out about key anti-rights religious actors, discourses, and tactics within the UN.

Get the report

Snippet - WCFM Regional focus: - EN

Regional focus:

Filter for funders that support initiatives in your geographical area.

Sexting Like a Feminist: Humor in the Digital Feminist Revolution | Title Snippet

Sexting Like a Feminist: Humor in the Digital Feminist Revolution

by Chinelo Onwualu

Snippet2 - WCFM Explore and share - EN

Explore and share the databases with your network now!

Louise Malherbe | Title Snippet EN

About the authors

Portrait of Louise Malherbe

Louise Malherbe is a film programmer/curator and a film critic based in Berlin. She worked as a film programmer for the Metropolis Cinema Association in Beirut and is now coordinating the Reel Streams project aiming at supporting the dissemination of independent cinema in the Arab region. She is Head of Programming for Soura Film Festival, a queer film festival focusing on the S.W.A.N.A. region, writes film critics for Manifesto XXI, and recently started curating films and festivals for Cinema Akil.

Snippet - COP30 - Resisting Ecofascisms - EN

Resisting Ecofascisms: A cross-movement dialogue at COP30

How movements are resisting fascist agendas in relation to climate change.

📅 Tuesday, November 11, 2025 
📍 Beira Rio Hotel, Belém, Pará

Ester Lopes | Snippet

Ester Lopes Portrait

Ester Lopes is a dancer and writer whose research focuses on the body, gender, race, and class relations. She is a Pilates instructor and art educator. Ester graduated in Contemporary Theater – Creative Processes (at FAINC) and in Dance and Body Consciousness (at USCS). Her musical specialization includes popular singing and percussion. She received training in Novos Brincantes with Flaira Ferro, Mateus Prado, and Antonio Meira at Brincante Institute in 2015 and 2016.

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📖 Feminist Economic Alternatives Brief

A tool for feminist activists at COP30 fighting for transformative, equitable and community-centred solutions to address the climate crisis.

Download the Brief

Também disponível em português

Embodying Trauma-Informed Pleasure | Small Snippet EN

Embodying Trauma-Informed Pleasure

Trauma is not the event; it is how our bodies respond to events that feel dangerous to us. It is often left stuck in the body, until we address it. There’s no talking our body out of this response – it just is.

Read more

 

Women Human Rights Defenders

Read in: English French Spanish

WHRDs are self-identified women and lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LBTQI) people and others who defend rights and are subject to gender-specific risks and threats due to their human rights work and/or as a direct consequence of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

WHRDs are subject to systematic violence and discrimination due to their identities and unyielding struggles for rights, equality and justice.

The WHRD Program collaborates with international and regional partners as well as the AWID membership to raise awareness about these risks and threats, advocate for feminist and holistic measures of protection and safety, and actively promote a culture of self-care and collective well being in our movements.

Risks and threats targeting WHRDs  

WHRDs are exposed to the same types of risks that all other defenders who defend human rights, communities, and the environment face. However, they are also exposed to gender-based violence and gender-specific risks because they challenge existing gender norms within their communities and societies.

By defending rights, WHRDs are at risk of:

  • Physical assault and death
  • Intimidation and harassment, including in online spaces
  • Judicial harassment and criminalization
  • Burnout

A collaborative, holistic approach to safety

We work collaboratively with international and regional networks and our membership

  • to raise awareness about human rights abuses and violations against WHRDs and the systemic violence and discrimination they experience
  • to strengthen protection mechanisms and ensure more effective and timely responses to WHRDs at risk

We work to promote a holistic approach to protection which includes:

  • emphasizing the importance of self-care and collective well being, and recognizing that what care and wellbeing mean may differ across cultures
  • documenting the violations targeting WHRDs using a feminist intersectional perspective;
  • promoting the social recognition and celebration of the work and resilience of WHRDs ; and
  • building civic spaces that are conducive to dismantling structural inequalities without restrictions or obstacles

Our Actions

We aim to contribute to a safer world for WHRDs, their families and communities. We believe that action for rights and justice should not put WHRDs at risk; it should be appreciated and celebrated.

  • Promoting collaboration and coordination among human rights and women’s rights organizations at the international level to  strengthen  responses concerning safety and wellbeing of WHRDs.

  • Supporting regional networks of WHRDs and their organizations, such as the Mesoamerican Initiative for WHRDs and the WHRD Middle East and North Africa  Coalition, in promoting and strengthening collective action for protection - emphasizing the establishment of solidarity and protection networks, the promotion of self-care, and advocacy and mobilization for the safety of WHRDs;

  • Increasing the visibility and recognition of  WHRDs and their struggles, as well as the risks that they encounter by documenting the attacks that they face, and researching, producing, and disseminating information on their struggles, strategies, and challenges:

  • Mobilizing urgent responses of international solidarity for WHRDs at risk through our international and regional networks, and our active membership.

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Analyses

Burundi’s Political Crisis Brings New Challenges for Women to Realise their Human Rights

Source: AWID

Analysis

Struggles for Democracy in Bahrain - Challenging patriarchy in and outside our movements

Source: AWID

Análisis

Luchas por la democracia en Bahréin – Desafiando el patriarcado dentro y fuera de nuestros movimientos

Source: AWID

Analyses

Luttes pour la démocratie au Bahreïn : remettre en question le patriarcat à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur de nos mouvements

Source: AWID

Mettre fin aux violences faites aux femmes, « une bataille qui vaut toujours la peine d’être menée ! »

Read in: English French Spanish

Mettre fin aux violences faites aux femmes, « une bataille qui vaut toujours la peine d’être menée ! »

D’origine libanaise et palestinienne, Lina Abirafeh (membre individuelle de l'AWID) est née dans un contexte de conflits, de déplacements de population et de problématiques de genre. Déterminée à mettre un terme à la violence à l’égard des femmes, elle dit : « Nous devrions tou-te-s lutter fermement contre la violence faite aux femmes ! C’est la violation des droits humains la plus répandue dans le monde, et elle dure depuis bien trop longtemps. C’est une bataille qui vaut la peine d’être menée, même si nous n’en voyons pas les résultats de notre vivant ! »

Lina, qui a obtenu un doctorat du Département pour le développement international de la London School of Economics, voit sa thèse actuellement publiée dans un ouvrage (en anglais) intitulé Gender and International Aid in Afghanistan: The Politics and Effects of Intervention (Genre et aide internationale en Afghanistan : les politiques et effets de l’intervention). Pendant près de 20 ans, elle s’est attachée à travailler sur des questions de violence contre les femmes, particulièrement dans des situations d’urgence et dans plus de 20 pays dont l’Afghanistan, la Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée, la République démocratique du Congo, Haïti, le Mali, le Népal et la République centrafricaine. Lina a également collaboré avec de nombreuses agences de l’ONU, avec la Banque Mondiale, et avec différentes organisations non-gouvernementales internationales et nationales. Elle intègrera au mois de septembre la Lebanese American University (LAU) à Beyrouth en tant que Directrice de l’Institute for Women’s Studies (IWSAW) in the Arab World (institut d’études des femmes dans le monde arabe).

 « Nous sommes tou-te-s concerné-e-s. Nous sommes donc tou-te-s responsables. » - Lina Abirafeh

Lina se fait aussi une joie de communiquer avec d’autres membres ! 

Vous pouvez voir la présentation (en anglais) TEDx de Lina sur son travail concernant la violence sexuelle au cours de crises humanitaires.
 

 

Region
Asie occidentale
Topics
Violence à l'égard des femmes
Guerres et conflits armés
Source
AWID

Ending violence against women, "it's still worth a fight!"

Read in: English French Spanish

Ending violence against women, "it's still worth a fight!"

Lina Abirafeh (an AWID individual member) is Lebanese and Palestinian, born into conflict, displacement and gender issues. She is committed to ending violence against women and says “we all should be! It is the most pervasive human rights violation in the world, and it has endured far too long. Even if we don’t see the results in our lifetime, it’s still worth a fight!”

Lina received a PhD from the London School of Economics Department of International Development, her research being published in a book entitled Gender and International Aid in Afghanistan: The Politics and Effects of Intervention. For nearly 20 years she has been dedicated to working on issues pertaining to violence against women, specifically in emergency contexts and in over 20 countries including Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Mali, Nepal, and Central African Republic. Lina has also worked with numerous UN agencies, the World Bank, as well as with diverse international and national non-governmental organizations. In September 2015, she joined the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut as Director of the Institute for Women’s Studies (IWSAW) in the Arab World.
“We are all affected. So we are all responsible.” - Lina Abirafeh
Lina is also looking forward to connecting with other members!
 
Watch Lina’s talk for TEDx on her work regarding sexual violence in humanitarian emergencies. 
 

 

Region
West Asia
Topics
Violence against women
War & armed conflict
Source
AWID

Para terminar con la violencia contra las mujeres, ¡aún vale la pena luchar!

Read in: English French Spanish

Para terminar con la violencia contra las mujeres, ¡aún vale la pena luchar!

Lina Abirafeh (afiliada individual de AWID) es libanesa y palestina. Nació en medio del conflicto, el desplazamiento y la discriminación de género y está comprometida con la eliminación de la violencia contra las mujeres. «¡Todas las personas deberíamos tener el mismo compromiso!», afirma. «Es la violación a los derechos humanos más generalizada en el mundo y persiste desde hace mucho tiempo. Aun cuando no veremos los resultados durante nuestra vida, vale la pena luchar».

Lina obtuvo un título de doctorado del departamento de desarrollo internacional de London School of Economics, para el que presentó una investigación publicada (en inglés) en el libro Gender and International Aid in Afghanistan: The Politics and Effects of Intervention [Género y ayuda internacional en Afganistán: La política y los efectos de la intervención]. Durante casi 20 años Lina se ha dedicado a trabajar por los temas referidos a la violencia contra las mujeres, especialmente a la ejercida en contextos de emergencia y en más de 20 países, incluidos Afganistán, Papua Nueva Guinea, República Democrática del Congo, Haití, Malí, Nepal y República Centroafricana. Ha trabajado también con numerosos organismos de las Naciones Unidas, el Banco Mundial y diversas organizaciones no gubernamentales nacionales e internacionales. En septiembre se incorporará a la Lebanese American University [universidad libanesa americana] de Beirut como directora del instituto para los estudios de la mujer en el mundo árabe (IWSAW).
 
«Todas las personas nos vemos afectadas; por eso todas somos responsables.» - Lina Abirafeh
 
Lina también anhela conectarse con otras/os afiliadas/os de AWID. 
 
Mira la charla de Lina (en inglés) por TEDx sobre su labor para evitar la violencia sexual en escenarios de emergencia humanitaria.
 
 

 

Region
Asia Occidental
Topics
Violencia contra la mujer
Guerras y conflictos armados
Source
AWID

Analysis

2030 Development Agenda Gets Adopted – Strong On Gender But Structural Obstacles Remain

Source: AWID

Análisis

Se adopta la Agenda de Desarrollo 2030 con fuerte contenido de género, pero persisten obstáculos estructurales

Source: AWID

Analyses

Le programme de développement pour 2030 adopté est solide en matière de genre mais demeure confronté à des obstacles structurels

Source: AWID

Analysis

State of Mexico acknowledges Feminicides and launches gender alert

Source: AWID

Análisis

State of Mexico acknowledges Feminicides and launches gender alert

Source: AWID

Analyses

L’État de Mexico reconnaît les féminicides et lance l’Alerte Genre pour la première fois

Source: AWID

Analysis

Shrinking Civil Spaces: Backlash or Push Back?

Source: AWID

Análisis

Reducción de los espacios civiles: ¿contragolpe o retroceso?

Source: AWID

Analyses

Les espaces civils s’amenuisent : régression ou offensive?

Source: AWID

Practical Tools

Feminist Donor List: Who Can Fund My Women’s Rights Organizing?

Analyses

La lutte des défenseuses kurdes des droits humains se poursuit en Irak, en Turquie et en Syrie

Source: AWID

Analysis

The Struggle of Kurdish Women Human Rights Defenders Continues in Iraq, Turkey, Syria

Source: AWID

Análisis

Continúa la lucha de las mujeres kurdas defensoras de los derechos humanos en Irak, Turquía y Siria

Source: AWID

Snippet Kohl - Plenary: The revolution will be feminist | AR

جلسة عامة | ستكون الثورة نسوية وإلّا لن تكون ثورة

جلسة عامة | ستكون الثورة نسوية وإلّا لن تكون ثورة 
مع منال التميمي وبوبولينا مورينو وكارولينا فيكيفيتش وأنووليكا نوجوزي أوكونجو

YOUTUBE | SOUNDCLOUD

#7 - Sexting like a feminist Tweets Snippet AR

أداؤك في المضاجع مهاراتك في ضبط المراجع…

You want this pussy? Let me see that paper. (Seriously, where are your test results? Digital copy is fine.)

منجزاتك الأكاديمية جسر عبور نحو شهوتك الجنسيّة (جدّيًا، سلِّم الأوراق المطلوبة، الكترونية كانت أم ورقيّة)