Sabriya Simon
Marcha da Mulheres Negras 2016
Marcha da Mulheres Negras 2016
Marcha da Mulheres Negras 2016

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.

Co-Creating Feminist Realities

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While we dream of a feminist world, there are those who are already building and living it. These are our Feminist Realities!

What are Feminist Realities?

Feminist Realities are the living, breathing examples of the just world we are co-creating. They exist now, in the many ways we live, struggle and build our lives.

Feminist Realities go beyond resisting oppressive systems to show us what a world without domination, exploitation and supremacy look like.

These are the narratives we want to unearth, share and amplify throughout this Feminist Realities journey.

Transforming Visions into Lived Experiences

Through this initiative, we:

  • Create and amplify alternatives: We co-create art and creative expressions that center and celebrate the hope, optimism, healing and radical imagination that feminist realities inspire.

  • Build knowledge: We document, demonstrate & disseminate methodologies that will help identify the feminist realities in our diverse communities.

  • Advance feminist agendas: We expand and deepen our collective thinking and organizing to advance just solutions and systems that embody feminist values and visions.

  • Mobilize solidarity actions: We engage feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements and allies in sharing, exchanging and jointly creating feminist realities, narratives and proposals at the 14th AWID International Forum.

The AWID International Forum

As much as we emphasize the process leading up to, and beyond, the four-day Forum, the event itself is an important part of where the magic happens, thanks to the unique energy and opportunity that comes with bringing people together.

We expect the next Forum to:

  • Build the power of Feminist Realities, by naming, celebrating, amplifying and contributing to build momentum around experiences and propositions that shine light on what is possible and feed our collective imaginations

  • Replenish wells of hope and energy as much needed fuel for rights and justice activism and resilience

  • Strengthen connectivity, reciprocity and solidarity across the diversity of feminist movements and with other rights and justice-oriented movements

Learn more about the Forum process

We are sorry to announce that the 14th AWID International Forum is cancelled

Given the current world situation, our Board of Directors has taken the difficult decision to cancel Forum scheduled in 2021 in Taipei. 

Read the full announcement

Find out more!

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CFA 2023 - Call for Activities is live- EN

The Call for Activities is Live!

The Deadline to submit activities has been extended to February 1st, 2024

 

In the spirit of the Forum’s theme, we invite a diversity of activity topics and formats that:

  • Facilitate genuine connection and interaction among participants
  • Foster healing and regeneration in various forms, as individuals, as communities and as movements
  • Inspire and challenge us to thrive together as communities and movements

Nominate bold feminists to join AWID's Board of Directors

Every year, AWID seeks to renew and enrich the perspectives and experience reflected in our Board of Directors by bringing in new members.

Currently, we are looking for individuals to serve 3-year terms on AWID’s Board, starting in early 2023. This is an opportunity to contribute to our organisation’s governance and to be part of an amazing group of feminists from around the world. 

Please help us to identify thoughtful and bold feminists to nominate for election by July 29, 2022.

Submit your nomination

Please also share this invitation to nominate with your networks!

Who are we looking for?

First and foremost, we are looking for candidates who are committed to AWID’s mission, who can make connections between local and global struggles, and who can help us to be thoughtful about how to best leverage AWID's positioning and strengths in a constantly evolving context. Candidates must be willing to uphold the legal duties and responsibilities of the AWID Board in the best interests of the organization. 

This is a voluntary role that requires commitment and engagement throughout the year. Board members are expected to commit a minimum of 10-15 days per year to attend in-person and virtual meetings, and contribute to other communications.  

We aspire for our Board to reflect diversity in all its forms, particularly in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, age, geography and background. Additionally, we seek Board members with experience relevant to AWID’s priority areas of work. 

While we will consider all candidates, in light of the current composition of the board, priority consideration will be given to:

Candidates with experience working at the intersections of women’s rights/gender justice and :

  • Finance
  • Climate justice
  • Disability justice, and/or 
  • Technology

 Candidates from the following regions:

  • Africa
  • South America

What Board members bring to AWID

The Board of Directors is key to inform AWID’s strategic direction and support our organisation to fulfill its mission in coherence with the world we live in and the needs of our movements. 

Board members contribute to the organization in many ways: bringing governance experience from other spaces, perspectives from diverse sectors of feminist movements, and substantive expertise in areas relevant to AWID’s strategy. 
The candidates who are ultimately elected will be joining the AWID Board in 2023, accompanying us for the launch of our new strategic plan led by AWID’s new Co-Executive Directors, and the planning of our next international Forum.   

Do you know someone with this profile?

Submit your nomination

(You can nominate yourself or someone you know - with their consent)

Please also share this invitation to nominate with your networks!

While anyone can nominate a person for the AWID Board, only AWID members can vote in our Board Elections - Become an AWID member today!

Thank you, in advance, for helping us find our next wonderful Board members to support AWID in its journey ahead!  

Guadalupe Campanur Tapia

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Category
Environment
Region
Latin America
Cause of death / disappearance

Killed

Guadalupe was an environmental activist involved in the fight against crime in Cherán, Mexico.

Guadalupe helped to overthrow the local government in April 2011 and participated in local security patrols including those in municipal forests.  She was among the Indigenous leaders of Cherán, who called on people to defend their forests against illegal and merciless logging. Her work for seniors, children, and workers made her an icon in her community.

She was killed in Chilchota, Mexico about 30 kilometers north of her hometown of Cherá.

 

 

Guadalupe Campanur Tapia, Mexico

CFA 2023 - Online and Hybrid - ar

 جديد

عبر الإنترنت وهجين

كمشارك/ة عبر الإنترنت، يمكنك توجيه النشاطات والتواصل والتحدث مع الآخرين/ الأخريات وتجربة الإبداع والفن والاحتفال بمنتدى جمعية حقوق المرأة في التنمية بشكل مباشر. سيستمتع المشاركون/ات المتصلون/ات عبر الإنترنت ببرنامج غني ومتنوع، بدءًا من ورشات العمل والنقاشات وحتى نشاطات الاستشفاء والعروض الموسيقية. ستركز بعض الأنشطة على التواصل بين المشاركين/ات عبر الإنترنت، وسيكون البعض الآخر هجينًا بالفعل، يركز على الاتصال والتفاعل بين المشاركين/ات عبر الإنترنت وأولئك الموجودين/ات في بانكوك.

Love letter to Feminist Movements #9

The body is a powerful entity. As women, our bodies are controlled, oppressed and policed from the womb. The way we look, move, dress, walk, speak, gesture, laugh. I often wondered at what drives patriarchal fears around the power of female bodies. Where I come from sex work and sex workers were whispered of with simultaneous contempt, disgust, fascination, pity and condemnation.

Where I come from sex work and sex workers were whispered of with simultaneous contempt, disgust, fascination, pity and condemnation.

Love letter to feminist movements from Khin Khin.

I first encountered sex work and sex workers at age 22. Simple conversations, sitting in circles, chatting over coffee and tea, we explored each other’s lives, experiences, thoughts and feelings.

For sex workers, sex work was the most worthwhile choice out of all other options to pay bills, to support family, to have more flexible working hours, to have sex. Just as I chose my job as the most worthwhile, to pay bills, to support family, to have more flexible working hours. 

These individuals, women and men, taught me that I made my own decisions about my body… where I focus its life and energy, whether I use it for pleasure or pain, whether I trade it in or give it freely, and how I want to feel about my body. The awareness was as exciting as it was empowering.

Crear | Résister | Transform: a festival for feminist movements – 2021… you accompanied me through a series of life-changing moments (!!!) 
We call these ‘events,’ though in truth, to me, your feminist learning spaces are, where I take a little of what’s inside me, a little of what your speakers say and some from the discussions to go deeper into our understanding.

Sharing… Partaking… Immersing…
in strength, in vulnerability, in pleasure.

Simply being the transformative feminist that I am, without pretentions, without misgivings… 

Welcoming the transformative feminist that I have always been, without even knowing the term or acknowledging it in such a manner or in such terms… 

Finding home for the fiercely transformative feminist living within me… 

Despite the anger, rage and frustration of not being treated as equals and being treated with ‘less __ than,’ 

I did not always consider myself a feminist nor did I recognise myself within the feminist movement or discourse… Truly, I appreciate doors being held open, chairs being pulled out to be seated, acknowledgement as a woman, of my femininity.

At times I dismissed the patriarchy with annoyance, at times, I responded with frustration and anger but I did not address it… I did not notice its sinister, insidious toxicity… I was privileged enough to be able to work through it, to survive it, to overcome it, to excel in spite of it… I did not question enough, challenge enough, push my boundaries enough… I did not do enough…
connecting with sex workers, exploring sexuality, and the women for peace and security...

Until I became fully aware and understood the implications of both privilege and oppression that was intersectional.

Until I realised what it meant to fight for gender justice and not simply ‘equality for all.’

Practitioner and facilitator no longer, I am a transformative feminist practitioner and facilitator.
Being a feminist means that I will act 

  • – through my daily activities: the way I live, the work that I do, the processes that I am invited to lead, the workshops and lectures that I am invited to give – 
  • to push back against patriarchal toxicity, to dismantle patriarchal structures and systems, 
  • to work to decolonise values, beliefs, thoughts, to smash the myths of gender norms and expectations, 
  • to address power imbalances imposed by patriarchal beliefs and socialisation, 
  • to foster relationships built on inclusion, holism, equity, care, reciprocity, accountability and justice, 
  • to stand and act in solidarity in the frontlines of the fight towards inclusion, equity and justice.

Plunging into uncertain, fragile, complex (and possibly quite violent) future…

  • I want to discover myself and be myself more intimately, authentically and deeply through the movement… 
  • I want to be more actively involved in and interconnected through this love relationship. 

I am deeply grateful for you and I promise to remain fierce in addressing and redressing problematic issues around gender, race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation and ability, and remain present and faithful to the struggle for inclusion, equity and justice.

Khin Khin

Anna Campbell (şehid Hêlîn Qerecox)

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Category
Civil & Political Rights
Region
Europe
Western Europe
Date of death / disappearance
Cause of death / disappearance

Killed

Anna grew up in Lewes, Sussex (UK) and, after deciding not to pursue her English degree at Sheffield University, she moved to Bristol and became a plumber.

She spent much of her time defending the marginalised and under-privileged, attending anti-fascist rallies, and offering support to the women of Dale Farm when they were threatened with eviction. A vegan and animal lover, she attended hunt sabotages and her name is honoured on PETA's 'Tree of Life' Memorial. Anna went to Rojava in May 2017 with a strong commitment to women's empowerment, full representation of all ethnicities and protection of the environment.

Anna died on March 15, 2018 when she was hit by a Turkish airstrike in the town of Afrin, northern Syria. Anna was fighting with the Women's Protection Forces (YPJ), when she was killed.

 

Anna Campbell (şehid Hêlîn Qerecox), UK

CFA 2023 - Submit Button - ar

No care economies without domestic workers!

A Manifesto 

As feminist and labour movements, together in solidarity, we articulate the following points as a collective vision for care economies with domestic workers rights at the centre. We call on feminist and social movements to join the call to rethink the economy with care at its centre recognising the rights, agency and leadership of domestic worker movements.

Our manifesto is a response to a complex context.

Domestic and care work is in the limelight after the COVID-19 global pandemic as it provided the means to carry the world through multiple intersecting crises at the global scale. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other multilateral institutions also acknowledge the importance of care and domestic work in sustaining the world’s economy. However, it is our analysis that this recognition most often takes an instrumentalist approach (i.e. care work sustains the ‘productive’ economy) focused on profiteering from care work without recognizing care as a human right and public good, or providing recognition and rights to the workers undertaking the bulk of this labour.

The manifesto is available in English, French, Spanish, Amharic and Thai.

Download the full manifesto

Shireen Lateef

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Category
Civil & Political Rights
Region
Pacific
Date of death / disappearance
Cause of death / disappearance

Natural

Shireen was an inspiration to many feminists in Fiji and a powerful ally to the women’s movement. She advocated tirelessly for gender equality locally and regionally.

She began her career as a junior gender specialist at the Asian Development Bank and brought about drastic changes to the institution’s gender policies.

Her research, “Rule by the Danda: Domestic violence amongst Indo Fijians” was one of the earliest pieces of research on domestic violence, marriage and women in Fiji. This seminal work has been a catalyst for feminist work in this area.

Shireen’s legacy lives on as many remember her influence, commitment and support to the women’s movement in Fiji and the Pacific.

 

Shireen Lateef, Fiji

Is the virtual submission process different from the in-person?

It is exactly the same process and same deadline. Please use the same form to submit your activity, whether it is in-person, online, or both (hybrid).

Marceline Loridan-Ivens

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Category
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Region
Europe

Born in 1928, Marceline worked as an actress, a screenwriter, and a director.

She directed The Birch-Tree Meadow in 2003, starring Anouk Aimee, as well as several other documentaries. She was also a holocaust survivor. She was just fifteen when she and her father were both arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. The three kilometres between her father in Auschwitz and herself in Birkenau were an insurmountable distance, which she writes about in one of her seminal novels “But You Did Not Come Back.”

In talking about her work, she once said: "All I can say is that everything I can write, everything I can unveil — it's my task to do it.”

 

Marceline Loridan-Ivens, France

ภาษาใดบ้างที่ใช้ในฟอรัม

ภาษาที่ AWID ใช้งานคือ ภาษาอังกฤษ ภาษาฝรั่งเศส และภาษาสเปน โดยภาษาไทยจะถูกเพิ่มเข้ามาในฐานะภาษาท้องถิ่น รวมถึงภาษามือและมาตราการในการช่วยให้เข้าถึงอื่นๆ โดยภาษาอื่นๆอาจถูกเพิ่มเข้ามาหากมีงบประมาณเพียงพอ สามารถเข้ามาดูการอัปเดทว่ามีการเพิ่มภาษาอื่นใดบางได้เรื่อยๆ เราใส่ใจในความยุติธรรมด้านภาษาและจะพยายามให้มีภาษามากที่ที่สุดเท่าที่งบประมาณจะสามารถครอบคลุมได้ เราหวังว่าเราจะสามารถสร้างโอกาสมากมายให้พวกเราสามารถสื่อสารกันหรือนำเสนอในภาษาของตัวเองได้

Yamile Guerra

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Category
Civil & Political Rights
Region
Latin America
Date of death / disappearance
Cause of death / disappearance

Killed

Yamile Guerra was a well-known lawyer, community leader and political activist in the Santander region of Colombia.

She was actively working to resolve disputes between local communities and developers, advocating against illegal land appropriation. Yamile had occupied various political posts, including as the Secretary General for the Santander government in Bogota and also aspired for the Mayor’s Office of Bucaramanga. In the last few years of her life, Yamile became increasingly active in environmental causes, particularly in the defense of the biodiverse wetlands of Santurbán against development, a region which supplies nearly 2 million people with freshwater.

According to her family and friends, Yamile received daily threats against her life and had asked the authorities for protection. 

“She was very very aware of this issue [land litigation] and she said many times that she felt insecure.” - Alixon Navarro Munoz, journalist and friend of Guerra family

On July 20, 2019 Yamile was shot to death by two men in Floridablanca, Santander. She had just finished discussing a land dispute with them. A suspect was later arrested for her murder and admitted to being paid to carry out her assassination. According to reports, Yamile was the third member of her family to have been killed in relation to land disputes. Her father, Hernando Guerra was murdered several years previously.

Yamile’s assassination is part of a wave of violence and systematic killing of hundreds of social activists and human rights defenders in Colombia. According to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), at the time of Yamile’s death, over 700 community leaders and human rights activists had been killed since the country signed a peace agreement in August 2016. Most were murdered for confronting illegal drug trafficking and mining operations, with indigenous people, Afro-Colombians and women human rights defenders being most at risk. 

Less than a week after Yamile’s death, thousands of Colombians marched all over towns and cities, holding up black and white photos of activists who had been killed, with signs that read: "Without leaders there can be no peace" and "No more bloodshed”.

Yamile Guerra was only 42 years old at the time of her assassination. 

การเข้าร่วมมีราคาเท่าไร

กรุณาคำนวณค่าใช้จ่ายโดยรวมถึงค่าเดินทางมายังกรุงเทพมหานคร ค่าที่พัก ค่าเบี้ยเลี้ยง ค่าวีซ่า ค่าสนับสนุนในการเข้าถึงต่างๆ และอื่นๆ ยังไม่รวมถึงค่าลงทะเบียนที่จะมีการประกาศเร็วๆนี้ โรงแรมในบริเวณสุขุมวิท กรุงเทพฯ มีราคาตั้งแต่ 1,700-6,800 บาทต่อคืน สำหรับการพักสองคน

โดยหากเป็นสมาชิก AWID จะได้รับส่วนลดค่าลงทะเบียน หากคุณยังไม่ได้เป็นสมาชิก เราขอเชิญชวนให้คุณสมัครสมาชิกและเข้าร่วมชุมชนเฟมินิสต์ระดับโลก

Roxana Reyes Rivas

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Category
LGBTQI Rights
Region
Latin America
Date of birth
Date of death / disappearance
Cause of death / disappearance

Disease

Roxana Reyes Rivas, philosopher, feminist, lesbian, poet, politician and LGBT and women’s rights activist from Costa Rica. Owner of a sharp pen and incisive humour, a laugh a minute. She was born in 1960 and raised in San Ramón of Alajuela, when it was a rural town, and her whole life she would break away from the mandates of what it meant to be a woman.   

With El Reguero (Costa Rican lesbian group) she organized lesbian festivals for over a decade, fun-filled formative spaces to come together at a time when the Costa Rican government and society persecuted and criminalized the lesbian existence. For hundreds of women the lesbian festivals where the only place they could be themselves and come together with others like them.  

Roxana would often say founding political parties was one of her hobbies. “It’s important for people to understand there are other ways to do politics, that many issues need to be solved collectively”. She was one of the founders of the New Feminist League and VAMOS, a human rights focused political party.

“The philosophical trade is meant to jab, to help people ask themselves questions. A philosopher who doesn’t irritate anyone is not doing her job”. For 30 years Roxana taught philosophy at several Costa Rican public universities. Through her guidance, generations of students reflected about the ethical dilemmas in science and technology.  

Roxana’s favourite tool was humour, she created the Glowing Pumpkin award, an acknowledgement to ignorance that she would bestow upon public figures, through her social media channels, mocking their anti-rights expressions and statements.  

An aggressive cancer took Roxana at the end of 2019, before she could publish a compilation of her poems, a departing gift from the creative mind of a feminist who always raised her voice against injustice.

มีหัวข้อที่เราควรหลีกเลี่ยงที่จะส่งเป็นกิจกรรมหรือไม่

AWID ฟอรัม ตลอดมาเป็นพื้นที่ที่ไม่กลัวการสนทนาที่จำเป็น หรือหัวข้อที่ท้าทาย เรายินดีรับข้อเสนอเหล่านี้เมื่อผู้จัดกิจกรรมสามารถรักษาพื้นที่สำหรับผู้เข้าร่วมด้วยความเคารพ ปลอดภัย และอย่างระมัดระวัง

Sara Hegazy

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Category
LGBTQI Rights
Region
Africa
North Africa
Date of birth
Date of death / disappearance
Cause of death / disappearance

Suicide

Sara Hegazy, a bold Egyptian LGBTQI+ rights activist, lived in a society where the members of her community, their bodies and lives often face lethal prejudice. The roots of Sara’s resistance were in the deconstruction of a dominant, oppressive and patriarchal system, and its anti-rights actors.

"[In Egypt], every person who is not male, Muslim, Sunni, straight, and a supporter of the system, is rejected, repressed, stigmatized, arrested, exiled, or killed. This matter is related to the patriarchal system as a whole, since the state cannot practice its repression against citizens without a pre-existing oppression since childhood." - Sara Hegazy wrote on March 6, 2020

The suppression of Sara’s voice by the Egyptian government reached its violent peak in 2017, when she was arrested for raising a rainbow flag at the Mashrou’ Leila (Lebanese band whose lead vocalist is openly gay) concert in Cairo. What followed were charges of joining an illegal group along with “promoting sexual deviancy and debauchery”. 

"It was an act of support and solidarity — not only with the [Mashrou' Leila] vocalist but for everyone who is oppressed...We were proud to hold the flag. We wouldn't have imagined the reaction of society and the Egyptian state. For them, I was a criminal — someone who was seeking to destroy the moral structure of society." - Sara Hegazy

Sara was jailed for three months, where she was tortured and sexually assaulted. In January 2018, after being released on bail, she sought asylum in Canada where she was safe but imprisoned by the memories of the abuse and violence her body and soul had gone through.

"I left this experience after three months with a very intense, serious case of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. Prison killed me. It destroyed me." - Sara Hegazy told NPR

Sara took her own life on 14 June 2020, leaving a handwritten note in Arabic: 

“To my siblings – I tried to find redemption and failed, forgive me.”
“To my friends – the experience [journey] was harsh and I am too weak to resist it, forgive me. 
“To the world – you were cruel to a great extent, but I forgive.”

Her legacy and courage will be carried forward by those who love her and believe in what she fought for.

Tributes:

“To Sarah: Rest, just rest, spared from this relentless violence, this state-powered lethal patriarchy. In rage, in grief, in exhaustion, we resist.”  - Rasha Younes, an LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. Read the complete text

Mashrou’ Leila’s lead vocalist sings tribute to Sara Hegazy

Tributes on Twitter 

Documentary about Sara Hegazy’s life

Website dedicated to Sara Hegazy and to those, especially LGBTQI voices, not able to grieve in public
 

เกี่ยวกับวีซ่า

เราตระหนักดีถึงอุปสรรคในทางปฏิบัติและความทุกข์ทางอารมณ์ในการเดินทางระหว่างประเทศ โดยเฉพาะอย่างยิ่งจากซีกโลกใต้ โดย AWID กำลังทำงานร่วมกับ TCEB (สำนักงานส่งเสริมการจัดประชุมและนิทรรศการของประเทศไทย) เพื่อสนับสนุนผู้เข้าร่วมฟอรัมในการขอวีซ่า ข้อมูลอื่นๆเกี่ยวกับการขอวีซ่าจะถูกนำเสนอในช่วงที่เปิดให้ลงทะเบียน รวมถึงสถานที่และวิธีการขอวีซ่า

CFA 2023 - breadcrumbs Menu _ FAQ_en

Snippet - CSW68 - Follow Socials - EN

Follow us!

Through in-person events, lives on our socials, an exhibit booth and more; we are showing up to convene, amplify and support the voices and participation of our members, partners and allies.

Together we will Reclaim Feminist Power by uplifting feminist alternatives and visions around economies that center collective systems of care and nurture both the planet and people.

Follow us on social media for more details on how to participate! Be part of the conversations using the hashtags #AWIDatCSW68 and #ReclaimFeministPower.

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