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

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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Protection of the Family

The Issue

Over the past few years, a troubling new trend at the international human rights level is being observed, where discourses on ‘protecting the family’ are being employed to defend violations committed against family members, to bolster and justify impunity, and to restrict equal rights within and to family life.

The campaign to "Protect the Family" is driven by ultra-conservative efforts to impose "traditional" and patriarchal interpretations of the family, and to move rights out of the hands of family members and into the institution of ‘the family’.

“Protection of the Family” efforts stem from:

  • rising traditionalism,
  • rising cultural, social and religious conservatism and
  • sentiment hostile to women’s human rights, sexual rights, child rights and the rights of persons with non-normative gender identities and sexual orientations.

Since 2014, a group of states have been operating as a bloc in human rights spaces under the name “Group of Friends of the Family”, and resolutions on “Protection of the Family” have been successfully passed every year since 2014.

This agenda has spread beyond the Human Rights Council. We have seen regressive language on “the family” being introduced at the Commission on the Status of Women, and attempts made to introduce it in negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals.


Our Approach

AWID works with partners and allies to jointly resist “Protection of the Family” and other regressive agendas, and to uphold the universality of human rights.

In response to the increased influence of regressive actors in human rights spaces, AWID joined allies to form the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs).  OURs is a collaborative project that monitors, analyzes, and shares information on anti-rights initiatives like  “Protection of the Family”.

Rights at Risk, the first OURs report, charts a map of the actors making up the global anti-rights lobby, identifies their key discourses and strategies, and the effect they are having on our human rights.   

The report outlines “Protection of the Family” as an agenda that has fostered collaboration across a broad range of regressive actors at the UN.  It describes it as: “a strategic framework that houses “multiple patriarchal and anti-rights positions, where the framework, in turn, aims to justify and institutionalize these positions.”

 

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AWID in 2016: Co-Creating Feminist Futures

AWID is pleased to share our 2016 Annual Report.

2016 was an incredible year for AWID, we convened the 13th International AWID Forum in Bahia, Brazil, a space for strategizing and alliance building with feminists and other justice movements, which was attended by over 1800 participants from 120 countries and territories across the globe.

We know that women’s rights and feminist movements are key actors in creating sustainable transformative change. Within our movements, organizing, resisting and responding to the challenging context is sharpening, and in our increasingly connected world, the potential for collective action across diverse movements has dramatically grown.

This is the crucial work that AWID seeks to amplify and support every day.


What we achieved in 2016

We expanded solidarity and joint action across diverse movements

A highlight of 2016 was our ground-breaking 13th International Forum with the theme: “Feminist Futures: Building Collective Power for Rights and Justice”, where we harnessed the thinking and energy of nearly 500 partners, presenters, panelists, moderators, artivists, writers, facilitators, IT innovators, and performers, many of them leaders in their movements. We also supported the convening of the first and historical Black Feminisms Forum (BFF) organised by a working group of Black Feminists from across the world.

We strengthened knowledge of issues and strategies

We contributed to collective advocacy

AWID, in partnership with other feminist and women’s rights organisations, engaged in advocacy and dialogue to explore better solutions for women’s rights agendas including our work with the Count Me In! consortium .

We increased the visibility of movements

The experiences of women with disabilities, Black and Afro-descendant women, sex workers, Indigenous women, trans and intersex people, domestic workers and how their lives are impacted by multiple oppressions and violence were placed front and center of the Forum process.

We also launched the 2016 WHRD Tribute to commemorate defenders who are no longer with us, during the 16 Days of activism, and thanks to the contributions from our members,

We drove attention to groups and issues that do not usually receive adequate mainstream media coverage through our partnership with The Guardian and Mama Cash.


Our members

 

Kasia Staszewska

Biography

Kasia has been supporting the work of feminist and social justice movements for the last 15 years. Before joining AWID, Kasia used to lead policy and advocacy for ActionAid and Amnesty International while organizing with feminists and social justice groups in Poland for access to abortion and against violence on the European borders. Kasia is passionate about resourcing feminist organizing in all their boldness, richness and diversity. She shares her time between Warsaw and her DIY community village in the forest. She loves saunas and is crazy about her dog named Wooly.

Position
Manager, Resourcing Feminist Movements
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Patience Chabururuka

Biography

Patience is a global human resources professional with over a decade of experience in human resources (HR) management in the not-for-profit sector. Patience previously worked at Mercy Corps as the Global HR Officer for Africa supporting the full employee life cycle for expatriates in the Eastern and Southern African region and provided HR technical guidance to Human Resources leaders in country offices within the African region. Before joining the global people team, she was the Country Human Resources and Safeguarding Focal Point, she was part of the senior management team leading on all human resources and safeguarding matters. Prior to Mercy Corps she led the HR and Operations department at SNV Netherlands Development Organization and was a member of the country management team. She also has HR Consultancy experience which she gained while she was still studying for her BSc Honors degree in Human Resource Management. She has a passion for HR, loves working with people and she takes wellbeing and safeguarding as her core values and in her professional work. As someone who loves sports, you can also find Patience at the basketball court, the tennis court or on the soccer field.

Position
Human Resources Coordinator
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Khaoula Ksiksi

Biography

Khaoula Ksiksi is a passionate advocate for justice, equity, and liberation. As a Gender, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (GEDI) Advisor, she works to make inclusivity a lived reality, not just a policy, across humanitarian programs and crisis contexts. She collaborates with teams to challenge structural oppression using bold, transformative tools rooted in lived experience.

Her activism began on the frontlines of Tunisia’s anti-racism movement. With Mnemty, she helped push through the country’s first anti-discrimination law, forcing a national reckoning with racial injustice. She later co-founded Voices of Black Tunisian Women to amplify Black women’s leadership, build solidarity networks, and demand visibility in a society that often silences them.

Khaoula is also a founding member of Falgatna, a radical queer-feminist movement fighting for SOGIESC rights and supporting LGBTQI+ communities through direct action, digital resistance, and survivor-centered advocacy.

Previously, she led regional feminist and climate justice projects at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in North and West Africa.

At the heart of her work is a deep belief: no one is free until we all are. Her activism is both a fight and a love letter to her people, her communities, and the world we deserve.

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