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For the first time ever this fall, the AWID international Forum occurred in Brazil, and put a spotlight on Brazilian feminist movements and perspectives.

I am bisexual. When I walk down the street some men think it is a compliment to say You are just my size’. I am also African. I am a smorgasbord of identities that could possible preclude me from fitting into the mainstream of what it would mean to be a ‘good functioning human’.

The latest development in the NGO Foreign Funding Case occurred on December 7, 2016, when Azza Soliman, a prominent women’s rights defender and lawyer was arrested and faced with three preliminary charges, including “receiving foreign funding to harm the state’s interests.” Azza was released on bail after she paid 20,000 Egyptian pounds, pending further court hearings.

The prominent Syrian human rights defenders Razan Zaitouneh, Samira Al-Khalil, Wa’el Hamada and Nazim Hammadi, who remain missing three years after armed men abducted them, should be released immediately, 56 human rights organizations said today, on the anniversary of their abduction.

AWID’s 5th online tribute to Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) who have died in recent years, commemorates sixty feminists and activists. Thirty eight of these defenders died violently, and were murdered as a result of who they were, their identities, and the rights they defended. 

The advance of actors pushing fundamentalist agendas within international policy spaces is cause for concern this Human Rights Day. Feminists and other social justice activists must act now to reaffirm and safeguard our human rights.

Increasing evidence of the gendered impacts of corporate abuse make it imperative for feminists, WHRDs and Organizations challenging corporate power on the ground, to share their perspectives and demands. Now, more than ever, we need cross-movement solidarity to make a binding treaty a reality.

IFEX bears witness to an unending stream of reports of people who are responding to acts of expression, with violence. This violence targets human rights defenders, it targets journalists, and it targets individuals based on their gender identity.

Joana Silochina Foster, the formidable Ghanaian-British activist and lawyer who died last month, co-founded Africa’s first feminist philanthropic institution.