The Human Rights Council (HRC) is the key intergovernmental body within the United Nations system responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe. It holds three regular sessions a year: in March, June and September. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is the secretariat for the HRC.
The HRC works by:
Debating and passing resolutions on global human rights issues and human rights situations in particular countries
Examining complaints from victims of human rights violations or activist organizations on behalf of victims of human rights violations
Appointing independent experts (known as “Special Procedures”) to review human rights violations in specific countries and examine and further global human rights issues
Engaging in discussions with experts and governments on human rights issues
Assessing the human rights records of all UN Member States every four and a half years through the Universal Periodic Review
AWID works with feminist, progressive and human rights partners to share key knowledge, convene civil society dialogues and events, and influence negotiations and outcomes of the session.
With our partners, our work will:
◾️ Monitor, track and analyze anti-rights actors, discourses and strategies and their impact on resolutions
Riham était avocate et activiste engagée à suivre de près la question des violations des droits au Yémen.
Elle a travaillé avec d'autres activistes pour fournir de la nourriture et de l'eau aux civils piégés par les milices houthies dans la banlieue de la ville de Taiz.
Riham a été tuée en février 2018. La cause de son décès, soit par la main d’un tireur d'élite ou par un tir de mortier, n’a pas été confirmée. Personne n'a été tenu responsable de son meurtre.
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.
Snippet FEA Linda Porn Bio (EN)
Linda Porn is yet another heroine of feminist union organizing and sex worker activism nationally (in Spain) and transnationally.
Originally from Mexico, she has been living in Spain since the 2000s. She is a sex worker, an activist, a single mother and a multidisciplinary artist. Drawing from these different identities, she uses performance, video art and theater to vizibilize struggles at the intersections of transfeminism, sex work, migration, colonialism and motherhood.
She combines art and sex work while caring for her daughter as a single mother.
Linda also belongs to sex workers collectives that fight for their rights, such as the OTRAS union and CATS Murcia. She also co-founded the group 'Madrecitas' - that visibilises and denounces racist institutional violence against migrant families. Violence to which she and her daughter were subjected as a sex worker and migrant single mother.
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A Film Series on Feminist Realities from Africa and the African Diaspora
by Gabrielle Tesfaye
When I created my short animation film, The Water Will Carry Us Home, my mind was plugged into a magical world of fearless resilience and ancestral mermaids who transformed their deepest scars into a new generation of life. Set during the time of the transatlantic slave trade, I was pulled to show this history of African enslavement in a different way than it has ever been told on screen. I wanted to give my ancestors the commemoration they never received. I was motivated to reclaim the history that continues to paint us as helpless victims. Essentially, I wanted to tell the truth. To reclaim and reimagine our history and perspective, means to simultaneously heal our generational traumas that exist today. It is this important work that so many women through the African continent and the African diaspora are doing today, igniting our collective Feminist Realities.
In the making of the film I researched religiously, and in what was written, I saw what was not. There were many times I felt I was hitting a wall trying to find something that was not there, and it was in those voided places that I realized the storytellers of today are filling the voids. I found the most useful stories in contemporary art, film, and African diaspora folklore.
“... a truly unique, raw and representation of feminist power in action.”
The Water Will Carry Us Home carried itself around the world into the hearts of the Diaspora. It also led me here, as the curator of the African and Diaspora film screenings of AWID’s Co-Creating Feminist Realities initiative. Whilst curating this collection of films, I looked for stories that were completely unique, raw and representational of feminist power in action. Consisting of three shorts and one feature, they reveal stories through many communities in Africa and the diaspora, including Ethiopia, Uganda, The Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa and Kenya. These films reposition African women as what they truly are- self governing and empowered through the unfiltered lens of their work.
“An incredibly beautiful, attentive, finely observed telling of the connection between Africa and its Diaspora formed form the trans Altantic slave trade. The visual universe it creates is just gorgeous… an echo of the fusion of spiritual traditions and non-linear time that speak to how we are still experiencing the moments of the past that formed 'new' worlds of diaspora blackness.”
- Jessica Horn, PanAfrican feminst strategist, writer and co-creator of the temple of her skin
Our short documentary film, Women Hold Up the Sky, created by the WoMin African Alliance, tells the story of women activists in Uganda and the Democractic Republic of Congo who are actively reclaiming their land rights, threatened by mining and other extractives in their homes. The film not only exposes the corruption of extractivism, but finally shares what we have been missing on screen - how grassroots African women are actively organizing, strategizing, and analyzing within their communities to create women-centred and community-driven alternatives. Margaret Mapondera of WoMin explains it beautifully, that they are the “custodians of lands, forests, waters, rivers and territories; the ways in which women hold and transmit the stories / herstories of our past and our futures; the powerful and transformative ways of being that women embody in their relationships to each other, to the environment and in themselves.”
“A refreshing and much-needed piece of cinema highlighting the many ways African women are coming together to create women-led and community-driven alternatives… The fight is on and
women hold the key.”
Pumzi, created by critically acclaimed director Wanuri Kahiu, bridges Africa and science fiction around climate and environmentalism. Pumzi imagines a futuristic world where humankind has been forced to settle on another planet. While Pumzi seems afro-futuristic and new for Africa on the surface, Kahiu reveals the truth that science fiction and fantasy is something that has always existed in African storytelling, but never recognized. Kahiu creates a world where women are truth seekers and heroes who pioneer us into a new world, the opposite of images that position Africans as victims of war and destruction. Instead, Pumzi writes the narrative of African women being their own saviors and problem solvers, who stop at no cost to follow the cryptic visions they channel in their dreams.
“A pioneering African sci-fi film, situating women as scribes of the future and opening up our visions about other worlds, other universes we might occupy as Africans - always an important exercise as we imagine our way out of present crises.”
- Jessica Horn, PanAfrican feminst strategist, writer and co-creator of the temple of her skin
Our feature film of the program, Finding Sally is set in 1970’s Ethiopia during the time of The Red Terror war, documenting the striking history of director Tamara Mariam Dawit’s activist aunt, Sally Dawit. Throughout the film we learn of Sally’s incredible journey as a young and courageous woman activist navigating one of the most violent times of Ethiopian history. Sally’s story not only reveals the gravity of this time, but the reflection of her own personal evolution as a young woman. Dawit was intentional to tell the film through the lens of women, untouched by male voices. Due to so much Ethiopian history being told by men, the making of this powerful story preserved its reality of honoring the feminist perspective. Dawit explains, “Women in revolution and war are often only included as someone's spouse or someone who did cooking or typing work. I wanted to look at the activism around the revolution only through the memories and voices of women.” Finding Sally demonstrates the reclamation of history sought by current filmmakers today. It is an igniting of feminist power and our connected realities throughout time.
“The responsibility falls on us, to remember these women that came before us and their brilliant work so they are not forgotten like the thousands of women already forgotten while fighting the good fight. Sally is such a woman and may she never be forgotten.”
These films have became a part of my own psyche, empowering me to continue building powerful alternatives towards justice from within. They affirm that I am a woman among a world of women, holding up the skies and actively building indestructible Feminist Realities. These films are more than stories of African women - they are globally relatable, inspiring and set the example of Feminist Realities for all of us around the world.
Gabrielle Tesfaye:
Gabrielle Tesfaye is an interdisciplinary artist versed in painting, animation, film, puppetry and interactive installation. Her work is rooted in the African diaspora, Afro-futurism, ancient art practices and cultural storytelling.
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Mariam era asistente jurídica en la Alianza Kawagib Moro por los Derechos Humanos.
Fue una acérrima crítica de la militarización de las comunidades moro, y denunció sistemáticamente los bombardeos aéreos y la concentración de campamentos militares. Tuvo que buscar refugio luego de exponer y denunciar las injusticias cometidas contra las comunidades musulmanas en Filipinas.
Se cree que fue asesinada por agentes militares sospechosos debido a su trabajo como defensora de derechos humanos. Los atacantes que mataron a Mariam la esperaron, se pusieron a la par del vehículo en el que se desplazaba y le dispararon siete veces.