Faustine Mpanga Mule
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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Feminists have long asserted that the personal is political. Crear, Resister, Transform Festival created spaces for feminists to discuss issues around body, gender and sexualities, and explored the interconnections of how these issues are both deeply embodied experiences, and simultaneously a terrain where rights are constantly disputed and at risk in society.
The power of feminist movements lie in how we organise and take coordinated action, not only amongst our own communities and movements, but with allied social justice causes and groups. This space provided opportunities for movements to share and strengthen organizing and tactical strategies with each other.
The COVID-19 global health pandemic has made the failures of neo-liberal capitalism even more apparent than ever before, exposed the cracks in our systems, and highlighted the need and opportunities to build new realities. A feminist economic and social recovery requires all of us to make it together. This journal edition in partnership with Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research, will explore feminist solutions, proposals and realities for transforming our current world, our bodies and our sexualities.
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2014: Intergovernmental preparatory process for the 3rd FfD Conference is launched
Launch of the Intergovernmental preparatory process for the 3rd Financing for Development Conference, October 2014
- A preparatory process, co-facilitated by Ambassador George Wilfred Talbot of Guyana and Ambassador Geir O. Pedersen of Norway, was put in place to lead discussions ahead of the 3rd FfD conference to be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in July 2015.
- As part of the preparations, two rounds of substantive informal sessions were held at the UN headquarters in New York to provide input to the drafting sessions of the outcome document.
- The WWG on FfD was re-activated with the aim of bringing feminist and women’s rights perspectives to the discussions and deliberations ahead of and during the 3rd International FfD Conference. AWID, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and the Feminist Task Force (FTF) are currently acting as co-facilitators of the group.
- The WWG on FfD’s submitted two oral statements during the first round, and written input to the second round of substantive informal sessions, which highlighted that gender inequality was not visible, nor was the inclusion of other types of discrimination and inequalities. The WWG’s submission highlights gender power relations and the intersections with other categories such as race, disability, ethnicity, age, wealth and sexual identity, which underpin the unequal distribution of opportunities and resources in societies around the world.
- Civil society organizations raised concerns about the space for their engagement in the two substantive informal sessions, including the risk that civil society space to engage in negotiations on the outcome document in January 2015 might be constricted.
Resourcing Feminist Movements
The “Where is the Money?” #WITM survey is now live! Dive in and share your experience with funding your organizing with feminists around the world.
Learn more and take the survey
Around the world, feminist, women’s rights, and allied movements are confronting power and reimagining a politics of liberation. The contributions that fuel this work come in many forms, from financial and political resources to daily acts of resistance and survival.
AWID’s Resourcing Feminist Movements (RFM) Initiative shines a light on the current funding ecosystem, which range from self-generated models of resourcing to more formal funding streams.
Through our research and analysis, we examine how funding practices can better serve our movements. We critically explore the contradictions in “funding” social transformation, especially in the face of increasing political repression, anti-rights agendas, and rising corporate power. Above all, we build collective strategies that support thriving, robust, and resilient movements.
Our Actions
Recognizing the richness of our movements and responding to the current moment, we:
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Create and amplify alternatives: We amplify funding practices that center activists’ own priorities and engage a diverse range of funders and activists in crafting new, dynamic models for resourcing feminist movements, particularly in the context of closing civil society space.
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Build knowledge: We explore, exchange, and strengthen knowledge about how movements are attracting, organizing, and using the resources they need to accomplish meaningful change.
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Advocate: We work in partnerships, such as the Count Me In! Consortium, to influence funding agendas and open space for feminist movements to be in direct dialogue to shift power and money.
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Zarema Sadulayeva
CFA 2023 - Themes - EN
Themes
We welcome applications across the full range of thematic areas and intersections important to feminist and gender justice movements. In the application form, you will be able to mark more than one theme that fits your activity.
- Free Bodies, Free Spirits: all things bodily autonomy, gender and sexuality, reproductive health and rights, freedom from gender-based violence, freedom to live in safety, pleasure and joy in our diverse bodies, identities and communities, and much, much more.
- Resisting Anti-Rights: locally and globally, feminists are leading the way in resisting all forms of intersectional oppressions, including fascisms, fundamentalisms, and authoritarian regimes; we have a lot to share and strategize with each other about.
- Movements and Organizing: let us get to know each other’s movements. From navigation of power (internal and external) to protection strategies in the face of the repression of women and gender-diverse human rights defenders, from alliance-building to creative and successful forms of organizing, let’s learn and be inspired by each other.
- Economic Justice and Feminist Economies: this theme encompasses all feminist efforts to transform our economies, from challenging dominant extractive models and defending labor rights to embodying and living feminist economic practices and alternatives in everyday life.
- Funding/Resourcing Activism: securing much-needed funding is a shared challenge for movements across the world; let us together unpack the feminist funding ecosystem, from critical analysis to first-hand experiences and practical ways to fund feminist work.
- Climate, Environmental Justice, Land and Water: ecological and climate justice has deep roots in many of our movements and communities; from ancient traditions to futuristic visions, from ecology villages to campaigns to end extractivism and health justice, we invite a full scope of activities on all aspects of climate and environmental justice.
- Militarization, War and Conflict: we aim to spotlight feminist organizing, analysis and experiences often on the frontline of crisis response and helping to sustain life, community and justice in the harshest times of war and protracted conflict.
- Decolonization: decolonization is central to each and every one of our themes, yet it also stands on its own, as a key feminist agenda of resistance and world-building in many colonial and post-colonial realities.
- Digital Realities and Feminist Tech: we welcome an opportunity to celebrate the incredible feminist initiatives that transform digital worlds, challenge big tech power structures, and democratize technology as truly by and for the people.
- Healing Justice: there is an incredible diversity of approaches to collective care and healing justice. Worldwide, healers and movements are reclaiming healing justice as a political principle, a set of practices, a learning journey, a way of life, and much more.
- Add your theme here!
How many survey responses are you looking to collect?
Our aim is to reach a total of 2,000 responses, almost double the number from the last WITM survey in 2011.
Luz Yeni Montaño
Sexting Like a Feminist: Humor in the Digital Feminist Revolution Snippet Small
Sexting Like a Feminist: Humor in the Digital Feminist Revolution
by Chinelo Onwualu
On September 2nd, 2021, the amazing feminist and social justice activists of AWID’s Crear | Résister | Transform festival came together not only to share resistance strategies, co-create, and transform the world, but also to talk dirty on Twitter.
Junio 2015
Sesiones adicionales para redactar el Documento Final de Adís Abeba
- Del 1 al 5 de junio de 2015 se realizaron sesiones adicionales para continuar avanzando en la redacción del Documento Final.
- Del 15 al 19 de junio, en la sede de la ONU tuvo lugar la ya planificada Tercera Sesión Redactora del Documento Final de la Conferencia.
Para saber más sobre este proceso, puedes consultar la CSO Hitchhiker’s Guide (en inglés).
Ana Fabricia Cordóba Cabrera
Clone of CFA 2023 - Hybrid like never before: in person - EN
In-person
Participants will come together in Bangkok, Thailand. We can’t wait!
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Preguntas frecuentes
María Verónica Reina
María was recognized globally for her extraordinary leadership in the disability community.
She represented the International Disability and Development Consortium during the negotiation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2001-2006).
Her work was devoted to the implementation of the goal of the Convention - realization of universal human rights by, for and with persons with disabilities for an inclusive, accessible and sustainable world.
In her words, her leadership was about “...serving the disability community, starting with small tasks that others may not wish to do”.
She passed away on October 27, 2017 in her hometown of Rosario, Argentina.
Read more about María Verónica Reina in her own words
#7 - Sexting like a feminist Tweets Snippet ES
¡Vente bien! Y muestra tus fuentes…
Si quieres esta concha, déjame ver ese papel (En serio, ¿dónde está el resultado de tu prueba? En versión digital está bien)
Quels sont quelques-uns des débats et des sujets controversés ?
- Towards The Third International Conference On Financing For Development: Old Tensions And New Challenges, by Nicole Bidegain Ponte/DAWN (March 2015)
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‘A geopolitical Analysis of Financing for Development’ by Regions Refocus 2015 and Third World Network (TWN) with DAWN.
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The Zero Draft Language Map, by Regions Refocus
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‘Addis Ababa financing conference: Will the means undermine the goals?‘ by RightingFinance
Diana Staubli
CFA 2023 - Hubs - thai
ใหม่
จุดศูนย์กลาง: การเดินทางข้ามพรมแดน
ผู้เข้าร่วมประชุมจะได้เข้าร่วมตามสถานที่ต่างๆนอกเพื้นที่ในการจัดงานที่กรุงเทพฯ และตามส่วนต่างๆของ โลกในแต่ละวันของการประชุม สถานที่ประชุมที่ผู้เข้าร่วมจัดการเองทั้งหมดนั้นจะเชื่อมต่อกับสถานที่จัดงาน
จริงในกรุงเทพฯเช่นเดียวกับบุคคลที่เชื่อมต่อทางออนไลน์ ผู้เข้าร่วมในจุดศูนย์กลาง Hub นี้จะสามารถ ดำเนินรายการในหัวข้อกิจกรรมต่างๆ เข้าร่วมอภิปราย แลกเปลี่ยน และเพลิดเพลินไปกับโปรแกรม ที่หลากหลาย
ที่ตั้งจุดศูนย์กลาง Hub จะประกาศในปี 2567
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Чтобы заявить о себе как об эксперте по вопросам ресурсного обеспечения феминистских движений
Asma Jahangir
Asma fue una destacada activista pakistaní por los derechos humanos, valiente crítica de la interferencia de los militares en la política, y firme defensora del estado de derecho.
Fue la fundadora y presidenta de la Human Rights Commission of Pakistan [Comisión de Derechos Humanos de Pakistán, un grupo independiente], y una de las administradoras del International Crisis Group. Obtuvo premios internacionales, y fue Relatora Especial de Naciones Unidas sobre derechos humanos y ejecuciones extrajudiciales.
Es recordada con afecto por sus colegas y amigxs de AWID
«Con su vida, Asma reescribió la historia que a muchas nos contaron, como mujeres. Asma cambió el mundo. Lo cambió en Pakistán, y lo cambió en nuestras imaginaciones.»
