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Special Focus

AWID is an international, feminist, membership organisation committed to achieving gender equality, sustainable development and women’s human rights

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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So'oalo was a fervent human rights advocate, especially pertaining to the rights of the LGBTQI community in the Pacific.

She was a member of the Samoa Fa’afafine Association (SFA) and a passionate advocate for the acknowledgement of a third gender in the island country. Under her leadership, the SFA pushed for the recognition of the validity and rights of the fa’afafine community.

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كيف ستعرضون وتعالجون المعطيات التي ستجمعونها في الاستطلاع؟

سيتم جمع المعطيات لأهداف إحصائية لتسليط الضوء على وضع التمويل للحركات النسوية العالمية وسيتم عرضها فقط بشكل إجمالي. لن تنشر AWID المعلومات عن اي منظمة محددة ولن تعرض أي من المعلومات التي ستمكّن من التعرّف على منظمة عن طريق موقعها أو صفاتها دون موافقة المنظمة.

Who are AWID's members?

A dynamic network of people around the world, AWID members are researchers, academics, students, educators, activists, business people, policy-makers, development practitioners, funders, and more. Our members - of every age - are those who make AWID a unique global feminist association.

Membership with AWID is open to anyone who shares our values

We offer different types of memberships geared to income level and whether you are an individual or an organization. Currently we have over 5000 members, individual and institutional, from 164 countries.

Our members are an important part of our work

We collaborate for advocacy on specific issues, members vote in elections for our Board, and can also participate in and contribute to our Priority Areas through webinars, surveys, or urgent actions, for example.

Our institutional membership draws from a broad range of organizations interested in advancing gender justice and women’s human rights, including women’s rights organizations, from the local to the global levels, grassroots networks, major international institutions, government departments, university programs and more. 63% of our members are from the global South and 38% are under the age of 30.

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Samira Khalil, Syria

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Сколько ответов на опрос вы хотели бы получить?

Мы стремимся в общей сложности получить 2000 ответов, что почти вдвое больше, чем в последнем опросе, проведенном в 2011 году.

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Les invitamos a consultar nuestra lista de donantes que potencialmente puedan financiar su trabajo por los derechos de las mujeres.

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Née dans l'État de Benue, au Nigeria, Dora était une pharmacienne experte et érudite ainsi qu’une dirigeante communautaire de renommée mondiale.

Lorsqu'elle est devenue directrice générale de l'Agence nationale pour la gestion et le contrôle des aliments et drogues (NAFDAC) entre 2001 et 2008, son travail d’envergure révolutionnaire a initié un changement de paradigme au sein de la fonction publique nigériane. Au cours de son mandat, elle a mené des réformes dans l'application des politiques et des réglementations qui ont permis de réduire de manière radicale le nombre de faux médicaments qui ont affecté le secteur pharmaceutique nigérian.

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Elle est décédée des suites d'un cancer et laisse dans le deuil son mari, ses six enfants et ses trois petits-enfants.


 

Dora Nkem Akunyili, Nigeria

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Fornecer a membres da AWID, parceires do movimento e financiadores uma análise atualizada, robusta, baseada em fatos e orientada para a ação das realidades do financiamento de movimentos feministas e do estado atual do ecossistema do financiamento feminista.

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Identificar e demonstrar oportunidades para transferir mais recursos de maior qualidade para a organização feminista, expor soluções falsas e interromper tendências que fazem com que o financiamento não seja bem-sucedido e/ou se mova contra a justiça de género e objetivos feministas interseccionais.

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Je suis une jeune féministe. Comment m’impliquer au sein de l’AWID ?

Les jeunes féministes sont au cœur de l’action de l’AWID.

De fait, 38 % de nos membres sont ont moins de 30 ans.

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