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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Snippet FEA Union Otras (EN)
UNION OTRAS
The Sex Workers' Trade Union Organisation (Organización de Trabajo Sexual, OTRAS) is the first union of sex workers in the history of Spain. It was born out of the need to ensure social, legal and political rights for sex workers in a country where far-right movements are on the rise.
After years of struggles against the Spanish legal system and anti-sex workers groups who petitioned to shut it down, OTRAS finally obtained its legal status as a union in 2021.
Its goal? To decriminalize sex work and to ensure decent working conditions and environments for all sex workers.
The union represents over 600 professional sex workers, many of whom are migrant, trans, queer and gender-diverse.
Our values - bodily autonomy
Bodily autonomy, integrity and freedoms<
We celebrate everyone's right to choose their identities, relationships, goals, work, dreams and pleasures, and what they do with their mind, body and spirit. We believe in working towards access to resources, information and safe and enabling environments that allow this to happen.
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Sobre Upasana Agarwal

Inna Michaeli
Inna es una activista y socióloga feminista queer. Posee muchos años de profundo compromiso con las luchas feministas y LGBTQI+, la educación en política y en procesos de organización de y para las mujeres migrantes, así como por la liberación de y la solidaridad con Palestina. Se incorporó a AWID en 2016 y cumplió diferentes funciones, la más reciente como Directora de Programas. Reside en Berlín (Alemania), creció en Haifa (Palestina/Israel), nació en San Petersburgo (Rusia), y ha puesto todo ese recorrido geográfico político y de resistencia a los colonialismos pasados y presentes al servicio del activismo feminista y la solidaridad transnacional.
Inna es autora de Women's Economic Empowerment: Feminism, Neoliberalism, and the State (Empoderamiento económico de las mujeres: Feminismo, neoliberalismo y Estado. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), basado en la tesis que le valió un doctorado de la Universidad Humboldt de Berlín. Como académica, impartió cursos sobre globalización, producción de conocimientos, identidad y pertenencia. Inna posee una maestría en Estudios Culturales de la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén. Integra la Junta de Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East (Voces Judías por una Paz Justa en Medio Oriente, Alemania) y, con anterioridad, fue miembro de la Junta de +972 Advancement of Citizen Journalism (+972 Avance del Periodismo Ciudadano). Antes, Inna trabajó con la Coalición de Mujeres por la Paz y es una apasionada de la movilización de recursos para el activismo de base.
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Al unirme a AWID, espero poder ayudar a la movilización del movimiento feminista. No solo para las mujeres privilegiadas, sino para TODAS las mujeres y activistas feministas.- Angelina Mootoo, feminista interseccional y caribeña, Guyana/EEUU
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Dre. Margo Okazawa-Rey est titulaire de la Chaire Barbara Lee pour le leadership des femmes et professeure invitée en études sur les femmes, le genre et la sexualité et en politique publique au Mills College à Oakland, en Californie. Elle est également professeure émérite à la San Francisco State University.
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Snippet FEA Principles of Work (FR)
Principes
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If your activity is accepted, you will be contacted by the AWID team to assess and respond to interpretation and accessibility needs.
Meztli Omixochitl Sarabia Reyna
Questions (Forum page)
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Vous avez des questions concernant le Forum de l’AWID ou les activités connexes ? Nous avons des réponses !
The Crear, Résister, Transform Story by Coumba Toure
A magical experience of feminist story telling led by pan-African feminist Coumba Toure, performing in the age old tradition of West African griots.
And we gathered again
We gathered our stories our strength
our songs
our tears
our rage
our dreams
our success
our failures
And we pull them all together
In one big bowl to share
for a moon of thoughts
And we stay in touch
We shake each others minds
we caress each other souls
While our hands still are tied
And our kisses and hugs are banned
Yet we grow stronger by the hour
Weaving together our voices
Crossing the sound barriers
as we speak in tongues
We are getting louder and louder
We know about differences from others
and from each other so we are stitching our beauties into patchwork or thoughts
From our deepest learnings from our powers
Sometimes we are surrounded by terror
by confusions by dishonesty
But we wash out in the Ocean of love
We are weavers of dreams
To clothes or new world
Thread after thread
As small as we are
Like little ants building our movement
Llike little drops building our rivers
We take steps forward and steps backward
Dancing our way back to sanity
Sustain to the rhythm of our hearts keep
Beating please don't not stop
And we are here transmitter of forgotten generosity
drop after drop growing like the ocean
growing like the river flowing from our souls .
showing our strength to be the water
that will clean this world
and we are gathering again can you feel us
I would lie if I say I said I am
Ok not to see you I do miss my people
I miss your touch and
You unfiltered and unrecorded voices
I miss our whispers and our screams
Our cries of the aborted revolution
We only want to give birth to new worlds
So fight to erase the borders between us
And we gathered again
We gathered our stories our strength
our songs
our tears
our rage
our dreams
our success
our failures
And we pull them all together In one big bowl to share
For a moon of thoughts
And we stay in touch
We shake each others minds
we caress each other souls
While our hands still are tied
And our kisses and hugs are banned
Yet we grow stronger by the hour
Weaving together our voices
Crossing the sound barriers
as we speak in tongues
We are getting louder and louder
We know about differences from others
and from each other so we are stitching our beauties into patchwork or thoughts
From our deepest learnings from our powers Sometimes we are surrounded by terror by Confusions by dishonesty
But we watch out in the Ocean of love
We are weavers of dreams
To clothes or new world
Thread after thread
As small as we are like little ants building our movements
like little drops building our rivers We take steps forward and steps backward
dancing our way back to sanity
Sustain to the rhythm of our hearts
keep beating please don't not stop
And we are here transmitter of forgotten generosity
Drop after drop growing like the ocean
growing like the river flowing from our souls
showing our strength to be the water
that will clean this world
and we are gathering again can you feel us
I would lie if I I said I am Ok
not to see you
I do miss my people
I miss your touch and
You unfiltered and unrecorded voices
I miss our whispers and our screams
Our cries over the aborted revolutions
We only want to give birth to new worlds
So fight to erase the borders between us
Please don’’t stop
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Snippet FEA No feminist economies without feminist unions (EN)
No feminist economies without feminist unions!
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