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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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Поскольку опрос посвящен исследованию реалий обеспечения феминистских организаций ресурсами, большинство вопросов касаются финансирования вашей организации в период с 2021 по 2023 год. Вам необходимо будет иметь при себе данную информацию для заполнения анкеты (например, годовые бюджеты и информацию об основных источниках финансирования).

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Cambios sísmicos: un año de finalización, transición y reflexión | Informe anual 2017

Los últimos cinco años han sido muy importantes para AWID.

Hemos contribuido a algunas victorias importantes, como expandir el panorama de financiamiento para los derechos de las mujeres con investigación e incidencia innovadoras y de gran alcance. Al mismo tiempo, hemos sufrido algunos golpes devastadores, como el asesinato de defensoras de derechos humanos como Berta Cáceres de Honduras, Gauri Lankesh de India y Marielle Franco de Brasil, así como el aumento de la movilización de los sectores antiderechos en los espacios de derechos humanos.

Hace cinco años, nos comprometimos con nuestro papel en la construcción de movimientos al generar conocimiento sobre las tendencias de los movimientos antiderechos, así como sobre temas en los que las feministas tienden a involucrarse menos, como los flujos financieros ilícitos. Activamos junto a los movimientos que son nuestrxs compañerxs, fortaleciendo el activismo feminista joven y el activismo intergeneracional y expandiendo la protección integral de lxs defensorxs de derechos humanos. En el cierre del plan estratégico, estamos orgullosxs de nuestros logros y nuestro crecimiento como organización. ¡Terminamos el 2017 con un compromiso renovado, ideas y aprendizaje para sostener la lucha que tenemos por delante!

 

Reason to join 3

Share your stories and hear from others. By connecting our experiences, narratives and proposals we help co-create and amplify Feminist Realities.

Stella Mukasa

Stella began her career at the Ministry of Gender and Community Development in Uganda engaging with policymakers for law reform, including the 1995 Ugandan Constitution, which established some of the most progressive reforms for women in the region.

She is revered throughout the region for her tireless efforts to create and enforce gender-responsive laws and policies. She played a key role in drafting Uganda’s Domestic Violence Act and in mobilizing support for gender-responsive constitutions in both Uganda and in Rwanda.

Through her work with International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), she worked on violence against children, and worked to strengthen the capacities of grassroots organizations addressing gender-based violence. She was a lecturer on gender rights and the law at Makerere University and served on the boards of Akina Mama wa Afrika, ActionAid International Uganda and the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa.


 

Stella Mukasa, Uganda

Holding up the Skies

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.”
 
    - Hers is Ours Collective, organizers of the Outsider Moving Art & Film Festival

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.”
 
    - Hers is Ours Collective, organizers of the Outsider Moving Art & Film Festival


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.”

     - Hers is Ours Collective, organizers of the Outsider Moving Art & Film Festival

Register here to watch this film from June 18-22


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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A minha participação é confidencial?

É claro que sim. As suas respostas serão eliminadas no final do processamento e da análise dos dados, e só serão usadas para fins de investigação. Os dados NUNCA serão divulgados fora da AWID e serão processados apenas por colaboradores e consultores da AWID que trabalham no projeto WITM connosco. Damos prioridade à sua privacidade e ao seu anonimato. Consulte a nossa política de privacidade detalhada aqui.

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2020: Reporte Anual

En este reporte presentamos aspectos destacados de cómo AWID contribuyó a la cocreación y la resistencia feminista: rescate feminista, contrarrestar a lxs anti-derechos, financiamiento, conversaciones entre movimientos y la revista de las Realidades Feministas


Ve nuestro video del Reporte Anual aquí:

Values - intersectionality

Interseccionalidad

Creemos que para que los movimientos feministas sean transformadores y sólidos debemos seguir trabajando en nuestras similitudes y diferencias. También debemos cuestionar el poder y los privilegios, tanto dentro como fuera de nuestros movimientos.

Juana Ramírez Santiago

Juana fue una de las fundadoras y era actualmente integrante de la junta directiva de la Red de Mujeres Ixiles de Nebaj, una organización por los derechos de las mujeres indígenas que es parte de la Iniciativa Mesoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Humanos (IM-Defensoras).

También era partera y madre de siete hijxs. Había recibido amenazas de muerte que fueron denunciadas ante la Fiscalía. Juana es la tercera defensora de derechos humanos indígena asesinada en el área durante 2018. El Ombudsman de Guatemala informa que un total de 20 defensorxs de derechos humanos fueron asesinadxs este año en el país.

Juana Ramírez Santiago fue baleada de muerte por atacantes desconocidos mientras cruzaba un puente en Nebak, Quiché, Guatemala. Están en curso las investigaciones para identificar a los perpetradores. 


 

Juana Ramírez Santiago, Guatemala

#MeToo in China

En China, el movimiento #MeToo [«Yo También»] se encendió en enero de 2018, empujado por el ímpetu del movimiento #MeToo de todo el planeta. Fue una respuesta a los problemas culturales y sistémicos relacionados con el género y el poder dentro de China. Las bases del movimiento habían sido establecidas durante décadas, y los muchos años de debate y promoción de la igualdad de género, finalmente, hicieron erupción con tremenda fuerza en toda la sociedad. El movimiento #MeToo fue impulsado fundamentalmente por jóvenes, que incluyen a innumerables mujeres anónimas y sus aliadxs, en busca de oportunidades para hacer realidad el principal «sueño chino»: transformar a China en un país con igualdad de género.
 
En China, el contexto para el movimiento #MeToo es extremadamente adverso: el Estado de derecho, la justicia y la transparencia de las acciones gubernamentales y la libertad de expresión no pueden darse por descontados, pero estos son precisamente los objetivos por los cuales lucha el movimiento. Ha sido, desde el principio, una lucha intensa, y cada víctima o activista que se visibiliza corre enormes riesgos: desde ser silenciadx o humilladx o de sufrir represalias hasta poner en peligro su seguridad. Todos los éxitos del movimiento #MeToo han sido logrados por quienes son lo suficientemente valientes como para asumir los costos de manifestarse y desafiar la censura.
 
La exhibición «#MeToo in China» fue inaugurada en 2019 y recorrió cinco ciudades. Su objetivo es dar mayor prominencia  a las experiencias personales de lxs víctimas y lxs activistas, para inspirar al público a unirse a la lucha a través del contacto con estas historias. La exposición misma se ha convertido en parte de la lucha #MeToo: ha debido enfrentar desafíos en su itinerario por toda China y, en más de una ocasión, fue amenazada con la clausura.

#MeToo China Image
#MeToo China Image
#MeToo China Image

ما هو عدد الردود الذي ترغبون بجمعها؟

نهدف للوصول الى 2000 رد، وهذا تقريباً ضعف الردود التي جمعناها من استطلاع "أين المال" الأخير عام 2021.

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Ritu

Biography

Ritu is a feminist technologist who brings her experience in the non-profit sector, driven by a passion for utilizing innovative approaches to finding feminist technological solutions. Holding a Master's in Technology in Computer Applications from the Indian Institute of Technology, her role at AWID encompasses a diverse range of responsibilities. From overseeing digital security and server management to database administration, capacity building, technology evaluation, software implementation and cloud solutions, Ritu ensures that AWID's IT infrastructure is resilient and effective. Prior to joining AWID, she played a pivotal role in advancing technological initiatives in the Health Promotion and Environment sectors, fueled by her dedication to leveraging technology for social good.

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  1. Lisez et acceptez les valeurs et la charte communautaire de l’AWID.
  2. Remplissez votre formulaire d'adhésion et indiquez votre contribution à au moins un type d'action proposé.
  3. Consultez vos courriels et vérifiez que vous avez bien reçu votre dossier de bienvenue numérique confirmant votre inscription.
  4. Effectuez les actions pour lesquelles vous vous êtes engagé·e lors de votre inscription.

Ana M. Tallada Iglesia

Ana était un ardente défenseure des droits des femmes et travaillait avec un large éventail de femmes au sein d’organisations de terrain ainsi que dans le secteur privé.

Elle croyait en la construction de ponts entre les secteurs. Ana était membre du Réseau national de promotion de la femme (RNPM) et participait activement à l'élaboration de nombreux programmes sociaux traitant de questions telles que la santé et les droits sexuels et reproductifs.


 

Ana M. Tallada Iglesia, Peru