Teresa Scalzo, Esq.
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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Ressources des mouvements féministes
L'enquête "Où est l'argent?" #WITM est maintenant en ligne ! Plongez dans l'enquête et partagez votre expérience du financement de votre organisation avec des féministes du monde entier.
En savoir plus et participer à l’enquête!
Les mouvements féministes, en faveur des droits des femmes et leurs allié-e-s du monde entier s’opposent au pouvoir et imaginent de nouvelles politiques de libération. Des ressources économiques et politiques aux actes quotidiens de résistance et de survie, les contributions qui viennent nourrir ce travail revêtent de nombreuses formes.
L’initiative de l’AWID, Ressources des mouvements féministes (Resourcing Feminist Movements, RFM), met en lumière l’écosystème de financement actuel, qui va des modèles d’attribution des ressources auto-générée aux voies de financement officielles.
A travers nos recherches et analyses, nous examinons de quelles façons les pratiques de financement pourraient mieux servir nos mouvements. Nous faisons une étude critique des contradictions propres au “financement” de la transformation sociale, compte tenu notamment de la répression politique croissante, des programmes anti-droits et du pouvoir grandissant des entreprises. Mais surtout, nous élaborons des stratégies collectives en appui à des mouvements fleurissants, solides et résilients.
Nos Actions
Reconnaissant la richesse de nos mouvements et répondant au contexte actuel, nous oeuvrons à:
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Créer et élargir les alternatives : Nous développons les pratiques de financement qui accordent une place prépondérante aux priorités des activistes et impliquons un large éventail de donateurs et d’activistes dans la création de nouveaux modèles dynamiques d’attribution de ressources en faveur des mouvements féministes, en particulier dans un contexte qui voit l’espace de participation de la société civile diminuer considérablement.
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Enrichir nos connaissances : Nous explorons, échangeons et consolidons nos connaissances sur la façon dont les mouvements attirent, organisent et utilisent les ressources qui leur sont nécessaires pour entreprendre des changements significatifs.
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Plaider : Nous travaillons en partenariat, comme avec le Count Me In! Consortium, afin d’influencer les programmes de financement et permettre aux mouvements féministes d’être en dialogue direct pour déplacer le pouvoir et l’argent.
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How will you present and process the data collected via the survey?
The data will be processed for statistical purposes to shed light on the state of resourcing for feminist movements globally and will only be displayed in an aggregate form. AWID will not publish information about a particular organization or display information that would allow an organization to be identified by its location or characteristics, without their prior consent.
Je n’ai encore jamais voyagé. Que devrais-je savoir ?
Ayant conscience des nombreuses difficultés que les déplacements impliquent, nous vous fournirons davantage d’informations et de détails sur les modalités de voyage jusqu’à Bangkok lorsque les Inscriptions ouvriront, au début de l’année prochaine.
Llamado a la acción: ¡Basta de infiltración antiderechos en la ONU!
Llamado a la acción
¡Basta de infiltración antiderechos en la ONU!
¿Quieren sumarse al creciente número de personas que le están diciendo «basta» a la infiltración de lxs actores anti-derechos en la ONU?
Zaitun Kasim
Las realidades de la dotación de recursos y del estado del financiamiento para los movimientos feministas cambia con rapidez, ¿la encuesta es de carácter excepcional?
No, no lo es. Se basa en los 20 años de historia de AWID movilizando más y mejor financiamiento para el cambio social encabezado por los feminismos, y se trata de la tercera edición de la investigación ¿Dónde está el dinero para las organizaciones feministas? Aspiramos a repetir la encuesta ¿Dónde está el dinero? cada tres años.
Guadalupe Campanur Tapia
Guadalupe was an environmental activist involved in the fight against crime in Cherán, Mexico.
Guadalupe helped to overthrow the local government in April 2011 and participated in local security patrols including those in municipal forests. She was among the Indigenous leaders of Cherán, who called on people to defend their forests against illegal and merciless logging. Her work for seniors, children, and workers made her an icon in her community.
She was killed in Chilchota, Mexico about 30 kilometers north of her hometown of Cherá.
How about climate justice, is this really the time for so many international flights?
Asking ourselves the same question, we believe there are no simple answers. For many participants the AWID Forum might be one of the few international trips they undertake in their life. The pandemic taught us the possibilities but also the limitations of virtual spaces for movement-building: there is nothing like in-person connection. Movements need cross-border connections to build our collective power in the face of the threats we face, notably the climate crisis. We believe that the upcoming AWID Forum can be a strategic space to hold these conversations and to explore alternatives to international travel. The hybrid element of the Forum is an important part of this exploration.
Ghiwa Sayegh Snippet
Ghiwa Sayegh es una anarcoescritora queer, editora independiente y archivista. Es la editora fundadora de Kohl, una revista para la investigación sobre cuerpo y género, y la cofundadora de Intersectional Knowledge Publishers. Posee una maestría en estudios de género de Université Paris 8 Vincennes, Saint-Denis. Le apasionan la teoría queer, las circulaciones transnacionales y las historias imaginadas o desconocidas. Sus influencias son Audre Lorde y Sara Ahmed.
L’AWID EN 2014 : Renforcer les processus d’organisation en faveur des droits des femmes dans le monde entier
Amanda Castro
Puis-je vous contacter si j’ai des questions ou des inquiétudes?
Si vous avez des questions ou des inquiétudes, merci de nous contacter par le biais de ce formulaire, en indiquant « Enquête WITM » dans l’objet de votre message. Vous pouvez également nous écrire à witm@awid.org.
Winnie Madikizela- Mandela
A Winnie la han descripto como una «militante agitadora» que luchó contra el régimen del apartheid en Sudáfrica.
Fue encarcelada numerosas veces y en varias ocasiones fue encerrada en celdas de aislamiento. Ma’Winnie, como la recuerdan afectuosamente, era conocida por hablar abiertamente sobre los desafíos que las mujeres negras enfrentaron durante y después del apartheid, habiendo sido ella misma sometida a esas brutalidades como madre, esposa y activista durante la lucha. Fue más allá del concepto erróneo que sostiene que el liderazgo está basado en el género, la clase o la raza. A pesar de haber sido una figura controvertida, es recordada por muchxs por su nombre en xhosa, «Nomzamo», que significa «la que soporta las pruebas».
Ma’Winnie sigue siendo una inspiración para muchxs, especialmente las jóvenes sudafricanas.
Su muerte incentivó un creciente movimiento bajo el lema: «Ella no murió, se multiplicó».
CFA 2023 - breadcrumbs Menu _ awid-forum-en
Snippet Kohl - Table ronde | Terres et territoires libérés : une conversation panafricaine
avec Luam Kidane, Mariama Sonko, Yannia Sofia Garzon Valencia et Nomsa Sizani.
2019: Feminist Realities in a changing world
AWID began preparing this annual report just as the global pandemic began to unravel how we gather, organize and live our lives. It is impossible to review what we have done without COVID-19 tinting our assessment.
Download the full 2019 Annual review
Co-Creating Feminist Realities is no longer just an AWID Forum theme - it is a rallying cry in response to a pandemic that has laid bare the failures of social, political and economic systems.
It is an urgently needed affirmation that there are other, more just ways of organizing our lives. During 2019 hundreds of groups shared their experiences and proposals for feminist realities with us, ranging from radical networks of community support in Latin America facilitating self-managed abortion, to practices of community-centered economies in Indonesia and community-centered food systems in India and the US, to a re-imagination and new practice of harm-free rites of passage in Sierra Leone. These are the experiences that will chart a path forward for a “new normal”.
Yet long histories of oppression and violence can make it difficult to imagine the possible. A key part of our work in 2019 was to spark these explorations through a toolkit AWID launched to support groups interested in unearthing the stories and aspirations that are the building blocks of feminist propositions.
While we focus on our proposals for a different world, we recognize the challenging context around us.
Through the Observatory on the Universality of Rights, Feminists for a Binding Treaty, Count Me In! and other alliances, AWID has continued to push back against unfettered corporate power and fascist and fundamentalist agendas that undermine women’s rights and gender justice. With dim prospects for transformative change through multilateral processes and limited responsiveness from most states, we are redoubling our efforts to ensure that feminist movements, in all their diversity, are resourced in ways that match the critical roles they play - supporting their communities, demanding rights and responding to crises. In 2019 we introduced feminist principles and approaches to ground-breaking funds like the Spotlight Initiative and the Equality Fund, and succeeded in leveraging resources through feminist reality seed grant funding from feminist funders.
As we look ahead, it is clear that the context is calling for a transformation of our organizing strategies:
- we are learning to navigate global advocacy confined to online channels,
- we grapple with the uncertainty of when and how we can convene in person, and
- we use the tools at our disposal to tighten connections across local to global spheres.
AWID is embarking on a new membership model that lowers barriers to access and emphasizes opportunities for engagement and cross-member connection. We will continue to experiment with different online tools and processes for building community. Cross-movement engagement will stay at the center of our work. AWID’s actions in solidarity with oppressed movements and identities, even and especially where these are marginalized in feminist movements, are important to drive change and support broad and inclusive movements for all.
Crisis is not new to feminist and social movements.
We are resilient, we adapt, and we show up for each other. And we have to keep doing better. Thank you to all who are part of the journey with us.
Download the full 2019 Annual review
Denis Ramirez Meza
Snippet - WITM To build - AR
لبناء وقائع نسوية ترتكز على الأدلة عن كيف يتحرك المال ولمن يصل
Barin Kobane
Barin était membre de l’unité de combat exclusivement féminine des Unités de protection du peuple kurde (YPG).
Elle a été tuée alors qu’elle était en service actif.
La journaliste libanaise Hifaa Zuaiter a écrit : « Barin représente tout ce que nous avons entendu à propos du courage des femmes kurdes et sa mort représente bien plus que le meurtre d’un-e rival-e ou une perte résultant d’une lutte politique ou ethnique. L’exhibition monstrueuse de sa dépouille par un groupe de rebelles syriens provient du fait qu’en tant que femme combattant sur un champ de bataille réservé aux hommes, elle a osé menacer l’hégémonie masculine ».
