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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

Women Human Rights Defenders

WHRDs are self-identified women and lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LBTQI) people and others who defend rights and are subject to gender-specific risks and threats due to their human rights work and/or as a direct consequence of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

WHRDs are subject to systematic violence and discrimination due to their identities and unyielding struggles for rights, equality and justice.

The WHRD Program collaborates with international and regional partners as well as the AWID membership to raise awareness about these risks and threats, advocate for feminist and holistic measures of protection and safety, and actively promote a culture of self-care and collective well being in our movements.


Risks and threats targeting WHRDs  

WHRDs are exposed to the same types of risks that all other defenders who defend human rights, communities, and the environment face. However, they are also exposed to gender-based violence and gender-specific risks because they challenge existing gender norms within their communities and societies.

By defending rights, WHRDs are at risk of:

  • Physical assault and death
  • Intimidation and harassment, including in online spaces
  • Judicial harassment and criminalization
  • Burnout

A collaborative, holistic approach to safety

We work collaboratively with international and regional networks and our membership

  • to raise awareness about human rights abuses and violations against WHRDs and the systemic violence and discrimination they experience
  • to strengthen protection mechanisms and ensure more effective and timely responses to WHRDs at risk

We work to promote a holistic approach to protection which includes:

  • emphasizing the importance of self-care and collective well being, and recognizing that what care and wellbeing mean may differ across cultures
  • documenting the violations targeting WHRDs using a feminist intersectional perspective;
  • promoting the social recognition and celebration of the work and resilience of WHRDs ; and
  • building civic spaces that are conducive to dismantling structural inequalities without restrictions or obstacles

Our Actions

We aim to contribute to a safer world for WHRDs, their families and communities. We believe that action for rights and justice should not put WHRDs at risk; it should be appreciated and celebrated.

  • Promoting collaboration and coordination among human rights and women’s rights organizations at the international level to  strengthen  responses concerning safety and wellbeing of WHRDs.

  • Supporting regional networks of WHRDs and their organizations, such as the Mesoamerican Initiative for WHRDs and the WHRD Middle East and North Africa  Coalition, in promoting and strengthening collective action for protection - emphasizing the establishment of solidarity and protection networks, the promotion of self-care, and advocacy and mobilization for the safety of WHRDs;

  • Increasing the visibility and recognition of  WHRDs and their struggles, as well as the risks that they encounter by documenting the attacks that they face, and researching, producing, and disseminating information on their struggles, strategies, and challenges:

  • Mobilizing urgent responses of international solidarity for WHRDs at risk through our international and regional networks, and our active membership.

Related Content

What happens when an African Feminist dies?

What happens when an African Feminist dies?

Massan D'Almeida

The kinds of stories we must dare to tell each other

Massan d’Almeida is a feminist organizer from Togo and the founding and outgoing Executive Director of the Réseau des organisations féministes de l’Afrique francophone (Network of Francophone African Women’s Organisations), an institutional AWID member that focuses on reinforcing networks and sustaining feminist organizations and individuals in francophone Africa. 


She died alone

Not too long ago, Elise Ama Esso Lare, an African feminist activist in our circle died at the age of 51, from a long-term illness. She had never earned a salary in the context of her activism, and because of her long-term illness, she had spent all the money she had during the last years of her life. 

How many of us in our feminist and women human rights defenders circles were aware of this? Too few. We don’t have mechanisms to circulate this kind of information. The type of details we usually share pertains to workshop invitations and such. And what do we do when one of us needs support? Too little. Activists like us have no health insurance or structures to take care of ourselves, so when one gets sick, the money comes out of our pocket. 

This feminist who died...Who buried her? Who came to her funeral? How many other activists in her circle were there to commemorate her? Too few. It was extremely disturbing. 

Togolese feminist activist, Elise Ama Esso (1966-2017)

Unpaid labour, Dwindling Resources

Let us talk about economic factors. 

In francophone Africa, salaries are extremely low, especially in the public and nonprofit sectors. Even those of us who have remunerated work are continuously searching for more ways to earn money. 

Let us talk about the cascade of World Conferences on Women and the international women’s rights movements that sprung up since 1975. Mexico. Beijing. Nairobi. 

This era generated a short spurt of support for feminist movements,  such that, all of a sudden, there seemed to be money for women’s rights. For some, it was a way to earn a bit of money. You could start an NGO, secure a grant or two, generate a bit of work, manage with the rest. For some, it was the opportunity to obtain some financial resources, travel, participate in a few conferences, earn a bit of per diem. 

The reality is quite different.There is arguably more funding these days, but resources allocated specifically for women’s rights remains scarce. When you look around, many organisations exist by name alone, having spent years without funding. Nevertheless, some people are still working out of sheer passion --some of them motivated by their educational or intellectual background or because they’ve had the opportunity to meet other activists in meetings, seminars, and conferences. They tell themselves, “I can also do something.” And sometimes, their entourage tells them, “You should also create your own NGO --it’s better than working for someone else’s NGO.”

The proliferation of organizations and activists affects the quality of the work because capacity and resources are extremely weak, and by extension, the motivation to do feminist work for a cause is weak. 

Creation Story of the Feminist NGO

Are NGOs the best vehicle for feminist work? The fact is that, outside of state structures, NGOs seem to be the only space in which you can support certain initiatives. The NGO-civil society paradigm is simply a format that emerged on the heels of the International Conferences of Women since Mexico in 1975. Back then, many countries around the world started investing in ministries of women through their international aid envelopes. Even so, few of these ministries had enough of a budget to carry out tangible activities. And because of bad governance and corruption, you needed a channel to redistribute resources for women’s human rights. That’s where the NGOs and international organizations come in. 

But now, the private sector is encroaching on our work. There’s a recent trend of corporations initiating projects that purport to work for women’s rights and gender equality, like Shell for example, who launched projects in several countries. 

Now corporations can apply directly for grants from our traditional funders. Often, corporations receive more funding than NGOs, maybe because they have a model that prioritizes making a profit and have mechanisms and tools that facilitate this profit-making. Results-Based Management for example, is such a widespread management model that came from the private sector, that even NGOs have adopted it. 
Because of our current institutional capacities, NGOs look more like “non-governmental individuals” than “non-governmental organizations”. They’re not sufficiently resourced and structured, which feeds into a vicious cycle: the less funding you have, the less funding you receive. 

Where is the Money?

Let me tell you another story: The other day, I was at a workshop in which many of us activists were supposedly gathered to support an organization. But, in fact, some of the participants were distracted. Some of the participants were preoccupied by the grant that the leading organization had received (instead of them). Some of the participants were doing mental gymnastics to figure out how much of the funding they had spent and how much was going into the pockets of the organizers. 

And because of this, there wasn’t a strong feeling of commitment among the participants. Nobody wanted to support them fully because there was a distinct impression that it was a zero-sum game --the money that went to that organization was money that nobody else received. The actual issue around which we were mobilizing became secondary. It became all about the money (or lack thereof).

What’s problematic is the fact that many activists don’t have salaries. It’s an uphill battle to work this way. It’s all very well to work on issues about which you are passionate, but many of us aren’t paid (and I mean francophone feminists because the anglophone feminists seem to have sorted things out). Many are volunteers who hold titles like “President”, “Secretary General” or “Treasurer” and operate without remuneration. Can you imagine working without a salary for one, two, ten years? How do you live that way?

Also, the quality and quantity of funding that we are receiving these days don’t allow us to sustain our organizing. We understand that this is because governments and institutions have to justify the grants that they give us to their constituencies, but that’s a whole other story. What’s clear is that either they can choose to come here and “work in the field” themselves or they can let us use our knowledge and expertise to do the work. I personally think it’s a violation of our right to decent paid work, and that’s something we need to dare talk about. It’s inconceivable that we don’t talk about this more often.

These are the kinds of stories we must dare to tell each other

I think about my colleagues, myself, and the sustainability of our movements. Today, we appear solid, but the day something happens to us, we are not sure what we or our people will become. It makes me think twice about the work that we do, the resources we have to do the work, and the way in which we do the work. People need to know what happens when an older African women human rights defender in our circle dies. 

 


About ROFAF

The Réseau des Organisations Féminines d’Afrique Francophone (ROFAF) is an international NGO that was founded in 2006 with the mandate to reinforce network and mobilize financial resources to advance women’s rights in francophone countries in francophone Africa. The ROFAF has been an institutional member of AWID since 2008, and has presented a session on their experiences in networking to fight for women’s security and leadership in conflict and post-conflict situations at the 2016 AWID Forum. 

The ROFAF is a nonpartisan and nonprofit nongovernmental organization that was established on July 28, 2006, with the mission to mobilize financial resources to advance women’s rights across French-speaking Africa. Its objectives are to: 

  • Financially support the initiatives of its member organizations
  • Promote the respect of women’s rights in French-speaking Africa

 

Source
AWID