This is a joint written contribution by 14 organisations*, including AWID, submitted to the third session of the UN Open-ended intergovernmental working group (IGWG) on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, on 23 October 2017.

This autumn brought the third edition of Chouftouhonna, the Tunis International Feminist Art Festival. Chouftouhonna is an intersectional feminist space by and for women, questioning gender roles and breaking the importance of patriarchy. 

For those who have attended a previous AWID Forum you can probably remember the energies that are generated in a space with 2000 feminist and social justice activists. The strength and renewal we feel when we meet with fellow activists all working together to co-create a better world. The learning and new knowledge we gain, create, and share. The solidarity we feel when we are able to build and strengthen connections.

We invite all to join us at the table, eat with us, sit with us, learn with us, grow with us…be with us as we co-create, and nourish our Black Feminist Futures.

In the lead up to the first Black Feminisms Forum, This is Africa will be publishing a series of interviews, features and articles about Black Feminisms. First up, Maggie Mapondera sits down with renowned activist, scholar and thinker Gay J McDougall, a member of the BFF’s Working Group, to talk about the struggles faced by women of African descent the world over.

Our freedom dreams are a roaring Black; swellings of coming insurrection manifested. This roar is felt in the tip of a brush about to paint the sounds of our resistance; in the cadence of saxophones, playing the drawings that our grandmothers sketched, of struggles unrelenting; in the poems inscribed by the movement of our bodies when that bass drops.

We welcome this week’s announcement of a EUR 500 million commitment for work to end violence against women and girls. But there are important caveats.

While Colombia’s peace talks continue in Havana, Cuba, back home in the region of North Cauca, Black Colombians have found their cries for access to their ancestral lands met with tear-gas and rubber bullets.

The recent Zika outbreak in Latin America and the Caribbean has highlighted some areas where different sectors of the global feminist movement need to deepen reflection and dialogue about how to develop tactics and strategies for moving our collective rights and justice agendas forward.

Personal Reflections on the 4th African Feminist Forum.