By Maria Araujo

To write about my experience at the AWID Forum while taking into consideration just how fulfilled I felt throughout the entire event will be a difficult task. This is mainly because writing may not be enough to enable you, the reader, to grasp the impact that the encounters I experienced during the event had on me.

By Fania Noel

In the context of globalization, where the once imperial ruler has lost first place in soft power to the Anglo-Saxons, the former French colonies are those keeping French alive outside of France.

In 2008, for the 11th Forum in Cape Town, Genre en Action (Gender in Action) launched a mobilization  in  partnership  with AWID, which  increased  francophone  participation.  The project was recreated in 2012 for the 12th Forum in Istanbul, by way of the Francophone Village. For the 13th Forum in Brazil in 2016, we are determined to pursue these efforts. But what have we learned since Cape Town?

As part of AWID's ongoing commitment to building creative cross-movement work, we are exploring multiple ways of working with and learning from artists and cultural makers from diverse social movements as a means of building solidarity, stimulating creative connections, and facilitating mutual learning.

In just over a month nearly two thousand individuals from diverse cultural and political spheres and social movements will gather together in Bahia, Brazil for the upcoming AWID Forum.

In the wake of the ‘Global Gag Rule’ (GGR)’s reinstatement, we asked women’s rights and feminist organisations around the world what this means for their work with women and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and how the news of the GGR and the Dutch fund will affect women in their regions.

By Cindy Clark

"Whilst working to resist oppressions, we also need to radically confront challenges within our own movements. The Women’s March on Washington, and the hundreds of sister marches that took place across the globe are a timely reminder of that call to action."

By Laura Contrera

Being fat is part of the great diversity of humans, yet from a hegemonic medical perspective all kinds of fat are considered a medical risk, limiting the issue to a simple arithmetic calculation of unhealthy consumption and lack of exercise.

"I tell the girl how thoughtful it is of her to reach out. And then I ask her why she is so tired. She explains she has splinters in her palms from the umbrella she has been carrying all evening; and all the grown ups are still making her carry all the bags." By Fungai Machirori

By Fungai Machirori

"Their violet T-shirts match the jacarandas – in full spring bloom – as the protesters make their way through downtown Johannesburg in remembrance of Fezekile ‘Khwezi’ Ntsukela Kuzwayo who bravely brought forward a charge of rape against Jacob Zuma in 2005, and died towards the end of last year aged 41."