AWID is deeply saddened by the loss of Josefa Gigi Francisco, whose life was dedicated to defending women’s human rights and advancing social justice. Her death on 22 July 2015 is a source of great sadness to women’s rights activists around the world. 

Today we stand at the last milestone of the post 2015 development agenda process. In the coming two weeks of negotiations at the UN – and the months of informal consultations to follow - there will be debates on the language of the initial declaration, the SDGs and their targets, the means of implementation (MOI); and follow up and review mechanisms outlined in the draft outcome document.

World leaders at the development finance summit may have paid lip service to women’s rights, but the Addis Ababa action agenda tells a different story

The 29th session of the UN Human Rights Council in June 2015 saw the introduction of the second ever Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) report on ‘Discrimination & Violence against Individuals Based on their Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity’. AWID spoke with Cynthia Rothschild, feminist, human rights and sexual rights activist, about the significance of the report and outcomes of the June 2015 Human Rights Council session.

With only a few days until the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) starts on July 13th in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, and governments at the UN headquarters in New York are still locked in negotiations on the outcome document. In the midst of this uncertainty, one thing is certain - what is finally agreed in Addis will impact how the next fifteen years of development financing are shaped, including financing for women’s rights, gender equality and the sustainable development goals (SDGs), to be agreed on September 2015 at the UN General Assembly.

The International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) made a statement on behalf of AWID, FORUM-ASIA, Just Associates, Nazra for Feminist Studies and the Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights – members of the Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition – to the 29th Session of the Human Rights Council.

We call on all States and this Council to recognise that violence against women is intrinsically linked to the imposition and exertion of power and maintaining the status quo, and that policies and laws to prevent violence against women should not only be geared towards protection, but also towards ensuring freedoms, including the freedom to decide on sexualities and bodily autonomy.

For economic justice to be realized, the current draft outcome (released on May 7th 2015)  proposed towards this high level conference needs to change to be transformative and work towards redressing the imbalances between corporate and public power, as well as inequalities resulting from  ‘North – South’ relations.

For decades, the women’s rights movement and women’s rights organizations have been severely underfunded. AWID research in 2010 revealed that the median budget for 740 women’s organizations all over the globe was a miserly US$20,000. In the same year, as a point of reference, the income for Save the Children International and World Vision International was US$1.442 billion and US$2.611 billion respectively.

What would a truly inclusive and egalitarian world look like? AWID invited LGBTIQ activists to answer these two questions - What would a queer-positive world be like? What is needed to achieve it?  Read their responses, and tell us what YOU think a queer positive world would look like.