On International Women Human Rights Defenders Day, the Young Feminist Wire brings you the story of Nahed Sherif Abdel Hamid, one of the young WHRDs who were recently released in the pardon. We also speak with Amal Elmohandes, who works with Nazra for Feminist Studies. Amal closely followed Nahed’s case and says the violations against WHRDs in Egypt are systemic.

The moment was symbolically powerful on multiple levels. As thousands of women marched to the National Congress, the seat of formal political power in Brazil, chanting slogans of resistance— “I do not accept my place in the kitchen”, “I want to be in the revolution”—you could not un-see us or un-hear us. At one point, you could not see the streets for all the people filling it.

As part of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Campaign, AWID spoke with two Algerian activists to learn more about violence against women in the country and the strategies and challenges of the feminists working to end it.   

In a lecture in Argentina, Ariel Dulitzky, president of the United Nations’ Working Group on Forced or Involuntary Disappearances, said that Working Group currently has 43,000 cases of disappeared persons across the world. AWID spoke with journalist Marta Dillon and popular feminist educator Claudia Korol to learn more about the history of this phenomenon and how it affects women in particular.

This Tribute honours and celebrates the women human rights defenders who are no longer with us. They advocated and struggled for the rights of women, workers, indigenous peoples, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) people, the protection of land and environment rights, sex workers and their activism bears witness to the collective struggles of all our social movements.

The Philippines, and more specifically Mindanao, the second largest and southernmost major island, rich in natural resources and minerals, is being plundered by trans- and multi-national companies carrying out extractive operations with impunity for the human rights violations they commit.

The 2030 sustainable development agenda, formally adopted in September 2015, was the result of three-year process throughout which women’s rights activists and organizations mobilized to put gender equality and women’s human rights at the center.

AWID spoke with Pierre Meyer author of the report “Do Not Wake up a Sleeping Lion: Mapping the legal environment of LGBTQ persons in Francophone West Africa”.

Aya Chebbi is an award winning Pan-African feminist activist and blogger. She spoke with AWID about women’s rights in Tunisia after the "revolutions of dignity".

AWID interviewed Khalida Jarrar’s daughters, Suha and Yafa, about their mother, the politicization of Palestinian women in the occupied territories and the struggles of women human rights defenders for their land and freedom.