A Step Forward Amid Strong Opposition to Women’s Human Rights at this Year’s 57th Commission on the Status of Women

by Susan Tolmay

FRIDAY FILE - The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 57) ended last week Friday with an Agreed Conclusions document acknowledged by many as fair and balanced, and “an important step forward” to addressing violence against women and girls (VAWG).

 

Sequesters, Cliffs and Cuts: A Women’s Rights Perspective on U.S. Federal Budget Negotiations

FRIDAY FILE - Deciphering U.S. federal budget negotiating -- let alone from a gender perspective -- is no easy task. Fortunately several women’s rights organizations are doing just that. AWID interviewed Joan Entmacher of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) and Radhika Balakrishnan of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University to help us unpack the rhetoric and decode what U.S. federal budget negotiations mean for women’s rights.

Women Moving Mountains – Successful Strategies and Funding Mechanisms to Eradicate Violence Against Women

FRIDAY FILE: A unique ‘aggregate analysis’ of the Dutch MDG3 Fund, conducted by AWID, with input from 33 fund recipient organisations provides a unique opportunity to highlight the broad range of multi-sectoral strategies that organisations are using a to tackle gender based violence (GBV) and the importance of continued and sustained funding for the work they do.

By Gabriela De Cicco and Srilatha Batliwala

Will We See Real Progress In Addressing Violence Against Women And Girls At the 57th Commission on the Status of Women?

FRIDAY FILE: AWID takes a look at what is at stake with this year’s priority theme for the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 57) that will take place at United Nations (UN) Headquarters in New York from 4 to 15 March 2013 - the Elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls.

By Susan Tolmay

COP18: Between losing rights and gender balance

FRIDAY FILE - The eighteenth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP18) took place from November 26 to December 8, 2012 in Doha, Qatar.

Defending ancestral lands: Indigenous Women Human Rights Defenders in the Philippines

by Katherine Ronderos

FRIDAY FILE - Murders of indigenous women human rights defenders (WHRDs) in the Philippines have caused worldwide condemnation. Defending indigenous communities’ rights to sustainable livelihoods, and protecting ancestral lands from mining interests has become an increasingly dangerous struggle.

UN Starts with Gender Equality Focus Preparing for its 2014 DCF and Post 2015

FRIDAY FILE: Almost twenty years after the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, the Vienna Policy Dialogue entitled “Advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women: the role of development cooperation”, took place in Vienna, Austria from 13 to14 December 2012[1].

By Anne Schoenstein[2]

The ICPD Global Youth Forum – A Multi-Stakeholder Meeting Led By Young People

FRIDAY FILE: The Global Youth Forum (GYF) held in Bali, Indonesia, from 4-6 December 2012, was a process mandated by the United Nations (UN) as part of the review of the implementation of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action beyond 2014.

Two decades of Indigenous Women’s leadership in Latin America

by Gabby De Cicco

FRIDAY FILE - Indigenous women have and continue to play key leadership roles in their communities as well as in international spaces. AWID talked to Otilia Lux de Coti, Executive Director of the Indigenous Women’s Forum (IIWF) about how indigenous women leadership has evolved in the past decades.

Transgender Rights In Ecuador: A Legal, Spatial, Political And Cultural Acquittal

FRIDAY FILE - AWID interviewed Elizabeth Vasquez from Proyecto Transgenero about their innovative work, inspiring achievements and further challenges ahead for transgender rights in Ecuador.

By Rochelle Jones