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

The UN Post-2015 Development Agenda – A Critical Analysis

FRIDAY FILE - As 2015 and the deadline for the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approaches – with progress limited, narrow and uneven – and on the heels of a disappointing Rio +20 Conference on Sustainable Development, the UN is advancing a process to define a new global development agend

Human Rights Abuses In Honduras Pose An Ongoing Threat To Women’s Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs)

FRIDAY FILE - Since the coup d’état in Honduras in June 2009, there has been an on-going and worsening situation of systemic violence and assassinations of human rights defenders. This is particularly serious for women human rights defenders (WHRDs).

By Rochelle Jones

Egyptian Women Continue To Strategize, Protest And Mobilize For A Fair And Equal Egypt

FRIDAY FILE - AWID Interviews three Egyptian women’s rights activists, Yara Sallam, Shahinaz El Hennawi and Dina* about their hopes and concerns since Egypt’s first free elections this year.

By Rochelle Jones

As clear as mud