Women Human Rights Defenders are at the forefront of rights struggles. WHRDs are targeted because of our work, including for what we do, the fact that we do it, and the identities we carry.
On 24 May 2017, the divisional court in Ankara overturned a conviction for sexual assault of human rights defender, Kemal Ördek. Instead the three perpetrators were sentenced to seven years and six months imprisonment for the charge of ‘aggravated burglary.’ The man previously convicted and sentenced for the sexual assault was acquitted.
AWID and partners express our strong concerns about the draft resolution on the protection of the family. We are concerned that the resolution attempts to instrumentalize older persons and their rights.
Bondita Acharya is an activist and a member of Women in Governance (WinG) Assam. She received death threats after condemning the arrest of three people for the possession of beef on 4 April 2017. The attacks on her include trolling on her Facebook account and other social media with sexually laden, criminal and defamatory posts.
Last Saturday, on 25 March 2017, AWID alongside other international organizations, attended a special Right Livelihood Award ceremony in Cairo where Mozn Hassan was honoured "for asserting the equality and rights of women in circumstances where they are subject to ongoing violence, abuse and discrimination."
Feminist activists have seen their hard work pay off as the CSW61 adopted a set of Agreed Conclusions that made significant commitments to advance women’s rights and economic empowerment in the changing world of work.
As concerned members of the Caribbean region and diaspora, we are outraged by the unreasonable and absurd charges of three counts of “malicious communication” under Section 9 (1) of the Cybercrimes Act of 2015 by the Jamaican state towards human rights defender and activist, Latoya Nugent.
We the undersigned organizations write to express our deep concerns about the latest restrictions on civil society participation at the 2017 UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meetings. This year's CSW is taking place under the shadow of the United States’ escalated anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, and anti-Muslim policies, which are preventing some women from exercising their right to political participation at UN Headquarters in New York.
Human Rights Council, 34th Session - Statement by the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)
“Time and history have never seen eye to eye .Time laughs at history and time and time and time again. Time traps history in a lie .But we always ,somehow, managed to roar history back onstage to take another bow to justify, to sanctify the journey until now” by James Baldwin