Protection of the Family
The Issue
Over the past few years, a troubling new trend at the international human rights level is being observed, where discourses on ‘protecting the family’ are being employed to defend violations committed against family members, to bolster and justify impunity, and to restrict equal rights within and to family life.
The campaign to "Protect the Family" is driven by ultra-conservative efforts to impose "traditional" and patriarchal interpretations of the family, and to move rights out of the hands of family members and into the institution of ‘the family’.
“Protection of the Family” efforts stem from:
- rising traditionalism,
- rising cultural, social and religious conservatism and
- sentiment hostile to women’s human rights, sexual rights, child rights and the rights of persons with non-normative gender identities and sexual orientations.
Since 2014, a group of states have been operating as a bloc in human rights spaces under the name “Group of Friends of the Family”, and resolutions on “Protection of the Family” have been successfully passed every year since 2014.
This agenda has spread beyond the Human Rights Council. We have seen regressive language on “the family” being introduced at the Commission on the Status of Women, and attempts made to introduce it in negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Our Approach
AWID works with partners and allies to jointly resist “Protection of the Family” and other regressive agendas, and to uphold the universality of human rights.
In response to the increased influence of regressive actors in human rights spaces, AWID joined allies to form the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs). OURs is a collaborative project that monitors, analyzes, and shares information on anti-rights initiatives like “Protection of the Family”.
Rights at Risk, the first OURs report, charts a map of the actors making up the global anti-rights lobby, identifies their key discourses and strategies, and the effect they are having on our human rights.
The report outlines “Protection of the Family” as an agenda that has fostered collaboration across a broad range of regressive actors at the UN. It describes it as: “a strategic framework that houses “multiple patriarchal and anti-rights positions, where the framework, in turn, aims to justify and institutionalize these positions.”

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2002: Discussions on the Financing for Development agenda begin
The Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development marked the beginning of discussions on the Financing for Development agenda.
- The Monterrey Consensus was adopted at this first international conference on Financing for Development. It was the first United Nations hosted summit-level meeting to address key financial and related issues on global development.
- The Conference and its preparatory process saw unprecedented cooperation between the United Nations and the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) as part of efforts to promote greater coherence and consistency among the international monetary, trade and financial systems and institutions.
- Monterrey also marked the first time that financing for development debates took place between governments, representatives of civil society and the business sector. These actors moved the discussion beyond a ‘technical’ focus, to look at how to mobilize and channel financial resources to fulfill the internationally agreed development goals of previous UN conferences and summits of the 1990s, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
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- Learn more about the six Monterrey themes and the conference follow up mechanisms: Gender Issues and Concerns in Financing for Development by Maria Floro, Nilufer Çagatay, John Willoughby and Korkut Ertürk (INSTRAW, 2004)
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A hands-on deckgame for collectives to explore feminist economic alternatives and systems of care as crisis response. This deckgame is for all movements navigating global climate crises through play and strategy based on real-life scenarios. A creative avenue to strategize in meetings, workshops, and community gatherings!
CFA 2023 - Online and Hybrid - EN
New
Online & Hybrid
As an online participant, you can facilitate activities, connect and converse with others, and experience first-hand the creativity, art and celebration of the AWID Forum. Participants connecting online will enjoy a rich and diverse program, from workshops and discussions to healing activities and musical performances. Some activities will focus on connection among online participants, and others will be truly hybrid, focusing on connection and interaction among online participants and those in Bangkok.
Elisa Badayos
También era organizadora de comunidades urbanas empobrecidas de la Provincia de Cebú, y trabajaba con Desaparecidos, una organización de familiares de personas desaparecidas.
Elisa y dos de sus colegas fueron asesinadxs el 28 de noviembre de 2017 por dos hombres no identificados en Barangay San Ramón, en la ciudad de Bayawan de la Provincia de Negros Oriental, durante una misión que investigaba presuntas violaciones de derechos territoriales en la zona.
La sobreviven cuatro hijxs.
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Feminists have long asserted that the personal is political. Crear, Resister, Transform Festival created spaces for feminists to discuss issues around body, gender and sexualities, and explored the interconnections of how these issues are both deeply embodied experiences, and simultaneously a terrain where rights are constantly disputed and at risk in society.
The power of feminist movements lie in how we organise and take coordinated action, not only amongst our own communities and movements, but with allied social justice causes and groups. This space provided opportunities for movements to share and strengthen organizing and tactical strategies with each other.
The COVID-19 global health pandemic has made the failures of neo-liberal capitalism even more apparent than ever before, exposed the cracks in our systems, and highlighted the need and opportunities to build new realities. A feminist economic and social recovery requires all of us to make it together. This journal edition in partnership with Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research, will explore feminist solutions, proposals and realities for transforming our current world, our bodies and our sexualities.
Explore the articles online or
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2009: la ONU celebra una Conferencia sobre el impacto de la crisis económica
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Angy Ferreira
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Rejoignez des milliers des personnes qui exigent une véritable justice climatique :
Suivez la campagne:
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Contactez : communications @ awid.org
CFA 2023 - Themes - EN

Themes
We welcome applications across the full range of thematic areas and intersections important to feminist and gender justice movements. In the application form, you will be able to mark more than one theme that fits your activity.
- Free Bodies, Free Spirits: all things bodily autonomy, gender and sexuality, reproductive health and rights, freedom from gender-based violence, freedom to live in safety, pleasure and joy in our diverse bodies, identities and communities, and much, much more.
- Resisting Anti-Rights: locally and globally, feminists are leading the way in resisting all forms of intersectional oppressions, including fascisms, fundamentalisms, and authoritarian regimes; we have a lot to share and strategize with each other about.
- Movements and Organizing: let us get to know each other’s movements. From navigation of power (internal and external) to protection strategies in the face of the repression of women and gender-diverse human rights defenders, from alliance-building to creative and successful forms of organizing, let’s learn and be inspired by each other.
- Economic Justice and Feminist Economies: this theme encompasses all feminist efforts to transform our economies, from challenging dominant extractive models and defending labor rights to embodying and living feminist economic practices and alternatives in everyday life.
- Funding/Resourcing Activism: securing much-needed funding is a shared challenge for movements across the world; let us together unpack the feminist funding ecosystem, from critical analysis to first-hand experiences and practical ways to fund feminist work.
- Climate, Environmental Justice, Land and Water: ecological and climate justice has deep roots in many of our movements and communities; from ancient traditions to futuristic visions, from ecology villages to campaigns to end extractivism and health justice, we invite a full scope of activities on all aspects of climate and environmental justice.
- Militarization, War and Conflict: we aim to spotlight feminist organizing, analysis and experiences often on the frontline of crisis response and helping to sustain life, community and justice in the harshest times of war and protracted conflict.
- Decolonization: decolonization is central to each and every one of our themes, yet it also stands on its own, as a key feminist agenda of resistance and world-building in many colonial and post-colonial realities.
- Digital Realities and Feminist Tech: we welcome an opportunity to celebrate the incredible feminist initiatives that transform digital worlds, challenge big tech power structures, and democratize technology as truly by and for the people.
- Healing Justice: there is an incredible diversity of approaches to collective care and healing justice. Worldwide, healers and movements are reclaiming healing justice as a political principle, a set of practices, a learning journey, a way of life, and much more.
- Add your theme here!
Guadalupe Campanur Tapia
Guadalupe était une activiste environnementale impliquée dans la lutte contre le crime à Cherán, au Mexique.
En 2011, Guadalupe a aidé à renverser le gouvernement local. Elle participait à des patrouilles de sécurité locale, notamment dans les forêts municipales et faisait partie des dirigeant-e-s autochtones de Cherán qui ont appelé les gens à défendre leurs forêts contre l’abattage implacable et illégal. Son travail pour les aînés, les enfants, les travailleurs-euses a fait d'elle une icône dans sa communauté.
Elle a été assassinée à Chilchota, au Mexique, à environ 30 kilomètres au nord de Cherán, sa ville natale.
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Sexting Like a Feminist: Humor in the Digital Feminist Revolution
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On September 2nd, 2021, the amazing feminist and social justice activists of AWID’s Crear | Résister | Transform festival came together not only to share resistance strategies, co-create, and transform the world, but also to talk dirty on Twitter.
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La première session de rédaction du document final de la troisième Conférence sur le financement du développement
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Expected Resolutions Relevant to Gender and Sexuality
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The rights of the child (EU & GRULAC)
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Birth registration and the right of all to recognition as a person before the law (Mexico, Turkiye)
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Adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to non-discrimination in this context (Germany, Finland)
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Negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights (Non-Aligned Movement)
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Effects of foreign debt and other international financial obligations on the enjoyment of human rights (mandate renewal) (Cuba)
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Rights of persons with disabilities, digital technologies, and inclusive disability infrastructure (Mexico, New Zealand)
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Rights of the child (focus: Children in armed conflict) (Uruguay on behalf of a group of States from Latin America and the Caribbean and European Union)
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Right to work (Egypt, Greece)
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Right to food (Cuba)
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Promotion of the enjoyment of cultural rights of all and respect for cultural diversity (Cuba)
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Human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and the obligation to ensure accountability and justice (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation)
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Right of the Palestinian people to self-determination (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation)
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Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and in the occupied Syrian Golan (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation)
Clone of CFA 2023 - Hybrid like never before: in person - EN
In-person
Participants will come together in Bangkok, Thailand. We can’t wait!