Pat Bellanger
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.”
Related Content
Carol Thomas
Carol Thomas était une pionnière de la défense des droits sexuels et reproductifs des femmes en Afrique du Sud. Gynécologue aguerrie et fondatrice du WomenSpace, elle pratiquait et promouvait des modes de prestation de soins aux femmes non traditionnels, en proposant des soins à la fois de haute qualité, empathiques et accessibles.
« Elle inscrivait cela non seulement dans la joie de la grossesse et des nouveaux bébés, mais également dans les angoisses de la stérilité, des accouchements prématurés et des cancers féminins et dans le déchirement des fausses couches et des mortinaissances. » -Helen Moffett
Carol fonctionnait selon de nouveaux paradigmes, mettant au centre de sa pratique les besoins des femmes ayant le moins d’accès aux services et aux droits dans la société :
« L’environnement socioéconomique dans lequel nous nous trouvons majoritairement implique que les femmes supportent un fardeau disproportionné de maladies et du chômage... En tant que femme noire précédemment désavantagée, je comprends très bien ce qui se passe dans nos communautés. » - Carol Thomas
Son entreprise sociale innovante «iMobiMaMa», s’étant mérité de nombreux prix, prend appui sur les kiosques de téléphonie mobile et la technologie interactive pour connecter directement les femmes avec les services, l’information et le soutien en soins prénataux et de santé sexuelle dans les communautés de toute l’Afrique du Sud.
Carol soutenait les femmes à la fois lors des grossesses désirées et non désirées, et a encadré de nombreux·ses infirmier·ère·s et médecins au cours de sa vie.
On la décrivait également comme la gynécologue chez qui se rendre « pour les trans qui souhaitaient des soins trans affirmatifs. Elle savait y faire lorsque tant d’autres butaient sur les pronoms ou les mots à employer. Ses couvertures chaudes, son écoute attentive et ses mots qui tombaient toujours justes étaient vraiment réconfortants. » - Marion Lynn Stevens
On disait de Carol Thomas qu’elle était au point culminant de sa carrière lorsqu’elle est décédée, le 12 avril 2019, des complications d’une double transplantation pulmonaire.
Les très nombreux hommages qui lui ont été rendus suite à son décès inattendu faisaient mention qu’elle était, entre autres :
« un modèle à suivre, une guerrière, une innovatrice, une leader dynamique, une rebelle, une boule d’énergie, une brillante scientifique, une doctoresse bienveillante ».
Nul doute que Carol Thomas restera dans nos mémoires et que nous lui rendrons hommage pour avoir été tout cela, et bien plus.
O questionário está disponível durante quanto tempo?
O questionário está disponível até o final de julho de 2024. Queira preencher o mesmo dentro deste prazo para garantir que as suas respostas são incluídas na análise.
My Queer Ramadan
by Amal Amer, California, US
I pray with my family for the first time in six years while wrapped in a keffiyah I scavenged from a dumpster.
Since coming into myself, I have refused to pray in jamaat with my family. Joining in the ranks of hierarchy, “women” behind “men” irks me. It grates my skin and teeth to the degree where I can’t focus, and the standing, bowing, and kneeling feels like a battle against my true being. Each second listening, a betrayal of my nature. Instead, I pray by myself in my own way.
Yet this Ramadan, I feel different. Back in my childhood home after many years, I am choosing to fast. I choose suhoor with my family, and praying together feels like a natural extension of eating together. After eating, my mother, father, brother and I line up for fajr.
I pray behind Baba, but my prayer is my own. I close my eyes, staying with my breath and my body.
My eyes closed, I open my inner sight to a wide open window on a vista of mountains, bright sun spreading over a light mist of clouds. This was the view I had while praying in jamaat at a queer Muslim wedding I attended in the mountains of the South of France last September.
I lined up with the wedding guests, queer and trans folks of North and West African, Arab, and European descent. Folks of all faiths joined while some chose to stand in respect at the sides or behind. The groups did not fall along fault lines of “Muslim” or “non-Muslim,” “religious” or “non religious.” The two lovers marrying each led us in prayer, and so did the Muslim woman officiating the nikkah. Each of the three led us in two rounds of prayers, two raqat.
I showed up as I was, my body uncovered. I had not washed. I only passed my camera to a friend who chose to stand at the side.
In the first sujood, I broke down crying. I wore a jean dress that loves my body, one found at a thrift store my ex-girlfriend pointed me to.
The sobs come through my whole body during the prayer, and I put my head to the earth with my community like a homecoming. A return to the embrace of love both intensely personal and communal, and I am held.
It feels like swimming in the sea with multiple people: joyful togetherness. But when you go beneath the water, it’s just you and the current.
Like a dozen people buried in the same graveyard. Separate, but sharing the same soil. Becoming one with the growing earth.
That was how it felt to pray in communion at a queer Muslim wedding.
I welcomed the light of acceptance while showing up as myself that day, with a group of people who had also chosen to claim all the parts of themselves in love. That light made a home in me, and it illuminates my heart in the dark living room at fajr this Ramadan morning. Though I pray with my birth family who do not accept all of me, I see myself praying in jamaat at that glorious wedding with all of my queer Muslim ancestors, my queer angels, my lineage, my soul family, my queer Muslim family, all standing in prayer. Bowing as one.
My family’s home does not always feel like my own, though I am here now. I take the bukhoor from room to room, barefoot. Smolder from the censer, an incense that says, “Here I am.” Baraka, blessings from the source of all, Allah and the Goddess to each room in the house, bidding good and dispersing the unbidden.
As I write this the sky turns the same royal blue I am familiar with from exiting the club and pulling all-nighters. It is the gradient of morning I step into as I go to sleep.
Word meanings:
-
Ramadan: the Muslim holy month, traditionally observed with 29 days of fasting without food or water during daylight hours
-
Keffiyah: a patterned scarf common in the SWANA region. The black and white version referred to here is associated with the Palestinian liberation movement
-
Pray in jamaat: Islamic ritual prayer in a group. Participants follow one person, traditionally male, who calls the prayer aloud.
-
Suhoor: the meal before the fast starts at dawn
-
Fajr: the dawn prayer
-
Baba: father
-
Raqat: one round of prayer consisting of standing, bowing, kneeling, and pressing the head to the ground
-
Sujood:the prayer position when one presses one’s head to the earth
-
Nikkah: the religious marriage ceremony
-
Bukhoor: an Arabic incense, woodchips soaked in resin
-
Baraka: blessing
“Angels go out at night too”
by Chloé Luu (@Electrichildren), France
Pictures of angels in my life, just some women and non-binary people of color hanging out, taking care of themselves and expressing love to each other. It's these simplest moments that are the most empowering.
< Freeing the Church, Decolonizing the Bible for West Papuan Women
Snippet FEA Principles of work Education and Learning (EN)
EDUCATION AND CONTINUOUS LEARNING
FR Editor's note
Editor's note
Feminist Realities is a warm and caring invitation, a kind of en masse-care (versus self-care) act of preservation, an invitation to archive, to take stock of all the work lest it disappear. (...)
Vuyisa Dayisi
Janet Benshoof
Janet Benshoof was a human rights lawyer from the United States and an advocate for women’s equality, sexual and reproductive rights.
She campaigned to broaden access to contraceptives and abortions across the world, and battled anti-abortion rulings and in the American territory of Guam. She was arrested in 1990 for opposing her country’s most restrictive abortion law, but won an injunction at the local court in Guam that blocked the law and eventually won at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, striking down the law for good.
“The women in Guam are in a very tragic situation. I never intend to be quiet about that.” - Janet Benshoof for People Magazine
Janet established landmark legal precedents including the US Food and Drug Administrations’ approval of emergency contraception, as well as the application of international law to ensure the rights of rape victims in the Iraqi High Tribunal’s prosecution of Saddam-era war crimes.
Janet was President and founder of the Global Justice Center, as well as founder of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the world’s first international human rights organization focused on reproductive choice and equality. She served 15 years as Director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Rights Project, where she spearheaded litigation shaping US constitutional law on gender equality, free speech, and reproductive rights.
“Janet was known for her brilliant legal mind, her sharp sense of humor, and for her courage in the face of injustice.” - Anthony D. Romero
Named one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America” by the National Law Journal, Janet was the recipient of numerous awards and honors.
She was born in May 1947 and passed away in December 2017.
Snippet - Home page promo WITM - ES
«¿Dónde está el dinero para las organizaciones feministas?»
Sobre la base de nuestros 20 años de historia movilizando más y mejor financiamiento para el cambio social encabezado por los feminismos, AWID te invita a responder la nueva edición de nuestra encuesta insignia, WITM
Principes d'engagement
Bienvenue à Crear | Résister | Transform : un festival dédié aux mouvements féministes !
Principes d'engagement
L'AWID s'engage à créer un espace en ligne qui nous invite et nous pousse tou·te·s à faire preuve de courage, de curiosité, de générosité et de responsabilité partagée.
Nous vous invitons à créer à nos côtés des espaces sans harcèlement ni violence, où chacun·e est respecté·e dans son identité et son expression de genre, sa race, ses capacités, sa classe, sa religion, sa langue, son ethnicité, son âge, sa profession, son type d'éducation, sa sexualité, sa taille et son apparence physique. Des espaces où nous reconnaissons les inégalités de notre monde et où nous nous efforçons de les transformer au gré de nos propres interactions avec les autres.
Nous voulons créer un espace qui permette à tout·te·s :
- d’être présent·e·s:
Soyez là les un·e·s pour les autres en étant activement à l’écoute. Essayons de nous sentir proches, même si tout est virtuel. Pour cela, vous aurez accès à l’interprétation de la discussion et à des moyens de communications ouverts (comme la boîte de dialogue et autres outils) pour réagir et échanger. Nous vous recommandons de porter des écouteurs ou un casque pendant la séance pour mieux entendre les autres et vous faire entendre. Dans la mesure du possible, essayez de fermer votre messagerie électronique ou toute autre distraction pendant que vous prenez part à la discussion.
- de valoriser toutes les formes de savoirs:
Célébrons les multiples façons dont le savoir se manifeste dans nos vies. Nous vous invitons à aborder la conversation avec curiosité et ouverture d’esprit pour apprendre des autres, en se permettant de désapprendre et de réapprendre à travers ces échanges, comme une manièrede commencer à construire collectivement des connaissances.
- de se sentir accueillie·s:
Nous nous engageons à adopter une approche holistique de l'accessibilité en tenant compte des différents besoins physiques, linguistiques, mentaux et de sécurité. Nous voulons un espace qui accueille des personnes d'origines, de croyances, de capacités et d'expériences différentes. Nous anticiperons au mieux mais vous demanderons également de nous communiquer vos besoins, et nous ferons de notre mieux pour y répondre.
- de se sentir en sécurité et respecté·e·s :
Nous nous engageons tou·te·s individuellement et collectivement à respecter la vie privée de chacun·e· et à demander le consentement des autres avant de partager des images ou du contenu qui les concerne, générés au cours de la conversation.
Créer un environnement sécurisé, respectueux et agréable durant ces conversations est la responsabilité de tou·te·s .
Signalement
Si vous remarquez qu'une personne a un comportement discriminatoire ou offensant, veuillez contacter la personne de référence qui vous sera indiquée en début de session.
Tout·e participant·e qui utilisera un langage ou des images abusives sera exclu·e de la conversation et ne sera pas réadmis·e. Nous n’aurons plus de relations avec cette personne de quelque manière que ce soit.
Snippet FEA Story 1 Maps Economies of Care (ES)
FRMag - My queer Ramadan
Mi ramadán queer
por Amal Amer
Rezo con mi familia por primera vez en seis años envueltx en un keffiyah que recogí de un contenedor de basura. (...)
arte: «Angels go out at night too» [Los ángeles también salen de noche], Chloé Luu >
Kalpana Chakma
Juli Dugdale
Juli Dugdale fue una feminista australiana que practicaba un liderazgo intergeneracional arraigado en los principios del feminismo, la inclusión y la igualdad. Fue líder, colega y mentora para muchas mujeres, especialmente, para las mujeres jóvenes de todo el mundo.
Juli fue una integrante comprometida del equipo del movimiento Young Women's Christian Association [Asociación Cristiana de Mujeres Jóvenes] (YWCA, por su siglas en inglés), una voluntaria y una ferviente defensora del liderazgo de las mujeres jóvenes por más de 30 años.
Se convirtió en un vínculo fuerte entre el movimiento australiano y la Oficina de la YWCA Mundial. Su confianza en la capacidad de liderazgo de las mujeres jóvenes llevó a establecer una asociación de varios años con el Departamento de Asuntos Exteriores y Comercio de Australia y a la creación del manual Rise Up (Rebélate), una guía global para el liderazgo transformador de las mujeres jóvenes, lanzada en 2018.
Juli falleció en Ginebra el 12 de agosto de 2019.
Tributos:
"Para quienes llegaron a trabajar con Juli, fue un privilegio. Quienes no lo hicieron, pueden tener la certeza de que su legado continúa en el trabajo que hacemos cada día y en la misión del movimiento de la YWCA". - YWCA Australia
"Juli Dugdale siempre ocupará un lugar profundo en el corazón de muchas personas en el movimiento de la YWCA, especialmente aquí, en Aotearoa, y a través del Pacífico. Juli tenía una relación especial con el Pacífico y fue un apoyo increíble para las mujeres jóvenes de allí. Ella era humilde, amable, cariñosa, dedicada, apasionada y tenía un corazón generoso. Ella encarnó la visión de la YWCA de "liderazgo transformador" con una extraordinaria visión y previsión de futuro, y ayudó a empoderar a generaciones de mujeres jóvenes líderes de todo el mundo". - YWCA Nueva Zelanda
Forum Homepage Banner
Register for the Forum!
When people come together on a global scale, as individuals and movements, we generate a sweeping force. Join us in Bangkok, Thailand and online in December 2024.
Colectivo Morivivi
Colectivo Moriviví is an all women artistic collective. Our artistic production consists of muralism, community-led muralism, and protest performance/actions. Our work is about democratizing art and bringing the narratives of Puerto Rican communities to the public sphere to create spaces in which they are validated. We believe that through artivism we can promote consciousness on social issues and strengthen our collective memory.
As part of their participation in AWID’s Artist Working Group, Colectivo Morivivi gathered a diverse group of members, partners and staff to facilitate a collaborative process of dreaming into, informing, and deciding on the content for a community mural through a multi-stage co-creation process. The project began with a remote conceptualization with feminists from different parts of the planet brought together by AWID, and then it evolved to its re-contextualization and realization in Puerto Rico. We were honored to have the input of local artists Las Nietas de Nonó(@lasnietasdenono), the participation of local women in the Community Painting Session, the logistics support from the Municipality of Caguas, and FRIDA Young Feminist Fund’s additional support to the collective.
The mural explores the transcendence of borders by presenting bodies like a map, in an embrace that highlights the intersection of the different feminist manifestations, practices and realities.
We also thank Kelvin Rodríguez, who documented and captured the different stages of this project in Puerto Rico:
About Colectivo Morivivi
Moriviví is a collective of young female artists, working on public art since April 2013. Based in Puerto Rico, we’ve gained recognition for the creation of murals and community led arts.
The group started out in local Urban Art Festivals. As our work became more popular, organizations and community leadership started to reach out to us. We began as eight high schoolers who wanted to paint a mural together. However, in eight years of hard work, we’ve faced many challenges. Now we are in a period of transition. During this following year, we aim to restructure the collective internally. Our goal is to open new opportunities for collaborators and back-up our decision making process with a new evaluation system. In the long run, we aspire to become an alternative school of art practice for those interested in immersing themselves in community art production.
Snippet - That Feminist Fire Logo (FR)
FRMag - Ashawo Work na Work
« Ashawo Work na Work » : Comment les jeunes féministes ghanéennes transforment des horizons féministes en réalité
par Fatima B. Derby
En 2017, la campagne #ManifestezVotreSolidarité a mis en évidence la manière dont les jeunes féministes pouvaient construire un avenir féministe en étant là les unes pour les autres, en participant à des conversations transrégionales, en marchant en solidarité avec d'autres activistes et en collaborant entre les mouvements. (...)
< illustration : « Laisse-les pousser », par Gucora Andu