AWID Forum: Co-creating Feminist Futures

In September 2016, the 13th AWID international Forum brought together in Brazil over 1800 feminists and women’s rights advocates in a spirit of resistance and resilience.

This section highlights the gains, learnings and resources that came out of our rich conversations. We invite you to explore, share and comment!


What has happened since 2016?

One of the key takeaways from the 2016 Forum was the need to broaden and deepen our cross-movement work to address rising fascisms, fundamentalisms, corporate greed and climate change.

With this in mind, we have been working with multiple allies to grow these seeds of resistance:

And through our next strategic plan and Forum process, we are committed to keep developing ideas and deepen the learnings ignited at the 2016 Forum.

What happens now?

The world is a much different place than it was a year ago, and it will continue to change.

The next AWID Forum will take place in the Asia Pacific region (exact location and dates to be announced in 2018).

We look forward to you joining us!

About the AWID Forum

AWID Forums started in 1983, in Washington DC. Since then, the event has grown to become many things to many peoples: an iterative process of sharpening our analyses, vision and actions; a watershed moment that reinvigorates participants’ feminisms and energizes their organizing; and a political home for women human rights defenders to find sanctuary and solidarity.

Learn more about previous Forums

Related Content

Body

Upasana Agarwal

Forgotten Song
“Forgotten Song” [«Canción Olvidada»]
Ode to the Moon
“Ode to the Moon” [Oda a la Luna»]
Vapour and Fire
“Vapour and Fire” [«Vapor y Fuego»]

Sobre Upasana Agarwal

Upasana Agarwal
Upasana es unx ilustradorx y artista no binarie de Calcuta, India. Su obra explora narrativas identitarias y personales, que empean restos o evidencias visuales de los contextos con los que trabaja. Le atraen especialmente los diseños en patrones que, para ellx, comunican verdades complejas sobre el pasado, el presente y el futuro. Cuando Upasana no está ilustrando, organiza y dirige un centro de arte comunitario queer y trans de la ciudad.

Snippet - Home page promo WITM - EN

"Where is the money for feminist organizing?"

Building on our 20-year history of mobilizing more and better funding for feminist-led social change, AWID invites you to complete the new iteration of our flagship survey, WITM.

START THE SURVEY Learn more

Snippet FEA Principles of work Transparency (EN)

A pink umbrella

TRANSPARENCY

Florence Adong-Ewoo

Florence était une militante des droits des personnes handicapées qui travaillait avec plusieurs organisations de femmes handicapées en Ouganda.

Elle a également occupé le poste de présidente de l’Association des femmes handicapées du district de Lira, ainsi que du caucus des conseillères du district de Lira. Formée en tant que conseillère pour personnes handicapées et parents d'enfants handicapés, elle a soutenu de nombreux projets appelant à une plus grande représentation des personnes handicapées.

Elle est morte dans un accident de moto.


 

Florence Adong-Ewoo, Uganda

Contributors of toolkit (WITM landing page)

We would like to thank the contributors and advisors of this toolkit:

  • Angelika Arutyunova
  • Cindy Clark
  • Kamardip Singh
  • Martin Redfern
  • Pei Yao Chen
  • Srilatha Batliwala
  • Veronica Vidal

    Download the Toolkit in PDF

Comprendre le contexte des menaces antidroits

Chapitre 2

Bien plus de la moitié de la population mondiale est aujourd’hui dirigée par l’extrême droite. C’est sur cette toile de fond que défenseur·e·s des droits humains et féministes luttent pour « tenir bon », protéger le multilatéralisme et le système international des droits humains, alors que leurs engagements les exposent à de violentes répressions. Ces institutions sont cependant de plus en plus soumises aux intérêts du secteur privé. Les grandes entreprises, surtout les sociétés transnationales, siègent à la table des négociations et occupent des fonctions de leadership dans plusieurs institutions multilatérales, l’ONU notamment. Le lien entre ultranationalisme, restriction de l’espace civique et emprise des entreprises a un impact considérable sur la réalisation ou non des droits humains pour tout le monde.

Protester holding a flyer that reads "Danger - Trump and the Far Right."
© Alisdare Hickson / Flickr
Danger - Trump and the Far Right.

Sommaire

  • Nationalisme et ultranationalisme
  • Emprise des entreprises : le pouvoir débridé des entreprises met nos droits en danger
  • Répression et restriction des espaces civiques pour les activistes féministes et les défenseur·e·s des droits humains des femmes et des personnes LGBTIQ+
  • Histoire du mouvement de la résistance. L’Article 16 de la CEDAW : vers une réforme des codes de la famille discriminatoires dans les contextes musulmans
     

Lire le chapitre complet >

What Our Members Say - FR

Ce que disent nos membres

Snippet FEA Get Involved Story 4 (ES)

¡INVOLÚCRATE!

Sigue a Unión Red Solidaria en Facebook y Twitter

Apoya el trabajo de Solidarity Network Union donando aquí

Sigue a OTRAS en Twitter, Instagram y Facebook

Apoya el trabajo de OTRAS donando aquí

Marceline Loridan-Ivens

Born in 1928, Marceline worked as an actress, a screenwriter, and a director.

She directed The Birch-Tree Meadow in 2003, starring Anouk Aimee, as well as several other documentaries. She was also a holocaust survivor. She was just fifteen when she and her father were both arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. The three kilometres between her father in Auschwitz and herself in Birkenau were an insurmountable distance, which she writes about in one of her seminal novels “But You Did Not Come Back.”

In talking about her work, she once said: "All I can say is that everything I can write, everything I can unveil — it's my task to do it.”


 

Marceline Loridan-Ivens, France

FRMag - United against violence (ES)

Juntas contra la violencia

por Karina Ocampo

A un rincón escondido de Chiapas, México, llegamos mujeres y disidencias sexuales para organizar nuestras acciones. (...)

Leer

< arte: «Proyecto fotográfico: La muerte sale por el Oriente», de Sonia Madrigal

The Crear, Résister, Transform Story by Coumba Toure

A magical experience of feminist story telling led by pan-African feminist Coumba Toure, performing in the age old tradition of West African griots.

And we gathered again 
We gathered our stories our strength 
our songs
our tears 
our rage 
our dreams 
our success
our failures
And we pull them all together 
In one big bowl to share 
for a moon of thoughts 
And we stay in touch 
We shake each others minds 
we caress each other souls
While our hands still are tied 
And our kisses and hugs are banned 
Yet we grow stronger by the hour 
Weaving together our voices
Crossing the sound barriers 
as we speak in tongues 

We are getting louder and louder 
We know about differences from others 
and from each other so we are stitching our beauties into patchwork or thoughts
From our deepest learnings from our powers 
Sometimes we are surrounded by terror 
by confusions by dishonesty
But we wash out in the Ocean of love 
We are weavers of dreams 
To clothes or new world 
Thread after thread
As small as we are
Like little ants building our movement
Llike little drops building our rivers
 We take steps forward and steps backward 
Dancing our way back to sanity 
Sustain to the rhythm of our hearts keep 
Beating please don't not stop
And we are here transmitter of forgotten generosity 
drop after drop growing like the ocean 
growing like the river flowing from our souls .
showing our strength  to be  the  water 
that will clean this world
and we are gathering again can you feel us 
I would lie if I say I said I am 
Ok not to see you I do miss my people 
I miss your touch and
You unfiltered and unrecorded voices 
I miss our whispers and our screams 
Our cries of the aborted revolution 
We only want to give birth to new worlds 
 So fight to erase the borders between us 


And we gathered again 
We gathered our stories our strength 
our songs
our tears 
our rage 
our dreams 
our success
our failures
And we pull them all together In one big bowl to share 
For a moon of thoughts 
And we stay in touch 
We shake each others minds 
we caress each other souls
While our hands still are tied 
And our kisses and hugs are banned 
Yet we grow stronger by the hour 
Weaving together our voices
Crossing the sound barriers 
as we speak in tongues 
We are getting louder and louder 
We know about differences from others 
and from each other so we are stitching our beauties into patchwork or thoughts
From our deepest learnings from our powers Sometimes we are surrounded by terror by Confusions by dishonesty
But we watch out in the Ocean of love 
We are weavers of dreams 
To clothes or new world 
Thread after thread 
As small as we are like little ants building our movements
 like little drops building our rivers We take steps forward and steps backward 
dancing our way back to sanity 
Sustain to the rhythm of our hearts
keep beating please don't not stop
And we are here transmitter of forgotten generosity 
Drop after drop growing like the ocean 
growing like the river flowing from our souls 
showing our strength to be  the  water 
that will clean this world  
and we are gathering again can you feel us 
I would lie if I I said I am Ok
not to see you
I do miss my people
I miss your touch and
You unfiltered and unrecorded voices  
I miss  our  whispers  and  our screams 
Our cries over the aborted revolutions 
We only want to give birth to new worlds 
So fight to erase the borders between us 
Please don’’t stop

Snippet - CSW69 spaces to watch out for - EN

CSW69 spaces to watch out for

Learn more about upcoming CSW69 events that AWID is co-organizing

Snippet FEA We are living in a world right (FR)

Nous vivons dans un monde où la destruction de la Nature alimente notre économie mondiale actuelle. Même en période de crise climatique, les gouvernements continuent d'encourager les industries agricoles à grande échelle à se développer. Ces activités empoisonnent la terre, menacent la biodiversité et détruisent la production alimentaire et les moyens de subsistance locaux. Pendant ce temps, alors que les femmes produisent la majorité de la nourriture dans le monde, elles ne possèdent presque aucune terre.

Et si nous percevions la terre et la Nature non pas comme une propriété privée à exploiter, mais comme une totalité avec laquelle vivre, apprendre et coexister harmonieusement ? Et si nous réparions nos relations avec la terre et adoptions des alternatives plus durables qui nourrissent à la fois la planète et ses communautés?

Nous Sommes la Solution (NSS) est l'un des nombreux mouvements dirigés par des femmes qui s'efforcent d'atteindre cet objectif.

Voici leur histoire.

Dilma Ferreira Silva

Dilma Ferreira Silva was a leading Amazonian rights activist who fought for decades for the rights of people affected by dams.

She herself was among the 32,000 people displaced by the Tucuruí, a mega-hydroelectric power plant, built in Brazil during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

In 2005 Dilma was invited to join the Movement of Dam-Affected Peoples in Brazil (MAB), and in 2006 she formed the women’s collective, eventually becoming regional coordinator of the movement.

In speaking about her activism, her colleagues commented:

“She stood out very fast because she was always very fearless in the struggle.” 

Dilma lived in the rural settlement of Salvador Allende,50 kilometers from Tucuruí, and dedicated her life to better protect communities and the land affected by the construction of mega projects. She was especially concerned with the gendered impacts of such projects and advocated for women’s rights.

At a national MAB meeting in 2011, Dilma spoke to women affected by the dams, saying:

“We are the real Marias, warriors, fighters who are there, facing the challenge of daily struggle”.

In the following years, Dilma organized grassroots MAD groups and worked with the community to form farming cooperatives that created a better distribution of food for the community. They improved the commercialization of fishing, and developed a cistern project for safe drinking water. She was also an advocate for farmers whose lands were being coveted by ‘grileiros’ (land grabbers). 

On 22nd March 2019, at the age of 48, Dilma, her husband and their friend were all brutally murdered. The three killings came as part of a wave of violence in the Amazon against the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (translates as ‘landless workers’ movement’), environmental and indigenous activists.