Confronting Extractivism & Corporate Power
Women human rights defenders (WHRDs) worldwide defend their lands, livelihoods and communities from extractive industries and corporate power. They stand against powerful economic and political interests driving land theft, displacement of communities, loss of livelihoods, and environmental degradation.
Why resist extractive industries?
Extractivism is an economic and political model of development that commodifies nature and prioritizes profit over human rights and the environment. Rooted in colonial history, it reinforces social and economic inequalities locally and globally. Often, Black, rural and Indigenous women are the most affected by extractivism, and are largely excluded from decision-making. Defying these patriarchal and neo-colonial forces, women rise in defense of rights, lands, people and nature.
Critical risks and gender-specific violence
WHRDs confronting extractive industries experience a range of risks, threats and violations, including criminalization, stigmatization, violence and intimidation. Their stories reveal a strong aspect of gendered and sexualized violence. Perpetrators include state and local authorities, corporations, police, military, paramilitary and private security forces, and at times their own communities.
Acting together
AWID and the Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition (WHRD-IC) are pleased to announce “Women Human Rights Defenders Confronting Extractivism and Corporate Power”; a cross-regional research project documenting the lived experiences of WHRDs from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
We encourage activists, members of social movements, organized civil society, donors and policy makers to read and use these products for advocacy, education and inspiration.
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"Women Human Rights Defenders confronting extractive industries: an overview of critical risks and Human Rights obligations" is a policy report with a gender perspective. It analyses forms of violations and types of perpetrators, quotes relevant human rights obligations and includes policy recommendations to states, corporations, civil society and donors.
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"Weaving resistance through action: Strategies of Women Human Rights Defenders confronting extractive industries" is a practical guide outlining creative and deliberate forms of action, successful tactics and inspiring stories of resistance.
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The video “Defending people and planet: Women confronting extractive industries” puts courageous WHRDs from Africa, Asia, and Latin America in the spotlight. They share their struggles for land and life, and speak to the risks and challenges they face in their activism.
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Challenging corporate power: Struggles for women’s rights, economic and gender justice is a research paper outlining the impacts of corporate power and offering insights into strategies of resistance.
Share your experience and questions!
◾️ How can these resources support your activism and advocacy?
◾️ What additional information or knowledge do you need to make the best use of these resources?
Thank you!
AWID acknowledges with gratitude the invaluable input of every Woman Human Rights Defender who participated in this project. This project was made possible thanks to your willingness to generously and openly share your experiences and learnings. Your courage, creativity and resilience is an inspiration for us all. Thank you!
Related Content
Workshop Methodology
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Workshop Methodology
Want to bring people together to strengthen resistance? This methodology for workshops offers group exercises to increase collective knowledge and power, with options to adapt to your needs.
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Global Day of Action
Movements marching globally for climate justice.
📅 Saturday, November 15, 2025
📍 Multiple Locations
Rapport Annuel 2013

Notre rapport annuel 2013 retrace les temps forts du travail que nous avons réalisé au cours de l'année, afin de contribuer à l'avancement des droits des femmes et de l'égalité des genres à travers le monde.
Qu'en est-il de la justice climatique? Est-ce vraiment le moment d'effectuer autant de vols internationaux ?
Nous nous posons la même question et nous pensons qu'elle n’admet pas de réponse simple. Le Forum de l’AWID pourrait être, pour de nombreux participant·e·s, l'un des rares voyages internationaux qu'ils·elles effectueront au cours de leur vie. La pandémie nous a révélé les possibilités mais aussi les limites des espaces virtuels pour la construction de mouvements : rien ne vaut une rencontre en personne. Les mouvements ont besoin de connexions transfrontalières pour renforcer leur pouvoir collectif face aux menaces qui pèsent sur eux, notamment la crise climatique. Nous sommes d'avis que le prochain Forum de l'AWID pourrait ouvrir un espace stratégique afin d'organiser ces conversations et explorer les alternatives qui se posent aux voyages internationaux. L'élément hybride du Forum est une composante importante de cette exploration.
Crear | Résister | Transform: A Walkthrough of the Festival! | Content Snippet EN
As heteropatriarchal capitalism continues to force us into consumerism and compliance, we are finding that our struggles are being siloed and separated by physical as well as virtual borders.
And with the additional challenges of a global pandemic to overcome, this divide-and-conquer strategy has been favorable for the proliferation of exploitation across many areas.
Yet, From September 1 to September 30, 2021, Crear | Résister | Transform: a festival for feminist movements! took us on a journey of what it means to embody our realities in virtual spaces. At the festival, feminist activists from across the world came together, not only to share experiences of hard-won freedoms, resistances, and cross-borders solidarities, but to articulate what a transnational form of togetherness could look like.
It is this togetherness that has the potential to defy borders, weaving a vision for a future that is transformative because it is abolitionist and anti-capitalist. Spread out over a month, across digital infrastructures that we occupied with our queerness, our resistance, and our imaginaires, the festival showed a way to deviate from the systems that make us complicit in the oppression of others and ourselves.
Though Audre Lorde taught us that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house, Sara Ahmed showed us that we can misuse them. Because we had to make space for assembly, in spite of all the other demands on our time, it became possible to imagine a disruption to the reality of heteropatriarchal capitalism.
Now, if we understand assembly as a form of pleasure, then it becomes possible to make the link between transgressive pleasure and transnational/transdigital resistance. Between the kinds of pleasure that challenges borders on the one hand, and queerness, campiness, land and indigenous struggle, anti-capitalism, and anti-colonial organizing on the other.
This issue attempted to capture a sense of how the festival’s exercise in assembly took on multiple shapes and imaginations. Beyond direct collaborations with some of its speakers and dreamers, we brought on a plethora of other voices from the Global South to be in conversation with many of its themes and subjects. Below is a map of some of the festival’s panels that most inspired us.
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What We Reject:
- Market-based false solutions
- Ecosystem service trading
- Green neoliberal economies mining
- Geo-engineering
- Fossil fuels
- Military spending over climate funds
- Climate finance as loans
2018: Supporting feminist movements to thrive and disrupt
This report looks back and celebrates the first year of AWID’s new strategic plan as we took our first steps towards our desired outcomes of supporting feminist movements to thrive, challenging anti-rights agendas and co-creating feminist realities.

We worked with feminists to disrupt anti-rights agendas, achieving important victories fought and won within the United Nations system when ground-breaking language on structural discrimination, sexual rights, and states’ obligations were included in a number of resolutions. Yes, the multilateral system is in crisis and in need of serious strengthening but these victories are important as they contribute to the legitimacy of feminist demands, providing feminist movements with more pressure points and momentum to advance our agendas.
We tried and tested different ways to build knowledge with feminist movements through webinars, podcasts and ‘live’ conversations. We developed facilitation guides with popular educators to reclaim knowledge in the interest of social and gender justice, even about a topic as seemingly opaque as illicit funding flows. We commissioned blogs and opinions about how feminist groups fund and resource themselves and threw light on the threats facing our human rights systems.
Within AWID, we practiced and learned from our shared leadership approach, and told the story of the trials and tribulations of co-leading a global, virtual organization. We don’t have a definitive answer to what feminist leadership looks like, but we know, a year on, that a continued commitment to collective experimentation and learning has enabled us to keep building an organization that we are all excited to contribute to.
As we look back on this year, we want to thank all our friends and supporters, colleagues and companions, who have given their time and shared their wealth of knowledge and wisdom with us. We want to thank our members who helped frame our strategic plan and joined us to make feminist demands. We could not do this work without you.
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Rosalinda Pérez
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con Nazik Abylgaziva, Amaranta Gómez Regalado, Cindy Weisner y Lucineia Freitas
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📰 Solidaridad Feminista Transnacional: un Antídoto contra el Ecocidio
Esta publicación (zine) colaborativa surgió de una serie de círculos de intercambio que reunieron a feministas de todo el mundo durante 2022. El propósito fue intercambiar ideas y aprender mutuamente de qué manera las comunidades responden a la crisis climática en diversos contextos locales.
2022: Transitions, Inspiration & Collective Power
Our strategic plan “Feminist Realities” completed its final year at the end of 2022. For the past five years, this bold framework pushed us to go beyond feminist futures and to recognize the feminist solutions and ways of life that already exist in the here and now. Realities that must be uplifted, celebrated, and popularized. The Feminist Economies We Love multimedia story project and Our:Resource knowledge hub on autonomous ways to resource feminist activism are just two examples of this visionary work, always deeply collective with diverse feminist movements.
Download the full 2022 Annual review

2022 was a year of transitions in AWID.
With this reflection on the year, we invite you to celebrate with us beautiful closures and promising beginnings. Change and transitions are an inseparable part of life and movements, which we seek to embrace with intention and care.
CFA 2023 - Who, where, when - ES
Dónde: Bangkok, Tailandia, y en línea
Quiénes: Aproximadamente unxs 2.500 feministas de todo el mundo participarán en persona, y otrxs 3.000 participarán de manera virtual
Estefania "Nia" Zuniga
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Sexting como feminista: el humor en la revolución digital feminista
por Chinelo Onwualu
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COP30: Reclaim climate action from corporate capture
As world leaders gather in Brazil, feminist movements are advocating, gathering and disrupting the status quo- at COP30 and beyond! We're heading alongside other feminists to Belém, Brazil for COP30, from 10 November – 21 November 2025, where we will continue to denounce false solutions.
Ritu
Ritu est une technologue féministe qui apporte son expérience au secteur non lucratif, animée par une passion pour l'utilisation d'approches innovantes pour trouver des solutions technologiques féministes. Titulaire d'un master en technologie des applications informatiques de l'Institut indien de technologie, son rôle au sein de l'AWID couvre un large spectre de responsabilités. De la supervision de la sécurité numérique et gestion des serveurs à l'administration des bases de données, en passant par le renforcement des capacités, l'évaluation technologique, la mise en œuvre de logiciels et de solutions cloud, Ritu veille à ce que l'infrastructure informatique de l'AWID soit résiliente et efficace. Avant de rejoindre l'AWID, elle a joué un rôle central dans l'avancement des initiatives technologiques des secteurs de la promotion de la santé et de l'environnement, alimentée par son engagement à tirer parti de la technologie pour le bien social.