WHRDs are self-identified women and lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LBTQI) people and others who defend rights and are subject to gender-specific risks and threats due to their human rights work and/or as a direct consequence of their gender identity or sexual orientation.
WHRDs are subject to systematic violence and discrimination due to their identities and unyielding struggles for rights, equality and justice.
The WHRD Program collaborates with international and regional partners as well as the AWID membership to raise awareness about these risks and threats, advocate for feminist and holistic measures of protection and safety, and actively promote a culture of self-care and collective well being in our movements.
Risks and threats targeting WHRDs
WHRDs are exposed to the same types of risks that all other defenders who defend human rights, communities, and the environment face. However, they are also exposed to gender-based violence and gender-specific risks because they challenge existing gender norms within their communities and societies.
By defending rights, WHRDs are at risk of:
Physical assault and death
Intimidation and harassment, including in online spaces
Judicial harassment and criminalization
Burnout
A collaborative, holistic approach to safety
We work collaboratively with international and regional networks and our membership
to raise awareness about human rights abuses and violations against WHRDs and the systemic violence and discrimination they experience
to strengthen protection mechanisms and ensure more effective and timely responses to WHRDs at risk
We work to promote a holistic approach to protection which includes:
emphasizing the importance of self-care and collective well being, and recognizing that what care and wellbeing mean may differ across cultures
documenting the violations targeting WHRDs using a feminist intersectional perspective;
promoting the social recognition and celebration of the work and resilience of WHRDs ; and
building civic spaces that are conducive to dismantling structural inequalities without restrictions or obstacles
Our Actions
We aim to contribute to a safer world for WHRDs, their families and communities. We believe that action for rights and justice should not put WHRDs at risk; it should be appreciated and celebrated.
Promoting collaboration and coordination among human rights and women’s rights organizations at the international level to strengthen responses concerning safety and wellbeing of WHRDs.
Supporting regional networks of WHRDs and their organizations, such as the Mesoamerican Initiative for WHRDs and the WHRD Middle East and North Africa Coalition, in promoting and strengthening collective action for protection - emphasizing the establishment of solidarity and protection networks, the promotion of self-care, and advocacy and mobilization for the safety of WHRDs;
Increasing the visibility and recognition of WHRDs and their struggles, as well as the risks that they encounter by documenting the attacks that they face, and researching, producing, and disseminating information on their struggles, strategies, and challenges:
Mobilizing urgent responses of international solidarity for WHRDs at risk through our international and regional networks, and our active membership.
Related Content
Merci d'avoir participé à la création de nos Horizons féministes
Un grand MERCI d'avoir pris part au 13ème Forum international de l'AWID !
Toute l'équipe de l'AWID vous remercie de nous avoir rejoint pour ces quatre jours d'apprentissage et de célébrations, pour envisager, rêver et co-créer nos Horizons féministes.
Nous avons été incroyablement inspiré-e-s et enthousiasmé-e-s par tout ce travail collectif que nous avons accompli ensemble !
Pour plus d'images, d'inspiration et de ressources :
AWID began preparing this annual report just as the global pandemic began to unravel how we gather, organize and live our lives. It is impossible to review what we have done without COVID-19 tinting our assessment.
Co-Creating Feminist Realities is no longer just an AWID Forum theme - it is a rallying cry in response to a pandemic that has laid bare the failures of social, political and economic systems.
It is an urgently needed affirmation that there are other, more just ways of organizing our lives. During 2019 hundreds of groups shared their experiences and proposals for feminist realities with us, ranging from radical networks of community support in Latin America facilitating self-managed abortion, to practices of community-centered economies in Indonesia and community-centered food systems in India and the US, to a re-imagination and new practice of harm-free rites of passage in Sierra Leone. These are the experiences that will chart a path forward for a “new normal”.
Yet long histories of oppression and violence can make it difficult to imagine the possible. A key part of our work in 2019 was to spark these explorations through a toolkit AWID launched to support groups interested in unearthing the stories and aspirations that are the building blocks of feminist propositions.
While we focus on our proposals for a different world, we recognize the challenging context around us.
Through the Observatory on the Universality of Rights, Feminists for a Binding Treaty, Count Me In! and other alliances, AWID has continued to push back against unfettered corporate power and fascist and fundamentalist agendas that undermine women’s rights and gender justice. With dim prospects for transformative change through multilateral processes and limited responsiveness from most states, we are redoubling our efforts to ensure that feminist movements, in all their diversity, are resourced in ways that match the critical roles they play - supporting their communities, demanding rights and responding to crises. In 2019 we introduced feminist principles and approaches to ground-breaking funds like the Spotlight Initiative and the Equality Fund, and succeeded in leveraging resources through feminist reality seed grant funding from feminist funders.
As we look ahead, it is clear that the context is calling for a transformation of our organizing strategies:
we are learning to navigate global advocacy confined to online channels,
we grapple with the uncertainty of when and how we can convene in person, and
we use the tools at our disposal to tighten connections across local to global spheres.
AWID is embarking on a new membership model that lowers barriers to access and emphasizes opportunities for engagement and cross-member connection. We will continue to experiment with different online tools and processes for building community. Cross-movement engagement will stay at the center of our work. AWID’s actions in solidarity with oppressed movements and identities, even and especially where these are marginalized in feminist movements, are important to drive change and support broad and inclusive movements for all.
Crisis is not new to feminist and social movements.
We are resilient, we adapt, and we show up for each other. And we have to keep doing better. Thank you to all who are part of the journey with us.
The search for alternative means of food production based on environmental sustainability is gaining ground across regions. This worldwide search comes with a common characteristic: the need to involve rural people and particularly women, building on their local priorities and knowledge by employing the principle of agroecology.
Definition
Agroecology is a way of practicing agriculture or using technologies that do not harm the environment. It proposes breaking with the hegemonic rural development model based on large landed estates and single-crop plantations that benefit mostly agricultural businesses and entrenches social exclusion.
In family farming, agroecology manifests as a resistance to the current development model and its social, cultural, environmental, and economic problems. It opposes the lack of the farmer’s financial capital autonomy; and it symbolizes a resistance to the current agribusiness model.
Feminist perspective
Efforts based solely on agroecology may not be sufficient to solve all problems of women’s marginalization and invisibility. A feminist perspective is then crucial to analyze the norms associated with the idea of family as currently constituted as the perfect institution, as well as with the condition of women’s subordination.
In simpler terms, it is important to include in this debate a reflection on socially constructed gender roles to advance the emancipatory potential of agroecology.
Member states and women's rights advocates and organisations are gathering at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 13 - 24 March for the 61st Commission on the Status of Women to address ‘women’s economic empowerment’ in the context of Sustainable Development Goal 5.
Whilst AWID is looking forward to physically meeting those of you who will be in New York, we want to engage with all those who cannot attend CSW, and as much as possible, amplify your voices in relevant spaces.
Continue reading to find out how to engage with AWID around CSW, whether you are attending physically or not.
Participate in an artistic takeover!
We are thrilled that AWID member Nayani Thiyagarajah is attending CSW this year and will take over the AWID Instagram. She will be available onsite to connect with other members for a possible feature on our Instagram. She will also explore possibilities of including some AWID members in a short film on the theme, ‘The personal is political’, a story of Nayani’s participation in this year’s CSW.
Nayani Thiyagarajah
Who is Nayani?
Nayani Thiyagarajah is a director, producer, and writer, dedicated to stories for the screen. A daughter of the Tamil diaspora, she calls Toronto home. For over 10 years, Nayani has worked in the arts and cultural industries. Her first independent feature documentary Shadeism: Digging Deeper (2015) had its World Premiere at the 2015 Zanzibar International Film Festival, where it won a Special Jury Prize. Nayani recently launched [RE]FRAME, with her producing partner Camaro West, a production company based out of Atlanta and Toronto, focused on re-framing the narratives around Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour through storytelling on screen.
On a more serious note, it should be noted that Nayani has a strange laugh, she's quite awkward, and her head is always in the clouds. She feels blessed beyond belief to create stories for the screen and play make believe for a living. Above all else, she believes in love.
Interested in meeting Nayani and being considered for inclusion in the film?
Send an email to membership@awid.org with the subject line “CSW Artistic Takeover”
By 13 March 2017
Please include your full name and country information.
Can't attend? Voice it!
If you are not able to attend CSW61 because of a travel ban, either due to the one imposed by the Trump administration or one you are facing from your own government, please share your story with us.
Send us messages you want heard in the United Nations spaces concerning funding, the impact of the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule, and the need to push back against all types of religious fundamentalisms. You can send these in the following formats:
Video: no longer than two minutes and sent through a file sharing folder (for example dropbox, google drive)
Audio: no longer than two minutes and sent through a file sharing folder (for example dropbox, google drive)
Image: you can share a photo or a poster of your message
Text: no longer than 200 words and sent in the body of an email or in a word document
AWID members tell us that connecting with other members at CSW is valuable. In such a huge advocacy space, it is useful to connect with others including activists working on similar issues, or originating from the same country or region. Recognising the importance of connecting for movement building, we invite you to:
Interested in connecting with other members @CSW61?
If you are attending the CSW, we’d love to see what’s going on through your eyes!
Show us by capturing a moment you find speaks to the energy in the CSW space, be it on or off site. We hope to publish some of your ‘images’ on our social media channels and share on awid.org.
You can send us:
colour and/ or black and white photographs with a title (if you wish) and
a caption (no longer than 100 words) about the story your image tells.
Please also include:
your full name and country of origin and
let us know if we can publish the information you shared (in part or in full).
Margarita is a feminist and LGBTIQA activist from Latin America; her passion is social transformation and collective wellbeing. She holds degrees in Psychology, Communications and Public Administration, as well as certificates in Public Policy, Leadership, Management & Decision Making. In her professional capacity, Margarita has had extensive experience with grassroots organizations, national and regional NGOs, universities and the public sector, developing facilitation, capacity building, political advocacy, communications & policy assessment.
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Special Projects Manager
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While active participants on the front lines of protests and uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), women became invisible, absent from processes of formation of the new states, and excluded from decision-making roles, responsibilities, and positions in the aftermath of the uprisings. Except in rare cases, men dominated leadership positions in transitional structures, including the constitutional reform and electoral committees[i]. Subsequent elections brought very few women to parliamentary and ministerial positions.
Additionally, a strong and immediate backlash against women and women’s rights has clearly emerged in the aftermath. The rise of new religious fundamentalist groups with renewed patriarchal agendas aiming to obliterate previous gains of the women’s movements even in countries with longer histories of women’s rights, such as Tunisia, has been very alarming.
The varying contexts of governance and transition processes across the MENA countries presents an important opportunity for women human rights defenders to shape the future of these democracies. However, the lack of prioritization of women’s rights issues in the emerging transitions and the aforementioned backlash have posed a variety of complex challenges for the women’s movements. Faced with these enormous challenges and possibilities, women’s rights activists have been struggling to forge ahead a democratic future inclusive and only possible with women’s rights and equality. The particular historical and contextual legacies that impact women’s movements in each country continue to bear on the current capacities, strategies, and overall preparedness of the women’s movements to take on such a challenge. Burdened with daily human rights violations in one context, with lack of resources and tools in another, with organizational tensions in a third, in addition to the constant attacks on them as activists, women human rights defenders have voiced their desire to be more equipped with knowledge and tools to be effective and proactive in engaging with these fast-changing environments. Conceptual clarity and greater understanding of notions and practices of democratization, transitional justice tools and mechanisms, political governance and participation processes, international and local mechanisms, movement building strategies, constitutional reform possibilities, and secularization of public space and government are important steps to defining future strategic action.
It is clear that feminists and women’s rights activists cannot wait for women’s rights to be addressed after transitions – issues must be addressed as the new power configurations are forming. Experiences of earlier moments of transition, namely from colonial rule, have clearly demonstrated that women’s rights have to be inherently part of the transition movement towards a more just and equal society.
What is included?
This publication represents a research mapping of key resources, publications and materials on transitions to democracy and women’s rights in different countries of the world that have undergone such processes, such as: Indonesia, Chile, South Africa, Nepal, Mexico, Argentina, Poland, Ukraine, as well as within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It provides bibliographic information and short summaries of resources which succinctly identify the contextual changes and challenges facing women in those particular transitional moments, as well as clearly delineates the ways in which women’s rights activists sought to confront those challenges and what lessons were learned.
A key criterion in the selection process was the primacy of a women’s rights/feminist perspective; the few exceptions to this rule offer a unique and, we hope, useful, perspective on the issues that women’s rights organizations and activists face in the region. The texts have been selected to provide a wide range of information, relevant to women human rights defenders working from the grassroots to the international level, across issues (including different case studies and examples), from different perspectives (international human rights bodies, academic institutions, NGO contributions, activists’ experiences, etc.), and at a wide range of levels of complexity, in order to respond to the needs of as many readers as possible.
The mapping clusters resources under six major categories:
Transitions to Democracy
Political Participation
Movement Building
Transitional Justice
Constitutional/Legal Reform
Responses to Fundamentalisms
[i]This and other context points are drawn from the report from Pre AWID Forum meeting on Women’s Rights in Transitions to Democracy: Achieving Rights, Resisting Backlash, collaboratively organized by AWID, the Equality Without Reservation Coalition, Global Fund for Women and Women’s Learning Partnership
Sara AbuGhazal es una feminista palestina que vive en Beirut. Es cofundadora de Sawt al-Niswa, un colectivo que produce conocimiento en Beirut. Es codirectora de The Knowledge Workshop [«Taller del conocimiento»], una organización feminista con sede en Beirut que trabaja en la historia oral y el archivo feminista. Sara es actualmente la Coordinadora Regional de la Coalición Regional para Defensoras de los Derechos Humanos en el Medio Oriente y África del Norte.
Sara lucha para ayudar a crear espacios de transformación feminista y solidaridad. Su trabajo se centra principalmente en la construcción de movimientos sostenibles en la región del MOAN. Sara se empeña en temas de la Palestina, la producción de conocimiento y la transformación feminista. Publica regularmente en sawtalniswa.org y su obra de ficción también aparece en la revista electrónica Romman
