While armed conflicts in Africa often make international media headlines, few reports cover the strategic, brave and critical work of African women's rights activists who expose and respond to violations, negotiate for peace and fight for democratic change during and after conflict. This session features African feminists who have joined and mobilized others in confronting recent conflicts and political crises in their countries. They will share strategies and challenges, and engage with session participants around effective activism on conflict, peace and security.

This session will generate a structured and moderated dialogue on: the connections between individual socialization and agency and organizational culture and change; between organizational culture and the building of change movements; and on building connections across diverse organizations for women’s empowerment and gender equality.

Different from the global movement against the multilateral trade regime of the World Trade Organization (WTO), protests against bilateral and biregional Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) are confined to few countries and regions, and scattered. IGTN and WIDE with their feminist view of the gender-trade-development nexus wish to include a perspective of social and gender justice into civil society interventions in order to counter corporate-driven trade liberalization policies. This workshop will be used as a platform: to share experience about successful mobilization against FTAs in terms of campaigns, protests and advocacy work, and about difficulties faced in organizing around trade issues, to highlight linkages between trade liberalization and other areas of concern among feminists, to identify key issues for future mobilization against FTAs from a gender perspectives, to identify issues controversial amongst CSOs and feminist organizations in different countries/regions, to discuss strategies and allies for movement building.

By presenting our activist experiences from within our organization, we will debate on the need and legitimacy of including our voice as women sex workers in the larger women's movement.

This panel will: address rising religious fundamentalisms as a main obstacle to the realization of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of societies, especially for women and youth in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE); share the strategies used to address these challenges, which include building youth movements and promoting positive attitudes towards SRHR through advocacy campaigns aimed at making policymakers accountable to women and youth; and facilitate discussion on long-term strategies of strengthening our movements.

For the past 15 years, the call for consideration of violence against women as a human rights issue has served as a platform for advocacy within the women's movement. The message of women's rights as human rights transcended many boundaries of region, language, culture, identity and political thought. Now the movement finds itself at a juncture where it must decide whether there is a new "big ask" for advancing work on violence against women.

The relationships between Maori (indigenous) and Pakeha (non-indigenous) people working towards Maori self-determination in Aotearoa / New Zealand are challenging and transformative. In this panel, young women activists from both movements will explore issues of intergenerational relationships, cross-cultural working, and the gender dimensions of this work, both within and across the movements.

The process of creating lasting social change often involves drawing upon the strengths of multiple -- often unrelated -- actors. This session will examine the case study and lessons derived from a comprehensive campaign to liberalize the abortion laws of Colombia.

This session will look at HIV/AIDS from the lens of power and inequality in order to define the many ways that this urgent challenge facing women presents opportunities for movement-building and energizing women's rights agendas. This workshop will provide a space to explore practically what women's movement can do differently to bring the HIV/AIDS agenda and positive women's voice into the heart of more compelling women's rights strategies for change on this important agenda and many others. This session will combine an interactive panel, a multimedia presentation and small group work. The panel, including a synthesis of key highlights from many of the other HIV/AIDS workshops at the Forum, will frame the analysis and strategy work that will be done in small groups and at the end, shared in plenary. There will also be space for Q&A and some moderated debate.

Tired of Monitoring and Evaluation Frameworks that are completely disconnected from your work? Or are you reluctant to measure the impact of your work at all because it seems too difficult to capture? Are donor demands and evaluation requirements bogging your organization down? Have you been trying to find tools and indicators that effectively measure change in ways that help you learn and improve, not just report to donors? Bring your questions and ideas to this interactive session where presenters will share some alternative feminist M&E tools and participants will share their experiences. If we want to talk about significant change and impact in women’s lives we urgently need systems for evaluating our work that take into account the unpredictability of the context, the complex power dynamics with which we work, and the difficulty of assessing our contribution to change.

The session will highlight the work of the diversity of women’s organizations and networks working for women's rights in the Caribbean. Panelists will speak of successes as well as challenges and opportunities. The session will illustrate the evolution of women’s organizing in the region from the work of organizations that address a broad range of issues to self-help groups that focus on issues of concern to communities of women with specific needs. It will explore the different contexts within which women organize and how links might be made between different movements and networks so as to address issues of concern to all women. The audience will be invited to share their own experiences of how they have dealt with linkages and transitions and how they have handled problems that arise. 

This session will contribute to the organizational strengthening of feminist youth organizations in other regions through the recognition and analysis of the opportunities and challenges experienced by feminist youth organizations in Latin America.

This session will address the issue of movement building from the point of view of India's minority Muslim women. It hopes to demonstrate how the struggle for rights in the face of domestic abuse and social violence is inseparable from a struggle for a dignified livelihood and therefore doubly difficult and complex, especially in the current political context.

How can women homeworkers’ stories broaden mass-based participation? Participatory Video (PV) is a powerful medium for sharing stories and heightening social connections, thus stimulating growth for participation. Two women activists weave in participatory and innovative approaches to re-live the PV experiences of homeworkers as they attain ownership of stories that continue to strengthen and inspire the organization.

The Maputo Plan of Action, recognized by the African Union Ministers of Health, outlines actions to secure sexual and reproductive rights and health (SRRH) in Africa. This session will familiarize advocates with the content of the Maputo Plan of Action and help them use it to build a movement for SRRH.

Human trafficking is a huge problem in the CEE-NIS region, where different countries have common causes, forms and consequences of trafficking. This means that women's NGOs, which are important actors in anti-trafficking action, have to develop a common strategy of activity and cooperation with other social movements (youth, human rights etc).

This session will present a book titled, "América Latina, Un Debate Pendiente. Aportes a la economía y a la política con una visión de género". Topics of discussion include: Macro-economics, gender, development, trade, work flexibility, the debate on social reproduction, and the non-economic dimensions of the economy.

Gender inequality fuels the spread of HIV and AIDS among women, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where women comprise 60% of all people living with HIV and AIDS. Yet, governments are under-investing in meeting women’s specific HIV prevention, treatment and care needs and organizations that work on women’s health, human rights have struggled to find sustainable funding to engage in the response. This session will explore opportunities that donors, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, are creating to increase investments in women and girls and strategies that women’s organizations have used to raise the money to lead women-centered responses.

This session looks retrospectively at women's organizing in a number of countries in South Asia, Latin America, West Africa, and the Middle East. It explores the impact of NGOization; shifts in funding and support, and in the structures, agendas and constituencies of women's movements, in these countries.

The objective of the session is to assess whether as a movement engaged in improving the situation of women using the law, we have been able to make the law work for women. Have we successfully built a women and law movement, and what kinds of evaluation methodologies contribute to movement building? How can we use data from these methodologies to evaluate frameworks like gender equality and gender mainstreaming? How do we capture and evaluate the movement building of our work, and what are some examples of innovative indicators and evaluation frameworks? The session hopes to come up with strategies to push for implementation as well as assess whether law is the best tool to achieve gender equality and deal with the discrimination women face.

This session will: Explore and show the specificity of religious fundamentalisms in the FSU(former Soviet Union) region and its causes; Share experiences on how to challenge and draw attention to the growing religious fundamentalisms in FSU; Show various forms of its display including the impact of traditional values under the slogan of reviving national identity and cultural otherness; Raise awareness of the threats of fundamentalisms to basic WHR (women's human rights) and women’s movements; Exchange views and experiences on mobilizing women from Muslim contexts and involving them in global women’s movements; Discuss future common activities to widen the field of study involving other players and reflecting international experience; Develop common strategies for increasing women’s activism in Muslim contexts for WHR advancement.

This session will present the results of a study, which consists of an analytical map of the principal regional actors in sexual and reproductive health and rights within Latin America. The study provides strategic lessons from experience, identifies needs for institutional development, and provides guidance on the most promising avenues for regional cooperation. We will discuss benefits, achievements, strengths and weaknesses of sexual/reproductive and health/rights networks.

In 2008 AWID conducted a global survey of women’s rights organizations working with young women. The results provide groundbreaking data on different strategies for working with young women, funding sources and availability by sector, obstacles to resource mobilization and views on the role of donors. In Part 1 of this session leading young feminist activists will engage session participants in a critical analysis of the research findings and the resource mobilization challenges faced by organizations working with young women. In Part 2 participants will devise concrete strategies that women’s rights organizations and donors can implement to secure resources for this vital work. Participants will be asked to contribute ideas for the exciting new Young Feminist Fund which will structure its funding around the specific strategies for organizing used by younger activists. This session invites participants of ALL generations and anyone who wants to learn more about working with young women to a lively discussion about the future of our movement.

Inciting insubordination: this participatory workshop is not a talking heads session. It is designed to draw on our individual and collective power and wisdom to re-energise, reconnect and re-unite. 14 years into our democracy, women have achieved a progressive Constitutional-legislative framework that advances women's rights and gender-equality. Yet  the majority of the poorest, the unemployed and those bearing the impact of violence and HIV and AIDS remains female. For those of us who spoke out against ex-President Mbeki's position on HIV/AIDS, Zimbabwe, GEAR and the Arms-deal, the likely next President of SA, Jacob Zuma's misogynistic comments are deeply disturbing.  This is an invitation to all South Africans: Come, participate and contribute your powerful energy, experience and ideas to support ourselves and our movements in this challenging moment.

The panel will explore the use of militia groups and armed forces to advance the agendas of State and non-state actors and the emergence of grassroots movements to expose, challenge and demand accountability for perpetrators of violence. This will be an exploration of the agendas of key States, private sectors such as oil and mining, and other non-state actors, in violent conflicts around the world and their role in the commission of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The panel will examine these issues with analysis of the agendas behind the conflicts in Iraq, Darfur, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Women’s leadership is critical in efforts to curb climate change. This session presents experiences from women in Africa who are part of a budding social movement focusing on the importance of a gendered perspective in the climate change debate. Presenters will share their experiences and stories from activist campaigns and advocacy with governments related to climate change. The presentations will cover issues related to natural disasters and environmental change; other sectors that are impacted by climate change, such as health, agriculture, and water; the role of corporations and macroeconomic policy in climate change; as well as an analysis of the financing issues related to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Through the lens of non-normative sexuality and with reference to the queer and sexual rights movements, this session will address the exclusion of disabled women and their sexuality by the women’s movement and develop strategies and alliances for inclusion and collaboration.

Occupying of public space is one of the ways in which movements can be strengthened. We will be exploring the use of music, rhythms, slogans, etc. to give visibility to feminist movements and to involve grassroots women’s groups who might not otherwise feel themselves sufficiently prepared to occupy these spaces.

This interactive session will explore the impact of generational shifts between NGO leaders who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s to those who came into activism later. While generational change is nothing new, there are particular issues that social change organizations are experiencing in this particular transfer. The session will explore how different generations of women activists view each other, ideas for creating mutual mentoring, and ways to build a shared vision and trust. We will also look at the types of structures and practices that support new leadership. Information from studies of changing NGO leadership in the US and Canada will be a presented as participants share their own experiences. Finally, the session will ask those attending to consider what they can do to support vibrant intergenerational feminist movement building in coming decades.

Many lessons have been learned over recent years about effective strategizing for reproductive rights. Latin America has seen victories and challenges across the entire region. This panel brings together the activists on the front lines to share their efforts and experiences.

This session shares women's diverse and context-specific strategies in Indonesia, Pakistan and Iran to counter political, cultural and religious impositions. Discussion will focus on the challenges of women negotiating rights within intersecting power contestations at macro, meso and micro levels. Speakers will problematise and interrogate "civil society", "politicised islam" and "democratic processes".

The goal of this session is to bring forth specific examples of strategic partnerships between human rights organizations in the global north and south that have lead to dramatic changes in human rights discourse, national politics and helped advance social justice for women in regions across the world. This interactive panel will offer insights into how human rights principles can be translated successfully into practice through the use of traditional and innovative legal strategies such as the documentation of human rights violations, reporting to international bodies and national and international litigation. The panelists will talk from personal experience about how collaborative partnerships have helped create new opportunities for action, maximized the impact of their work and enabled them to share the benefits of progress.

Our group brings together Palestinian and Jewish feminists from Israel working to promote feminist voices in the public sphere and especially advocating feminism as a necessary and complementary component of restorative justice in the Middle East. In the panel we discuss our experience during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, when we mobilized a feminist coalition which spearheaded larger opposition to the war inside Israel. We draw from this experience and explore ways to build feminist movements – both constituencies and institutions – considering the special conditions of our local societies. The questions we ask are: What are our visions and strategies for the future? How can we build a common platform among women of different experiences, identities and beliefs? What would be the best way to deal with the growing NGO-ization, the parliamentary parties and the multiple existing feminist organizations? 

This session focuses on the participation of the women's movement in the peace process and political transition of Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. We will look at the gains made by the women's peace movement in terms of women's participation in political decision making in post-conflict and transitional governments; as well as examine the challenges women face to build a movement strong enough to efficiently contribute to the return of peace and security in the region.

This session will analyze alternative models and development practices from a women’s rights and gender equality perspective. Speakers will share their perspectives on current development practices and their thoughts on the lack of new alternative paradigms. Concrete experiences and perspectives from the ground and from women’s organizations will complement this session as well as ensure that the debate focuses on the reality that people burdened by poverty actually face.

In 2008 AWID conducted a global survey of women’s rights organizations working with young women. The results provide groundbreaking data on different strategies for working with young women, funding sources and availability by sector, obstacles to resource mobilization and views on the role of donors. In Part 1 of this session leading young feminist activists will engage session participants in a critical analysis of the research findings and the resource mobilization challenges faced by organizations working with young women. In Part 2 participants will devise concrete strategies that women’s rights organizations and donors can implement to secure resources for this vital work. Participants will be asked to contribute ideas for the exciting new Young Feminist Fund which will structure its funding around the specific strategies for organizing used by younger activists. This session invites participants of ALL generations and anyone who wants to learn more about working with young women to a lively discussion about the future of our movement.

Inciting insubordination: this participatory workshop is not a talking heads session. It is designed to draw on our individual and collective power and wisdom to re-energise, reconnect and re-unite. 14 years into our democracy, women have achieved a progressive Constitutional-legislative framework that advances women's rights and gender-equality. Yet  the majority of the poorest, the unemployed and those bearing the impact of violence and HIV and AIDS remains female. For those of us who spoke out against ex-President Mbeki's position on HIV/AIDS, Zimbabwe, GEAR and the Arms-deal, the likely next President of SA, Jacob Zuma's misogynistic comments are deeply disturbing.  This is an invitation to all South Africans: Come, participate and contribute your powerful energy, experience and ideas to support ourselves and our movements in this challenging moment.