Rose Marie Muraro
Advancing Universal Rights and Justice
Uprooting Fascisms and Fundamentalisms
Across the globe, feminist, women’s rights and gender justice defenders are challenging the agendas of fascist and fundamentalist actors. These oppressive forces target women, persons who are non-conforming in their gender identity, expression and/or sexual orientation, and other oppressed communities.
Discriminatory ideologies are undermining and co-opting our human rights systems and standards, with the aim of making rights the preserve of only certain groups. In the face of this, the Advancing Universal Rights and Justice (AURJ) initiative promotes the universality of rights - the foundational principle that human rights belong to everyone, no matter who they are, without exception.
We create space for feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements and allies to recognize, strategize and take collective action to counter the influence and impact of anti-rights actors. We also seek to advance women’s rights and feminist frameworks, norms and proposals, and to protect and promote the universality of rights.
Our actions
Through this initiative, we:
- Build knowledge: We support feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements by disseminating and popularizing knowledge and key messages about anti-rights actors, their strategies, and impact in the international human rights systems through AWID’s leadership role in the collaborative platform, the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs)*.
- Advance feminist agendas: We ally ourselves with partners in international human rights spaces including, the Human Rights Council, the Commission on Population and Development, the Commission on the Status of Women and the UN General Assembly.
- Create and amplify alternatives: We engage with our members to ensure that international commitments, resolutions and norms reflect and are fed back into organizing in other spaces locally, nationally and regionally.
- Mobilize solidarity action: We take action alongside women human rights defenders (WHRDs) including trans and intersex defenders and young feminists, working to challenge fundamentalisms and fascisms and call attention to situations of risk.
Related Content
Snippet - WCFM Database blurb 2 - En
Know a Funder? Add them to the Database!
Are you a funder? Or do you know funders that support feminist and gender justice movements? Apply to be a part of the Who Can Fund Me? Database now!
Alejandra Morena
Biography
Alejandra is passionate about women’s rights and gender justice. She dreams of creating a world that centers care – for people and nature. As a feminist human rights expert, she’s worked at the intersections of gender, climate, social and economic justice at various international organizations. Her areas of expertise include knowledge building and co-creation, research, facilitation, and advocacy. She holds a MA in Human Rights from the University of Essex and has authored and co-developed many publications, including the article “Enraged: Women and Nature”. The campaign Feminist Activism Without Fear draws on interviews and research carried out by Alejandra.
Originally from Argentina, she has lived and worked in several countries in Europe and Latin America over the past two decades. Alejandra loves photography, the sea, baking with her daughter, and enjoying food from around the world. As a mother, she aims to be a cycle breaker. Alejandra draws energy and inspiration from the amazing women in her life, who are spread in many corners of the world.
Position
Research & Advocacy Lead, Resourcing Feminist Movements
Add to stories
Off
sinppet-annual-budget-size-4-4
Key factors impacting
budget size
→Region
→Level of organizing
→Registration status
→Priorities and Agendas
I am interested in working for women’s rights. How do I get started?
Snippet - COP30 - Actions - EN
COP30 Events and Actions
08 - 16 November, 2025
January 2015: 1st drafting session on the outcome document for the 3rd FfD Conference
The 1st drafting session on the outcome document for the 3rd Financing for Development Conference
- In January 2015 a series of drafting sessions towards the final outcome document started at UN headquarters in New York.
- Prior to the first drafting session the co-facilitators of the Addis conference preparatory process presented an elements paper for the so-called “zero-draft” outcome document, as the basis for the intergovernmental negotiations of the outcome document.
- During the sessions, women’s rights organisations emphasised the need to treat the FfD and means of implementations (MOI) under the post 2015 processes separately, because FfD provides a unique opportunity for states to address the structural causes of inequality.
Snippet - COP30 - Mutual Aid and Community Care - EN
AWID Member Exclusive: Mutual Aid and Community Care Crafting Workshop
AWID members will explore and critically evaluate the role that mutual aid can play in resourcing our movements, through collective collage making.
📅 Wednesday, November 12, 2025
📍 The People’s COP Space
How much does registration cost?
This information will only be available when registration opens.
Snippet - WD2026 - Fiji_Georgia Link - EN
During Women Deliver, Movement Hubs in Fiji and Georgia are designing their own program rooted in their community to connect virtually to the Women Deliver Conference. Learn about their program!
Interested in hosting Movement Hubs for other global movement events and policy spaces? Get in touch with AWID’s Membership Team: membership@awid.org .
Young Feminist Activism
Organizing creatively, facing an increasing threat
Young feminist activists play a critical role in women’s rights organizations and movements worldwide by bringing up new issues that feminists face today. Their strength, creativity and adaptability are vital to the sustainability of feminist organizing.
At the same time, they face specific impediments to their activism such as limited access to funding and support, lack of capacity-building opportunities, and a significant increase of attacks on young women human rights defenders. This creates a lack of visibility that makes more difficult their inclusion and effective participation within women’s rights movements.
A multigenerational approach
AWID’s young feminist activism program was created to make sure the voices of young women are heard and reflected in feminist discourse. We want to ensure that young feminists have better access to funding, capacity-building opportunities and international processes. In addition to supporting young feminists directly, we are also working with women’s rights activists of all ages on practical models and strategies for effective multigenerational organizing.
Our Actions
We want young feminist activists to play a role in decision-making affecting their rights by:
-
Fostering community and sharing information through the Young Feminist Wire. Recognizing the importance of online media for the work of young feminists, our team launched the Young Feminist Wire in May 2010 to share information, build capacity through online webinars and e-discussions, and encourage community building.
-
Researching and building knowledge on young feminist activism, to increase the visibility and impact of young feminist activism within and across women’s rights movements and other key actors such as donors.
-
Promoting more effective multigenerational organizing, exploring better ways to work together.
-
Supporting young feminists to engage in global development processes such as those within the United Nations
-
Collaboration across all of AWID’s priority areas, including the Forum, to ensure young feminists’ key contributions, perspectives, needs and activism are reflected in debates, policies and programs affecting them.
Related Content
Body
Marilu Miranda
Charlotte Schaer
Fabiola Osorio Bernáldez
Remembering: A Tribute to WHRDs no longer with us
AWID honors feminists and Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) who have died and whose contributions to the advancement of human rights are very much missed.
Celebrating Activists and WHRDs
AWID’s WHRD Tribute is a photo exhibition featuring feminist, women’s rights and social justice activists from around the world who are no longer with us.
The Tribute was first launched in 2012, at AWID’s 12th International Forum, in Turkey. It took shape with a physical exhibit of portraits and biographies of feminists and activists who passed away. The initiative was described by Forum participants as being a unique, moving and energizing way to commemorate our collective history.
At the 13th International Forum in Brazil, we honored activists and WHRDs with a mural unveiling ceremony in four languages, a dance performance and a Brazilian ritual.
In between the events, the Tribute lives as an online gallery that is updated every year as part of the 16 Days Campaign Against Gender Based Violence (25 November – 10 December).
Contributions from all over the world
Since 2012, through our annual Tribute to Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) no longer with us, over 400 feminists and WHRDs from 11 regions and 80 countries have been featured.
AWID would like to thank the families and organizations who shared their personal stories and contributed to this memorial. We join them in continuing the remarkable work of these women and forging efforts to ensure justice is achieved in cases that remain in impunity.
Visit the WHRD Tribute online exhibit
The violence and threaths against WHRDs persist
In addition to paying homage to these incredible activists, the Tribute particularly sheds light on the plight of WHRDs who have been assassinated or disappeared.
One third of those featured in the Tribute were activists who have been murdered or disappeared in suspicious circumstances. They were specifically targeted for who they were and the work they did to challenge:
- State power
- Heteronormativity
- Fundamentalisms
- Corporations
- Patriarchy
- Organized Crime
- Corruption
- Militarization…
Women like Agnes Torres, from Mexico, was killed because of her gender identity and sexual orientation; or Cheryl Ananayo, an environmental activist from the Philippines was assassinated as she struggled against a mining company; or Ruqia Hassan, a Syrian independent journalist and blogger killed for her criticism of ISIS. And so many others.
With the WHRD Tribute, we bring them all into our collective memory and carry their legacy of struggle as our torch in the feminists’ and women’s rights movements. We recognize that security, safety and self-care must be a priority in all our political agendas. And we call on to governments and international bodies to collectively address violence against feminists and WHRDs.