Jennifer López
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
CFA 2023 - Hybrid like never before: in person - EN
Hybrid like never before
For the first time, the AWID Forum offers three modes of participation
In-person
Participants will come together in Bangkok, Thailand. We can’t wait!
Body
CFA 2023 - breadcrumbs Menu _ awid-forum-ar
Miriam Mũmbi Nyoike
CFA 2023 - Themes - ar
المواضيع
نرحب بالطلبات عبر مجموعة كاملة من المواضيع والتقاطعات المهمة للحركات النسوية وحركات العدالة الجندرية. في نموذج الطلب، ستتمكن/ين من تحديد أكثر من موضوع يناسب نشاطك.
- أجساد حرة، أرواح حرة: كل ما يتعلق بالاستقلالية الجسدية، الجندر والجنسانية، الصحة والحقوق الإنجابية، التحرر من العنف القائم على النوع الاجتماعي، وحرية العيش بأمان، المتعة والفرح في أجسادنا وهوياتنا ومجتمعاتنا المتنوعة، وأكثر من ذلك بكثير .
- مقاومة محاربة الحقوق: محليًا وعالميًا، تقود النسويات والنسويون الطريق في مقاومة جميع أشكال الاضطهاد المتعدد الجوانب، بما في ذلك الفاشية والأصولية والأنظمة الاستبدادية؛ لدينا الكثير لمشاركته ووضع الاستراتيجيات مع بعضنا البعض.
- الحركات والتنظيم: دعونا نتعرف على حركات بعضنا البعض. من التنقل في السلطة (الداخلية والخارجية) إلى استراتيجيات الحماية في مواجهة قمع المرأة والمدافعين/ات عن حقوق الإنسان المتنوعي/ات الجندر، ومن بناء التحالفات إلى الأشكال الإبداعية والناجحة للتنظيم، دعونا نتعلم ونستلهم من بعضنا البعض.
- العدالة الاقتصادية والاقتصاد النسوي: يشمل هذا الموضوع جميع الجهود النسوية لتحويل اقتصاداتنا، من تحدي النماذج الاستخراجية السائدة والدفاع عن حقوق العمل إلى تجسيد وعيش الممارسات والبدائل الاقتصادية النسوية في الحياة اليومية.
- تمويل /توفير الموارد للنشاطات: يمثل تأمين التمويل الذي تشتد الحاجة إليه تحديًا مشتركًا للحركات في جميع أنحاء العالم؛ دعونا نفكك معًا نظام التمويل النسوي، بدءًا من التحليل النقدي وحتى التجارب المباشرة والطرق العملية لتمويل العمل النسوي.
- المناخ، العدالة البيئية، الأرض والمياه: للعدالة البيئية والمناخية جذور عميقة في العديد من حركاتنا ومجتمعاتنا؛ من التقاليد القديمة إلى الرؤى المستقبلية، ومن القرى البيئية إلى الحملات لإنهاء الاستخراج وترقية العدالة الصحية، ندعو إلى نطاق كامل من الأنشطة المتعلقة بجميع جوانب العدالة المناخية والبيئية.
- العسكرة، الحرب والصراع: نهدف إلى تسليط الضوء على تنظيم وتحليل التجارب النسوية في كثير من الأحيان في الجبهة الأمامية للاستجابة للأزمات والمساعدة في الحفاظ على الحياة والمجتمع والعدالة في أقسى أوقات الحرب والصراع الذي طال أمده.
- إنهاء الاستعمار: يعتبر إنهاء الاستعمار أمرًا أساسيًا في كل موضوع من موضوعاتنا، ولكنه يقف أيضًا بمفرده، كأجندة نسوية رئيسية للمقاومة وبناء العالم في العديد من الحقائق الاستعمارية وما بعد الاستعمارية.
- الواقع الرقمي والتكنولوجيا النسوية: نرحب بفرصة الاحتفاء بالمبادرات النسوية المذهلة التي تحول العوالم الرقمية، وتتحدى هياكل السلطة التكنولوجية الكبيرة، وتضفي الطابع الديمقراطي على التكنولوجيا من خلال الناس ومن أجلهم حقًا.
- العدالة الشفائية: هناك تنوع مذهل في أساليب الرعاية الجماعية والعدالة الشفائية. في جميع أنحاء العالم، يستعيد المشافين/ات والحركات العدالة الشفائية كمبدأ سياسي، ومجموعة من الممارسات، ورحلة تعليمية، وأسلوب حياة، والكثير غير ذلك.
- أضف/ أضيفي موضوعك هنا!
Marielle Franco
Marielle was a Brazilian politician, feminist, lesbian and human rights activist.
Marielle was an outspoken critic of police brutality and extrajudicial killings. Her openly feminist, Black and favela-centered politics were a source of hope for marginalized groups in Rio de Janeiro, currently governed by a conservative city government and an evangelical mayor.
On March 14, 2018, after delivering a speech in Rio de Janeiro, Franco and her driver were shot multiple times and killed. Following news of her death crowds took to the streets shouting "Marielle presente!" (Marielle is here!) and demanding justice be done.
Read more about Marielle and the situation in Brazil
Forum 2024 - FAQ - Call for Activities EN
Call for Activities
Our Companion Sites
The Young Feminist Wire
An online community for and by young feminists working on women’s human rights, gender equality and social justice around the world.
The Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs)
The platform is the go-to place for information and resources on safeguarding the universality of rights in international and regional human rights spaces.
The Young Feminist Fund-FRIDA
Provides funding for young feminist-led initiatives. It aims to strengthen the capacity of young feminist organizations to leverage resources for their work and to increase donors’ and allies’ commitments to resourcing young feminist activism.
Online Directory of Urgent Responses for WHRDs
A go-to site to learn about the urgent responses undertaken to protect women human rights defenders and to find tools and resources to support the work and wellness of WHRDs.
IM-Defensoras (Mesoamerican Initiative for Women Human Rights Defenders)
A regional initiative created to prevent, respond, document and make public all cases of violence against women human rights defenders in the Mesoamerican region.
The WHRD International Coalition
The WHRD IC is a resource and advocacy network for the protection and support of women human rights defenders worldwide.
Post-2015 Women´s Coalition
A Coalition of feminist, women´s rights, women´s development, grassroots and social justice organisations working to challenge and reframe teh global development agenda.
Women´s Major Group on Development
The role of the Women’s Major Group is to assure effective public participation of women’s non-governmental groups in the UN policy processes on Sustainable Development, Post2015 and Environmental matters.
Women Working Group on Financing for Development
An alliance of women’s organizations and networks to advocate for the advancement of gender equality, women’s empowerment and human rights in the Financing for Development (FfD) related UN processes.
Lara Kruger
Lara was a well-known and loved radio DJ on Motsweding FM in South Africa.
Lara was one of the first openly-transgender radio hosts on a mainstream station. She worked hard to shine a light on LGBTI issues.
Lara’s activism started at a young age when she would vocally defend her right to dress and behave as she felt comfortable to members of her community who didn’t yet understand what it meant to be transgender.
ฟอรัม AWID นานาชาติ คืออะไร
ทุกสามถึงสี่ปี AWID จะเป็นเจ้าภาพงานประชุมนานาชาติที่สำคัญ โดยจะเป็นการประชุมขนาดใหญ่ระดับโลกที่หัวใจหลักอยู่ที่ขบวนการเฟมินิสต์และความเป็นธรรมทางเพศที่หลากหลาย เป็นการรวมตัวกันระดับโลกของนักกิจกรรมเฟมินิสต์ เครือข่ายพันธมิตร นักวิชาการ แหล่งทุน และผู้กำหนดนโยบาย โดยฟอรัมเปลี่ยนสถานที่จัดหมุนเวียนไปในต่างภูมิภาคและในประเทศต่างๆทั่วซีกโลกใต้
WHRDs from the South and Southeast Asian region
7 Women Human Rights Defenders from across the South and Southeast Asian region are honored in this year’s Online Tribute. These defenders have made key contributions to advancing human and women’s rights, indigenous people’s rights, and the right to education. These WHRDs were lawyers, women’s rights activists, scholars, and politicians. Please join AWID in commemorating t their work and legacy by sharing the memes below with your colleagues, networks and friends and by using the hashtags #WHRDTribute and #16Days.
Please click on each image below to see a larger version and download as a file
Samira Khalil
Samira was a Syrian activist under Bashar al-Asad's regime.
From a young age Samira opposed all forms of despotism, particularly vis-a-vis the authoritarian regime in which she lived.
Samira was kidnapped in 2013 along with three other prominent activists. She is believed to have been taken from the Center for the Documentation of Violations in Duma, in rural Damascus.
The main suspect associated with her disappearance is the Army of Islam (which denies its involvement). There has been no formal investigation of Samira’s disappearance and she has not been heard from since. Samira was committed to her country and refused to leave Syria until she felt her role in empowering women and documenting crimes was no longer necessary.
ฉันจำเป็นต้องเป็นสมาชิก AWID หรือไม่เพื่อเข้าร่วมฟอรัม
ไม่ คุณไม่จะเป็นต้องเป็นสมาชิก AWID เพื่อที่จะเข้าร่วมฟอรัม แต่สมาชิก AWID จะได้รับส่วนลดค่าลงทะเบียนรวมถึงสิทธิประโยชน์อื่นๆ เรียนรู้เพิ่มเติมเกี่ยวกับการเป็นสมาชิก AWID
9. Advocate and tell the world!
The results of your research will also shape your advocacy – for example, your results will have revealed which sectors fund the most and which sectors you feel need donor education.
In this section
- Build your advocacy strategy
- Reach out to your network
- Adapt your strategy to the sector
1. Women’s rights organizations
2. Bilaterals and multilaterals
3. Private foundations
4. Women’s funds
5. Private sector and new donors
Build your advocacy strategy
In the “Frame your research” section of this toolkit we recommend that you plot out what goals you hope to accomplish with your research. These goals will allow you to build an advocacy strategy once your research is complete.
An advocacy strategy is a plan of distributing your research results in a way that allows you to accomplish your goals, falling under the broader goal of advocating with key sectors to make positive changes for resources for women’s rights organizing.
Using the goals defined in your research framing:
- List the potential groups of contacts who can be interested in your research results
- For each group, explain in one sentence how they can help you achieve your goal.
- For each group, mark what tone you are supposed to use to talk to them (formal professional, commentary casual, do they understand the field’s jargon?)
- List every media that can allow you to reach these audiences, in the proper tone (social media to build community feeling, press release for official announcement to a general audience, etc.)
From this list – as exhaustive as possible, chose which ones are the most efficient for achieve your goals. (See below for specific examples of audiences and advocacy methods)
Once you have a strategy, you can start the dissemination.
Reach out to your network
To disseminate your results, reach out first to the contacts through whom you distributed your survey, as well as to all your survey and interview participants.
- First, take this opportunity to thank them for contributing to this research.
- Share with them the main survey results and analysis.
- Make it easy for them to disseminate your product through their networks by giving them samples of tweets, Facebook posts or even a short introduction that they could copy and paste on their website.
Do not forget to state clearly a contact person and ask for a confirmation once they have published it.
On top of making you able to track who disseminated your report, it will help build stronger relationships within your network.
Adapt your strategy to the sector
As an example, we present below a list of sectors AWID engages in advocacy.
- Use this list as a point of departure to develop your own sector-specific advocacy plan.
- Create an objective for what you hope to accomplish for each sector.
- Be sure to add any additional sectors to this list that are relevant for your particular research, such as local NGOs or local governments, for example.
Your list of advisory organizations and individuals will also be useful here. They can help you disseminate the report in different spaces, as well as introduce you to new organizations or advocacy spaces.
1. Women’s rights organizations
Sample objectives: Update women’s rights organizations on funding trends; brainstorm collaborative efforts for resource mobilization using research findings; influence how they approach resource mobilization
Examples of possible advocacy methods:
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Offer seminars, learning cafés or other events throughout your region, in relevant languages, in order to update women’s rights organizations with the findings of your research.
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If you can’t physically reach everyone in your region, think about setting-up a webinar and online presentations.
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Present your findings at larger convenings, such as the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
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Beyond your own organizations’ newsletters and website, write articles on different platforms that are frequented by your target audience.
Some examples: World Pulse, OpenDemocracy, feministing.
2. Bilaterals and multilaterals
Sample Objective: Raising awareness about how funding is not meeting established commitments and how this sector needs to improve funding mechanisms to finance women’s rights organizing.
Identify which bilateral & multilaterals have the most influence on funding – this could include local embassies.
Examples of possible advocacy methods:
- Enlist ally organizations and influential individuals (some may already be your advisors for this research process) to do peer education.
- Seek their assistance to disseminate research finding widely in large multilaterals (like the UN).
- Present at and/or attend influential spaces where bilaterals and multilaterals are present, such as GENDERNET .
- Publish articles in outlets that are read by bilaterals and multilaterals such as devex, Better Aid, Publish What You Pay.
3. Private foundations
Sample Objective: Expand the quality and quantity of support for women’s rights organizations.
Examples of possible advocacy methods:
- Attend and/or present at events led by private foundations.
- Approach private foundations through membership groups, such as the International Human Rights Funders Group or African Philanthropy Network. Propose sessions at their events.
- Reach out to progressive grantmaking alliances, such as EDGE Funders, for dissemination and possible presentation.
- Publish articles on different outlets read by private funders, such as The Chronicle of Philanthropy and Alliance Magazine.
4. Women’s funds
Sample Objective: Encourage them to continue their work at higher scale.
Examples of possible advocacy methods:
- Hold presentations at the women’s funds in your region and in countries that you hope to influence.
- Disseminate your research findings to all women’s funds that impact the region, priority issue or population you are focusing on.
- Consider doing joint efforts based on the results of the findings. For example, you could propose to collaborate with a fund to develop an endowment that closes the funding gaps found in your research.
5. Private sector and new donors
Sample Objective: Increase their understanding of the field and encourage coherence between their philanthropic interests and business practice.
Examples of possible advocacy methods:
- Enlist ally organizations and influential individuals (some may already be your advisors for this research process) to do peer education.
- Arrange meetings with influential private actors to present your research findings.
- Host your own meeting, inviting private sector actors, to share the findings and to advocate for your position.
Make sure to adapt your presentations, propositions and applications to each targeted group.
Previous step
Are you ready to start your own research?
We strongly recommend referring to our Ready to Go worksheet to assess your own advancement.
Estimated time:
• 1-2 years, depending on advocacy goals
People needed:
• 1 or more communications person(s)
Resources needed:
• List of spaces to advertise research
• List of blogs and online magazines where you can publish articles about your research finding
• List of advisors
• Your WITM information products
• Sample of Advocacy Plan
Previous step
Ready to Go? Worksheet
Fahmida Riaz
“Afterwards
After love the first time,
Our naked bodies and minds
A hall of mirrors,
Wholly unarmed, utterly fragile,
We lie in one another's arms
Breathing with care,
Afraid to break
These crystal figurines.” - Fahmida Riaz
Fahmida Riaz broke social taboos by writing about female desire in her poetry, creating alternative narratives about women’s bodies and sexuality, and setting new standards in Urdu literature.
Her work faced harsh criticism from conservatives, who accused her of using erotic and “pornographic” expressions in her poetic language.
Fahimida was eventually blacklisted and charged with sedition under Section 124A of the Pakistan Penal Code) during the dictatorship of Zia Ul Haq. Forced into exile in 1981, she spent almost seven years in India before returning to Pakistan.
As part of the preface to “Badan Dareeda” ('The Torn-Bodied'), a collection of poetry published in 1974, she wrote:
If, indeed, I am forced to stand before this maqtal today and face the gallows, I should face them with my head held high. My poems are the trace of a mangled head: emanating sounds even as it is suspended from ropes... A Body Torn has taken the form of a razmia, or the sound of rupture. And if such rupture indeed shocks a people, then consider the poet as having achieved her purpose: she has managed to disturb them. (translation from Urdu by Asad Alvi)
The brilliance of Fahmida was in defying any singular logic or categories of gender, nation, religion or culture. She refused to be put in the role of a ‘woman poet’, breaking with traditional definitions of feminine poetry and concepts and themes (ranging from political consciousness, body, culture, desire, religion, home) and knocking down inhibitions put on her gender.
“You have to understand that culture can have no essence. Cultures move, flowing into one another, forming new cultures. Culture is born this way. There is no clash of cultures.”
Fahmida authored more than 15 books on poetry and fiction including her poem ‘Taaziyati Qaraardaaden’ (‘Condolence Resolutions’) that might serve as an appropriate tribute to her life and legacy and a collection of poems (Apna Jurm To Saabit He ‘My Crime Stands Proven’) published in 1988 during her time in exile.
Fahmida Riaz was born in Meerut, India on 28 July 1946 and passed away on 21 November 2018 in Lahore, Pakistan.
