Nicole Barakat

Nicole Barakat is a queer femme, SWANA artist born and living on Gadigal Country (so-called Sydney, Australia). She works with deep listening and intuitive processes with intentions to transform the conditions of everyday life. Her work engages unconventional approaches to art-making, creating intricate works that embody the love and patience that characterises traditional textile practices.

Nicole’s Exhibition

The Elimination of Discrimination Against Sex Workers

Kay Thi Win, Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW)
Thin Pa Pa Htun, Aye Myanmar Association
Xiao Shuang, Northeast Transgender Support Network
Cathy Ketepa, Friends Frangipani Inc. PNG
Rajeshwari Prajapati, Society for Women Awareness Nepal (SWAN)

watch panel

“Gender Ideology” Narratives

For decades, feminist scholars and advocates have articulated important concepts related to gender to understand and challenge oppression and discrimination. Those concepts have now become the target of anti-rights actors who claim that oppressive patriarchal gender roles are “common sense”, strategically painting all other ideas, cultural norms, and forms of social life as a dangerous, conspirative ideology.

Read our Brief  on “Gender Ideology” Narratives: A Threat To Human Rights

Download here 

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. 

Download the full 2019 Annual review

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.

Download the full 2019 Annual review

Download the full 2019 Annual review

Yes, AWID membership is open to anyone who shares our values.

A number of men who share our commitment to feminism and women’s human rights are members of AWID.

Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development, Doha, Qatar

• The Doha conference aimed to review the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus. The conference revisited all six areas of financing for development but little substantive progress was achieved.
• While the outcome of Doha went beyond Monterrey on gender equality, it did not go far enough. A statement by the WWG on FfD highlighted that the commitments to gender equality in the Doha Declaration would only be meaningful if the systemic issues that underpin poverty and the unequal distribution of power and resources in the global political economy were decisively addressed.
• In addition to the main Doha conference, during their parallel forum the Civil Society under the Doha NGO Group (DNG) for Financing for Development demanded global economic structural changes, and policies that put peoples´ rights first and respect and promote human rights.