Events in Indonesia, in late 2019 - in particular, signs of intensifying militarization and backlash against LGBTQ rights - led us to question AWID’s ability to maintain a reasonably safe and welcoming environment for the diversity of participants we aspire to bring together at the Forum.

After careful consideration the AWID Board of Directors decided to change the venue for the 14th International AWID Forum, in November 2019 from Bali to Taipei.

Taipei offers  a strong degree of logistical capacities, and is accessible for many travellers (with a facilitated e-visa process for international conferences).  

For more details:

• Read the full announcement that we made on December 10, 2019 about the location change
• Find out more why we chose Taipei as the location of the 14th AWID Forum

Effective as of 25 Apr 2023. 

Please click here to view the previous version of our Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy describes how the Association for Women’s Rights in Development and our subsidiaries and affiliates (“AWID,” “we,” “us” or “our”) handles personal information that we collect through our website that links to this Privacy Policy (the “Site”), as well as through social media, our marketing activities, our live events and other activities described in this Privacy Policy (“Service”).  

Index

Personal information we collect

How we use your personal information

How we share your personal information

Your choices

Other sites and services 

Security

International data transfers

Children

Changes to this Privacy Policy

How to contact us

Notice to European users

Personal information we collect

Information you provide to us.  Personal information you may provide to us through the Service or otherwise includes:

• Contact data, such as your first and last name, salutation, email address, billing and mailing addresses, professional title and company name, and phone number.
• Demographic data, such as your city, state, country of residence, postal code, date of birth, gender, pronouns, preferred language of communication, and information about how you identify (race/ethnicity, disabilities, migrant, sex worker, etc.).
• Communications data, based on our exchanges with you, including when you contact us through the Service, social media, or otherwise. 
• Marketing data, such as your preferences for receiving our marketing communications and details about your engagement with them.
• User-generated content data, such as profile pictures, photos, images, music, videos, comments, questions, messages, works of authorship, and other content or information that you generate, transmit, or otherwise make available on the Service, as well as associated metadata.  Metadata includes information on how, when, where and by whom a piece of content was collected and how that content has been formatted or edited.  Metadata also includes information that users can add or can have added to their content, such as keywords, geographical or location information, and other similar data. 
• Payment data needed to complete transactions, including payment card information or bank account number.
• Other data not specifically listed here, which we will use as described in this Privacy Policy or as otherwise disclosed at the time of collection.

Automatic data collection.  We, our service providers, and our business partners may automatically log information about you, your computer or mobile device, and your interaction over time with the Service, our communications and other online services, such as:

• Device data, such as your computer or mobile device’s operating system type and version, manufacturer and model, browser type, screen resolution, RAM and disk size, CPU usage, device type (e.g., phone, tablet), IP address, unique identifiers, language settings, mobile device carrier, radio/network information (e.g., Wi-Fi, LTE, 3G), and general location information such as city, state or geographic area.
• Online activity data, such as pages or screens you viewed, how long you spent on a page or screen, the website you visited before browsing to the Service, navigation paths between pages or screens, information about your activity on a page or screen, access times and duration of access, and whether you have opened our emails or clicked links within them.

Cookies and similar technologies. Some of the automatic collection described above is facilitated by cookies, which are small text files that websites store on user devices and that allow web servers to record users’ web browsing activities and remember their submissions, preferences, and login status as they navigate a site. Cookies used on our sites include both “session cookies” that are deleted when a session ends, “persistent cookies” that remain longer, “first party” cookies that we place and “third party” cookies that our third-party business partners and service providers place. 

How we use your personal information

We may use your personal information for the following purposes or as otherwise described at the time of collection:

Service delivery and business operations.  We may use your personal information to:

• provide, operate and improve the Service;
• communicate with you about the Service, including by sending announcements, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages;
• communicate with you about events or contests in which you participate;
• understand your needs and interests, and personalize your experience with the Service and our communications; and
• provide support for the Service, and respond to your requests, questions and feedback.

Research and development.  We may use your personal information for research and development purposes, including to analyze and improve the Service. As part of these activities, we may create aggregated, de-identified and/or anonymized data from personal information we collect.  We make personal information into de-identified or anonymized data by removing information that makes the data personally identifiable to you.  We may use this aggregated, de-identified or otherwise anonymized data and share it with third parties for our lawful business purposes, including to analyze and improve the Service and promote our business.

Marketing.  We and our service providers may collect and use your personal information to send you direct marketing communications.  You may opt-out of our marketing communications as described in the Opt-out of marketing section below. 

Compliance and protection.  We may use your personal information to:

• comply with applicable laws, lawful requests, and legal process, such as to respond to subpoenas or requests from government authorities;
• protect our, your or others’ rights, privacy, safety or property (including by making and defending legal claims); 
• audit our internal processes for compliance with legal and contractual requirements or our internal policies; 
• enforce the terms and conditions that govern the Service; and 
• prevent, identify, investigate and deter fraudulent, harmful, unauthorized, unethical or illegal activity, including cyberattacks and identity theft.  

With your consent.  In some cases, we may specifically ask for your consent to collect, use or share your personal information, such as when required by law.  

Cookies and similar technologies. In addition to the other uses included in this section, we may use the Cookies and similar technologies described above for the following purposes:

• Technical operation. To allow the technical operation of the Service, such as by remembering your selections and preferences as you navigate the site.
• Functionality. To enhance the performance and functionality of our services.
• Analytics. To help us understand user activity on the Service, including which pages are most and least visited and how visitors move around the Service, as well as user interactions with our emails. For example, we use Google Analytics for this purpose. You can learn more about Google Analytics and how to prevent the use of Google Analytics relating to your use of our sites here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en. 

Retention. We generally retain personal information to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements, to establish or defend legal claims, or for fraud prevention purposes.  To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we may consider factors such as the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.   

When we no longer require the personal information we have collected about you, we may either delete it, anonymize it, or isolate it from further processing.  

How we share your personal information

We may share your personal information with the following parties and as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy or at the time of collection.  

Affiliates.  Our corporate parent, subsidiaries, and affiliates, for purposes consistent with this Privacy Policy.

Service providers.  Third parties that provide services on our behalf or help us operate the Service or our business (such as hosting, information technology, customer support, email delivery, marketing, consumer research and website analytics). 

Payment processors. Any payment card information you use to make a purchase on the Service is collected and processed directly by our payment processors, such as Stripe.  Stripe may use your payment data in accordance with its privacy policy, https://stripe.com/en-gb/privacy. You may also sign up to be billed by your mobile communications provider, who may use your payment data in accordance with their privacy policies.

Third parties designated by you. We may share your personal data with third parties where you have instructed us or provided your consent to do so. We will share personal information that is needed for these other companies to provide the services that you have requested. Moreover, you may choose to translate user-generated content using Google Translate. Google may use your user-generated content in accordance with its privacy policy, https://policies.google.com.Professional advisors.  Professional advisors, such as lawyers, auditors, bankers and insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services that they render to us.

Authorities and others. Law enforcement, government authorities, and private parties, as we believe in good faith to be necessary or appropriate for the compliance and protection purposes described above. 

Other users.  Your profile and other user-generated content data (except for messages)     may be visible to other users of the Service. For example, other users of the Service may have access to your information if you chose to make your profile or other personal information available to them through the Service, such as when you provide comments, reviews, survey responses, or share other content.   This information can be seen, collected and used by others, including being cached, copied, screen captured or stored elsewhere by others (e.g., search engines), and we are not responsible for any such use of this information.

Your choices 

In this section, we describe the rights and choices available to all users. Users who are located in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the European Economic Area can find additional information about their rights below.

Opt-out of marketing communications.  You may opt-out of marketing-related emails by following the opt-out or unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of the email, or by contacting us.  Please note that if you choose to opt-out of marketing-related emails, you may continue to receive service-related and other non-marketing emails.  

Declining to provide information. We need to collect personal information to provide certain services.  If you do not provide the information we identify as required or mandatory, we may not be able to provide those services.

Delete your content or end your membership. You can choose to delete certain content you have provided to us.  If you wish to request to end your membership, please contact us.

Other sites and services

The Service may contain links to websites, mobile applications, and other online services operated by third parties.  In addition, our content may be integrated into web pages or other online services that are not associated with us.  These links and integrations are not an endorsement of, or representation that we are affiliated with, any third party.  We do not control websites, mobile applications or online services operated by third parties, and we are not responsible for their actions. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of the other websites, mobile applications and online services you use.

Security 

We employ a number of technical, organizational and physical safeguards designed to protect the personal information we collect.  However, security risk is inherent in all internet and information technologies and we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information. 

International data transfer

We are headquartered in the United States and may use service providers that operate in other countries. Your personal information may be transferred to the United States or other locations where privacy laws may not be as protective as those in your state, province, or country.  

Users in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the European Economic Area should read the important information provided below about transfer of personal information outside of the European Union. 

Children  

The Service is not intended for use by anyone under 18 years of age. If you are a parent or guardian of a child from whom you believe we have collected personal information in a manner prohibited by law, please contact us.  If we learn that we have collected personal information through the Service from a child without the consent of the child’s parent or guardian as required by law, we will comply with applicable legal requirements to delete the information.

Changes to this Privacy Policy 

We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by updating the date of this Privacy Policy and posting it on the Service or other appropriate means.  Any modifications to this Privacy Policy will be effective upon our posting the modified version (or as otherwise indicated at the time of posting). In all cases, your use of the Service after the effective date of any modified Privacy Policy indicates your acknowledgment that the modified Privacy Policy applies to your interactions with the Service and our business.

How to contact us

• Email: Contact Us 
• Mail: 192 Spadina Ave, Suite 300, Toronto, ON L1T 0G7
• Phone: 416 594 3773

Notice to European Users

Where this Notice to European users applies. The information provided in this “Notice to European users” section applies only to individuals located in the EEA or the UK (EEA and UK jurisdictions are together referred to as “Europe”).

Personal information. References to “personal information” in this Privacy Policy should be understood to include a reference to “personal data” (as defined in the GDPR) – i.e., information about individuals from which they are either directly identified or can be identified. It does not include “anonymous data” (i.e., information where the identity of individual has been permanently removed). The personal information that we collect from you is identified and described in greater detail in the section “Personal information we collect”.

Controller. AWID is the controller in respect of the processing of your personal information covered by this Privacy Policy for purposes of European data protection legislation (i.e., the EU GDPR and the so-called ‘UK GDPR’ (as and where applicable, the “GDPR”)). See the How to contact us section above for our contact details. 

Our legal bases for processing. In respect of each of the purposes for which we use your personal information, the GDPR requires us to ensure that we have a “legal basis” for that use. 

Our legal bases for processing your personal information described in this Privacy Policy are listed below.

• Where we need to process your personal information to deliver our Services to you (including our Site) (“Contractual Necessity”).
• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (“Legitimate Interests”). More detail about the specific legitimate interests pursued in respect of each Purpose we use your personal information for is set out in the table below.
• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation (“Compliance with Law”).
• Where we have your specific consent to carry out the processing for the Purpose in question (“Consent”).  

We have set out below, in a table format, the legal bases we rely on in respect of the relevant Purposes for which we use your personal information – for more information on these Purposes and the data types involved, see How we use your personal information above.

Retention. We retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements, to establish or defend legal claims, or for compliance and protection purposes, unless specifically authorized to be retained longer.  

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. 

When we no longer require the personal information, we have collected about you, we will either delete or anonymize it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible. If we anonymize your personal information (so that it can no longer be associated with you), we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Other information

No obligation to provide personal information. You do not have to provide personal information to us. However, where we need to process your personal information either to comply with applicable law or to deliver our Services to you, and you fail to provide that personal information when requested, we may not be able to provide some or all of our Services to you. We will notify you if this is the case at the time.

No Automated Decision-Making and Profiling. As part of the Services, we do not engage in automated decision-making and/or profiling, which produces legal or similarly significant effects. We will let you know if that changes by updating this Privacy Policy.

Security. We have put in place procedures designed to deal with breaches of personal information. In the event of such breaches, we have procedures in place to work with applicable regulators. In addition, in certain circumstances (including where we are legally required to do so), we may notify you of breaches affecting your personal information.

Your rights

General. European data protection laws give you certain rights regarding your personal information. If you are located in Europe, you may ask us to take any of the following actions in relation to your personal information that we hold:

• Access. Provide you with information about our processing of your personal information and give you access to your personal information.

• Correct. Update or correct inaccuracies in your personal information.
• Delete. Delete your personal information where there is no lawful reason for us continuing to store or process it, where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal information to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons that will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request. 
• Portability. Port a machine-readable copy of your personal information to you or a third party of your choice, in certain circumstances. Note that this right only applies to automated information for which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Restrict. Restrict the processing of your personal information, if, (i) you want us to establish the personal information's accuracy; (ii) where our use of the personal information is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (iii) where you need us to hold the personal information even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (iv) you have objected to our use of your personal information but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use.
• Object. Object to our processing of your personal information where we are relying on legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation that makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedom – you also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Withdraw Consent. When we use your personal information based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent.  

Exercising These Rights. You may submit these requests by email. See the How to contact us section above for our contact details. We may request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and process your request. Whether or not we are required to fulfill any request you make will depend on a number of factors (e.g., why and how we are processing your personal information), if we reject any request you may make (whether in whole or in part) we will let you know our grounds for doing so at the time, subject to any legal restrictions.  Typically, you will not have to pay a fee to exercise your rights; however, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within a month. It may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or if you have made a number of requests; in this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Your Right to Lodge a Complaint with your Supervisory Authority. In addition to your rights outlined above, if you are not satisfied with our response to a request you make, or how we process your personal information, you can make a complaint to the data protection regulator in your habitual place of residence. 

• For users in the European Economic Area – the contact information for the data protection regulator in your place of residence can be found here: https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en.
• For users in the UK – the contact information for the UK data protection regulator is below:

The Information Commissioner’s Office

Water Lane, Wycliffe House

Wilmslow - Cheshire SK9 5AF

Tel. +44 303 123 1113

Website: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

Data Processing outside Europe; we are a US-based company and many of our service providers, advisers, partners or other recipients of data are also based in the US. This means that, if you use the Services, your personal information will necessarily be accessed and processed in the US. It may also be provided to recipients in other countries outside Europe.  

It is important to note that that the US is not the subject of an ‘adequacy decision’ under the GDPR – basically, this means that the US legal regime is not considered by relevant European bodies to provide an adequate level of protection for personal information, which is equivalent to that provided by relevant European laws. 

Where we share your personal information with third parties who are based outside Europe, we try to ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it in accordance with applicable privacy laws by making sure one of the following mechanisms is implemented: 

• Transfers to territories with an adequacy decision. We may transfer your personal information to countries or territories whose laws have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal information by the European Commission or UK Government (as and where applicable) (from time to time).

• Transfers to territories without an adequacy decision. 
  • We may transfer your personal information to countries or territories whose laws have not been deemed to provide such an adequate level of protection (e.g., the US, see above).  
  • However, in these cases:
    • we may use specific appropriate safeguards, which are designed to give personal information effectively the same protection it has in Europe – for example, standard-form contracts approved by relevant authorities for this purpose; or 
    • in limited circumstances, we may rely on an exception, or ‘derogation’, which permits us to transfer your personal information to such country despite the absence of an ‘adequacy decision’ or ‘appropriate safeguards’ – for example, reliance on your explicit consent to that transfer. 

You may contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal information out of Europe.

These transgender women were murdered because of their activism and their gender identity. There are insufficient laws recognizing trans* rights, and even where these laws exist, very little is being done to safeguard the rights of trans* people. Please join AWID in honoring these defenders, their activism 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 

See Our 2015 WHRD Tribute

A big THANK YOU for being part of the 2016 AWID Forum!

Thank you to all of you who have joined us, physically or virtually, for the past four days of learning, celebrating, envisioning, dreaming and building our Feminist Futures together at the 2016 AWID Forum!

We are incredibly inspired, amazed, and re-energized by all the collective work we have done together in creating our diverse futures.

For images, blogs and resources:

Visit the 2016 AWID Forum website

Get social with the #AWIDForum

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Ultra conservative actors have developed a number of discourses at the international human rights level that call on arguments manipulating religion, culture, tradition, and national sovereignty in order to undermine rights related to gender and sexuality.

Anti-rights actors have increasingly moved away from explicitly religious language. Increasingly, we see regressive actors - who may previously have derided human rights concepts - instead manipulating and co-opting these very concepts to further their objectives.

Protection of the family

This emerging and successful discourse appears innocuous, but it functions as a useful umbrella theme to house multiple patriarchal and anti-rights positions. The ‘protection of the family’ theme is thus a key example of regressive actors’ move towards holistic and integrated advocacy.

The language of ‘protection of the family’ works to shift the subject of human rights from the individual and onto already powerful institutions.

It also affirms a unitary, hierarchical, and patriarchal conception of the family that discriminates against family forms outside of these rigid boundaries. It also attempts to change the focus from recognition and protection of the rights of vulnerable family members to non-discrimination, autonomy, and freedom from violence in the context of family relations.

The Right to Life

The Holy See and a number of Christian Right groups seek to appropriate the right to life in service of an anti-abortion mission.  Infusing human rights language with conservative religious doctrine, they argue that the right to life, as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, applies at the moment of conception.

The discourse has no support in any universal human rights instrument. Yet this is an appealing tactic for anti-rights actors, because the right to life cannot be violated under any circumstances and is a binding legal standard.

Sexual rights

Anti-rights actors use a number of rhetorical devices in their campaign to undermine sexual rights: they argue that sexual rights do not exist or are ‘new rights,’ that they cause harm to children and society, and/or that these rights stand in opposition to culture, tradition or national laws.

Conservative actors engaged in advocacy at the UN attack the right to comprehensive sexuality education from several directions. They claim that CSE violates ‘parental rights’, harms children, and that it is not education but ideological indoctrination. They also claim that comprehensive sexuality education is pushed on children, parents, and the United Nations by powerful lobbyists seeking to profit from services they provide to children and youth.

Attempts to invalidate rights related to sexual orientation and gender identity have proliferated. Ultra conservative actors argue that application of long-standing human rights principles and law on this issue constitutes the creation of ‘new rights’; and that the meaning of rights should vary radically because they should be interpreted through the lens of ‘culture’ or ‘national particularities.’

Reproductive Rights

Christian Right organizations have been mobilizing against reproductive rights alongside the Holy See and other anti-rights allies for several years. They often argue that reproductive rights are at heart a form of Western-imposed population control over countries in the global South. Ironically, this claim often originates from U.S. and Western Europe-affiliated actors, many of whom actively work to export their fundamentalist discourses and policies.

Regressive actors also cite to ‘scientific’ arguments from ultra-conservative think tanks, and from sources that rely on unsound research methodologies, to suggest that abortion causes an array of psychological, sexual, physical, and relational side effects.

Protection of children and parental rights

Just as anti-rights actors aim to construct a new category of ‘protection of the family,’ they are attempting to construct a new category of ‘parental rights,’ which has no support in existing human rights standards.

This discourse paradoxically endeavours to use the rights protections with which children are endowed, as articulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to support the rights of parents to control their children and limit their rights.

Violence against women

Increasingly, anti-rights actors are attempting to infiltrate and subvert standards and discourses developed by women human rights defenders, such as violence against women (VAW).

At the Commission on the Status of Women and other spaces, one rhetorical move is to treat VAW as a concept in which to embed anti-reproductive rights and patriarchal arguments. Ultra conservative actors, for example, have argued that non-heteronormative or traditional intimate partner relationships are a risk factor for violence, and emphasize that fathers are necessary to protect families from violence.

Gender and ‘gender ideology’

The Holy See has set off a sustained critique of gender, ‘gender ideology’, ‘gender radicals,’ and gender theory, and anti-rights actors often read the term as code for LGBTQ rights. Gender is used by the religious right as a cross-cutting concept that links together many of their discourses. Increasingly, the hysteria on this subject fixates on gender identity and trans rights.

Complementarity and human dignity

Complementarity of the sexes is a discourse employed by a number of ultra-conservative actors today. Its rhetoric is structured around an assumption of difference: men and women are meant to have differing but complementary roles in marriage and family life, and with respect to their engagement in the community and political and economic life.

Reference to ‘natural’ roles is meant to fundamentally reject universal human rights to equality and non-discrimination.

It is also used to justify State and non-State violations of these rights, and non-compliance with respect to State obligations to eliminate prejudices and practices based on stereotyped roles for men or women.

National sovereignty and anti-imperialism

This discourse suggests that national governments are being unjustly targeted by UN bodies, or by other States acting through the UN. This is an attempt to shift the subject of human rights from the individual or marginalized community suffering a rights violation to a powerful and/or regressive institution - i.e. the state, in order to justify national exceptions from universal rights or to support state impunity. 

Religious freedom

Anti-rights actors have taken up the discourse of freedom of religion in order to justify violations of human rights. Yet, ultra-conservative actors refer to religious freedom in a way that directly contradicts the purpose of this human right and fundamentally conflicts with the principle of the universality of rights. The inference is that religious liberty is threatened and undermined by the protection of human rights, particularly those related to gender and sexuality.

The central move is to suggest that the right to freedom of religion is intended to protect a religion rather than those who are free to hold or not hold different religious beliefs.

Yet under international human rights law, the right protects believers rather than beliefs, and the right to freedom of religion, thought and conscience includes the right not to profess any religion or belief or to change one’s religion or belief.

Cultural rights and traditional values

The deployment of references to culture and tradition to undermine human rights, including the right to equality, is a common tactic amongst anti-rights actors. Culture is presented as monolithic, static, and immutable, and it is is often presented in opposition to ‘Western norms.’

Allusions to culture by anti-rights actors in international policy debates aim to undermine the universality of rights, arguing for cultural relativism that trumps or limits rights claims. Regressive actors’ use of cultural rights is founded on a purposeful misrepresentation of the human right. States must ensure that traditional or cultural attitudes are not used to justify violations of equality, and human rights law calls for equal access, participation and contribution in all aspects of cultural life for all, including women, religious, and racial minorities, and those with non-conforming genders and sexualities.

Subverting ‘universal’

Anti-rights actors in international policy spaces increasingly manipulate references to universal or fundamental human rights to reverse the meaning of the universality of rights.

Rather than using the term universal to describe the full set of indivisible and interrelated human rights, ultra conservative actors employ this term to instead delineate and describe a subset of human rights as ‘truly fundamental.’ Other rights would thus be subject to State discretion, ‘new’ rights or optional. This discourse is especially powerful as their category of the truly universal remains unarticulated and hence open to shifting interpretation.

Other Chapters

• Key opposition strategies and tactics
• Key impacts on the international human rights system
• Key opposition actors

Read the full report

Other Chapters

• Key opposition strategies and tactics
• Key impacts on the international human rights system
• Key opposition actors

Read the full report

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by Amal Amer, California, US

I pray with my family for the first time in six years while wrapped in a keffiyah I scavenged from a dumpster.

Since coming into myself, I have refused to pray in jamaat with my family. Joining in the ranks of hierarchy, “women” behind “men” irks me. It grates my skin and teeth to the degree where I can’t focus, and the standing, bowing, and kneeling feels like a battle against my true being. Each second listening, a betrayal of my nature. Instead, I pray by myself in my own way. 

Yet this Ramadan, I feel different. Back in my childhood home after many years, I am choosing to fast. I choose suhoor with my family, and praying together feels like a natural extension of eating together. After eating, my mother, father, brother and I line up for fajr. 

I pray behind Baba, but my prayer is my own. I close my eyes, staying with my breath and my body. 

My eyes closed, I open my inner sight to a wide open window on a vista of mountains, bright sun spreading over a light mist of clouds. This was the view I had while praying in jamaat at a queer Muslim wedding I attended in the mountains of the South of France last September. 

I lined up with the wedding guests, queer and trans folks of North and West African, Arab, and European descent. Folks of all faiths joined while some chose to stand in respect at the sides or behind. The groups did not fall along fault lines of “Muslim” or “non-Muslim,”  “religious” or “non religious.” The two lovers marrying each led us in prayer, and so did the Muslim woman officiating the nikkah. Each of the three led us in two rounds of prayers, two raqat.

I showed up as I was, my body uncovered. I had not washed. I only passed my camera to a friend who chose to stand at the side. 

In the first sujood, I broke down crying. I wore a jean dress that loves my body, one found at a thrift store my ex-girlfriend pointed me to.

The sobs come through my whole body during the prayer, and I put my head to the earth with my community like a homecoming. A return to the embrace of love both intensely personal and communal, and I am held.

It feels like swimming in the sea with multiple people:  joyful togetherness. But when you go beneath the water, it’s just you and the current. 

Like a dozen people buried in the same graveyard. Separate, but sharing the same soil. Becoming one with the growing earth. 

That was how it felt to pray in communion at a queer Muslim wedding.

I welcomed the light of acceptance while showing up as myself that day, with a group of people who had also chosen to claim all the parts of themselves in love. That light made a home in me, and it illuminates my heart in the dark living room at fajr this Ramadan morning. Though I pray with my birth family who do not accept all of me, I see myself praying in jamaat at that glorious wedding with all of my queer Muslim ancestors, my queer angels, my lineage, my soul family, my queer Muslim family, all standing in prayer. Bowing as one. 

My family’s home does not always feel like my own, though I am here now. I take the bukhoor from room to room, barefoot. Smolder from the censer, an incense that says, “Here I am.” Baraka, blessings from the source of all, Allah and the Goddess to each room in the house, bidding good and dispersing the unbidden. 

As I write this the sky turns the same royal blue I am familiar with from exiting the club and pulling all-nighters. It is the gradient of morning I step into as I go to sleep. 

Word meanings:

• Ramadan: the Muslim holy month, traditionally observed with 29 days of fasting without food or water during daylight hours

• Keffiyah: a patterned scarf common in the SWANA region. The black and white version referred to here is associated with the Palestinian liberation movement 

• Pray in jamaat: Islamic ritual prayer in a group. Participants follow one person, traditionally male, who calls the prayer aloud.

• Suhoor: the meal before the fast starts at dawn

• Fajr: the dawn prayer

• Baba: father

• Raqat: one round of prayer consisting of standing, bowing, kneeling, and pressing the head to the ground

• Sujood:the prayer position when one presses one’s head to the earth

• Nikkah: the religious marriage ceremony 

• Bukhoor: an Arabic incense, woodchips soaked in resin

• Baraka: blessing

“Angels go out at night too”

by Chloé Luu (@Electrichildren), France

Pictures of angels in my life, just some women and non-binary people of color hanging out, taking care of themselves and expressing love to each other. It's these simplest moments that are the most empowering.

< Freeing the Church, Decolonizing the Bible for West Papuan Women

Kunyit Asam: The Roots of Love and Resilience >

we are infinite

An exhibition by Nicole Barakat, embodying her reconnection with the diaspora of objects from her ancestral homelands in the South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region.
 
Barakat presents a collection of textile works as manifestations of her practice of engaging with displaced, and often stolen objects held within Western museum collections including the Louvre, British Museum and Nicholson Museum. 
 
To by-pass the gatekeepers and breach the vitrines holding these ancestral objects, Barakat reclaims pre-colonial, non-linear, receptive forms of knowing that are often devalued and dismissed by colonial and patriarchal institutions - engaging with coffee cup divination, dream-work, intuitive listening and conversations with the objects themselves (source).

About Nicole Barakat

Jurema Araújo is a teacher-poet from Rio de Janeiro. She contributed to the magazine Urbana, edited by the poets Brasil Barreto and Samaral (RIP) and to the book Amor e outras revoluções (Love and Other Revolutions) with several other writers. In collaboration with Angélica Ferrarez and Fabiana Pereira, she co-edited O livro negro dos sentidos (The Black Book of Senses), a creative anthology on black women’s sexuality in Brazil. Jurema is 54-years-old; she has a daughter, three dogs, a cat, and many friends.

Introducing The Black Book of Senses

I’ll admit it: when Angélica and Fabi invited me to curate a collection of erotic texts by black women, I didn’t know what curatorship was. I understood the erotic well, but curatorship... I smiled, feeling shy and flattered. I think I thanked them – at least I hope I did – and thought to myself: what the fuck is it?! This fancy word I’ll have to learn the meaning of while doing it, what is it?

Now at this point, I know what it is to be a curator: it is making love with someone else’s texts, with someone else’s art, with the intention of putting a book together. And that is exactly what I did. I undressed each text of every author of this book with a literary lasciviousness. And I got involved in the words and senses of others. I was penetrated by poems I didn’t write; tales I didn’t even dare to imagine turned me upside down, messing with my feelings, with my libido. And it was a wonderful and unusual orgasm: ethereal, corporeal, sublime, at once intellectual and sensitive.
These texts pulsated like a clit hardened by desire, drenched, dripping joy in every reading. Words that swallowed me with their naughty significance, making me dive deeper into this wet universe. 

These black women went to the bottom of their arousals and turned their deepest erotic fantasies into art. These works are impregnated with each writer’s own way of experiencing sexuality: freely, blackly, for ourselves, in our own way, empowered.

I chose to spread the texts throughout different parts of the book, each one organized according to the most delicate, explosive, evident, or implicit content they presented.

To open the door to this “invulved blackessence,” we have our Preliminaries section, with texts that introduce readers to this world of delights. It is a more general, delicate caress to acknowledge the subjects addressed by the texts in the rest of the book.

Then comes the heat of Touch, addressing what the skin can feel. That energy which burns or freezes our bodies, makes our hormones explode and starts to awaken the other senses. And although there are many of us who are voyeurs, the contact of skin with a wet and warm mouth is exciting, like wandering through the softness of whomever is with you. We are seduced by the firm or gentle touch that gives us goosebumps and that lovely discomfort that runs from the neck down to the back and only stops the next day. And the warmth of the lips, the mouth, the wet tongue on the skin – oh, the tongue in the ear, hmmm – or skin on skin, clothes moving over the body, almost like an extension of the other’s hand. If there is no urgency, that wildest arousal of the pressure of a tight grab, a bit of pain – or a lot, who knows?

The Sound – or melody? – section shows us that attraction also happens through hearing: the voice, the whispers, the music that enables the connection between the bodies and can become the theme of desire. For some of us, someone with a beautiful voice would only need their vocal cords, because that harsh or heavy or melodious sound would be auditory sex. Their loud swearing or sweet words whispered in the ear would be enough to give us hair-raising shivers from neck to coccyx.

In Flavor, we know the tongue does a good job tasting the most hidden places and wandering through the body to delight itself. Sometimes this organ is used, boldly, to taste the other’s nectar. The idea of someone sharing their strawberry or a delicious, juicy mango through bites and licks – or licks and bites – melts us. But nothing is more delicious than tasting the caves and hills of the person you are with. Stick your tongue deep inside to taste a piece of fruit... or spend hours tasting the head of a cock in your mouth, or suck on a delicious breast to taste the nipples. This is all about memorizing someone by their Flavor.

There are texts in which the nose is what triggers desire. The Smell, my dear readers, can awaken us to the delights of desire. Sometimes we meet a person who smells so good, we want to swallow them right through our nose. When you run through the other person’s body with your nose, starting with the neck – wow, that delightfully uncomfortable shiver that runs down the spine and undresses the soul! The shameless nose then moves to the back of the neck and captures the scent of the other in such a way that in the absence of that person, smelling their same scent evokes, or conversely, invades in us olfactory memories that bring the arousing smell of that person back.

We then get to Look – for me, the betrayer of senses – in which we perceive desire from a point of “view.” It is through sight that the texts present desire and arousal, through which the other senses are brought about. Sometimes a smile is all it takes to drive us crazy. The exchange of glances? That look that says “I want you now.” That look of possession that comes to an end when you stop fucking, or not. That one is very particular; it draws the other who won’t be able to look away for long. Or the sidelong glance – when one looks away when the other turns their head, like a cat-and-mouse game? Once we are caught red-handed, there’s nothing else to do besides breaking into a wide smile.

Finally, the explosion. Wandering through All senses, the texts mix feelings that seem like an alert, so there is the greatest pleasure, that orgasm.

Of course, there is nothing explicitly separating these poems and tales. Some are subtle. Arousal engages all our senses and, most importantly, our heads. That’s where it happens, and it connects our whole body. I organized the poems according to how they came to me in each reading. Feel free to disagree! But to me, there is a sense through which desire goes and then explodes. Realizing which one it is, is delightful. 

Being able to turn arousal into art means freeing ourselves from all the prejudice, prisons, and stigma this white-centric society has trapped us in.

Every time a black writer transforms the erotic into art, she breaks these harmful racist chains that cripple her body, repress her sexuality, and turn us into the object of another’s greed. Writing erotic poetry is taking back the power over her own body and roaming fearlessly through the delights of desire for herself, for others, for life.

The literary erotic is who we are when turned into art. Here we show the best of us, our views of love drenched by pleasure, seasoned by the erogenous, spread through our bodies, and translated by our artistic consciousness. We are multiple and we share this multiplicity of sensations in words dripping with arousal. Yes, even our words drip with our sexual desire, drenching our verses, turning our sexual urges into paragraphs. To come, for us, is a breakthrough.

It is necessary to make our minds, bodies, and sexuality black, to reestablish our pleasure, and take back our orgasms. Only then will we be free. This whole process is a breakthrough, and it happens painfully. But there is happiness in finding ourselves to be very different from where we had been placed. 

I feel like I am yours, I am ours. Taste, delight yourselves, feast on these beautiful words with us. 

This text is adapted from the introductions to “O Livro Negro Dos Sentidos” [The Black Book of Senses], an erotic collection of poems by 23 black female writers.