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After two virtual learning sessions bringing together participants for the first time, we met in Nairobi, Kenya and over a five day period we learned, strategized, questioned and ultimately began the slow, intentional yet essential task of building community.

The escalation of misogyny and toxic masculinity as an indicator of strength and dominance has meant that dissent or demands for accountability and change have been met with detention and torture, increased use of anti-terror laws to curb human rights work, extrajudicial executions, transnational repression, lynching and surveillance.

In the past month, the Rohingya community in Malaysia faced an intensified wave of online violence and racist vitriol. Spurred by proposed restrictions on Rohingya public activities by Malaysian state governments and reforms to increase government surveillance over refugees, disinformation campaigns took over social media, demanding even stricter measures.

We are in complete solidarity with women, LBTQI+ and all human rights activists in Iran, Lebanon and the wider SWANA Region.

As we reflect on its recently-concluded 53rd session taking place in June and July 2023, we revisit some of the details to better understand how states and anti-rights organizations seek to avoid scrutiny for human rights violations and undermine the system as a whole.

A year ago, Mahsa Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, died in the custody of the morality police after being arrested over alleged “improper” hijab in Tehran.

Rejeitamos a cooptação do marco dos direitos humanos, particularmente a noção defendida pela Relatora Especial de que o cumprimento dos direitos das mulheres trans, por um lado, e das mulheres cis, por outro, é ou pode ser conflituoso e incompatível.

We reject the co-optation of the human rights framework that the fulfillment of the rights of trans women and cis women is or can be conflicting and incompatible.

The young women leading these efforts and the women groups working on the ground cannot be mentioned here due to several security concerns under the current military coup. But their resilience, strength and courage is one for the history books.

Feminist movements and spaces offer me safety and empowerment. They are the mothers we wished we had and the link we needed to connect and organize ourselves despite our differences against a common enemy that has been undermining everyone, patriarchy.