Catherine Han Montoya
Women Human Rights Defenders
WHRDs are self-identified women and lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LBTQI) people and others who defend rights and are subject to gender-specific risks and threats due to their human rights work and/or as a direct consequence of their gender identity or sexual orientation.
WHRDs are subject to systematic violence and discrimination due to their identities and unyielding struggles for rights, equality and justice.
The WHRD Program collaborates with international and regional partners as well as the AWID membership to raise awareness about these risks and threats, advocate for feminist and holistic measures of protection and safety, and actively promote a culture of self-care and collective well being in our movements.
Risks and threats targeting WHRDs
WHRDs are exposed to the same types of risks that all other defenders who defend human rights, communities, and the environment face. However, they are also exposed to gender-based violence and gender-specific risks because they challenge existing gender norms within their communities and societies.
By defending rights, WHRDs are at risk of:
- Physical assault and death
- Intimidation and harassment, including in online spaces
- Judicial harassment and criminalization
- Burnout
A collaborative, holistic approach to safety
We work collaboratively with international and regional networks and our membership
- to raise awareness about human rights abuses and violations against WHRDs and the systemic violence and discrimination they experience
- to strengthen protection mechanisms and ensure more effective and timely responses to WHRDs at risk
We work to promote a holistic approach to protection which includes:
- emphasizing the importance of self-care and collective well being, and recognizing that what care and wellbeing mean may differ across cultures
- documenting the violations targeting WHRDs using a feminist intersectional perspective;
- promoting the social recognition and celebration of the work and resilience of WHRDs ; and
- building civic spaces that are conducive to dismantling structural inequalities without restrictions or obstacles
Our Actions
We aim to contribute to a safer world for WHRDs, their families and communities. We believe that action for rights and justice should not put WHRDs at risk; it should be appreciated and celebrated.
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Promoting collaboration and coordination among human rights and women’s rights organizations at the international level to strengthen responses concerning safety and wellbeing of WHRDs.
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Supporting regional networks of WHRDs and their organizations, such as the Mesoamerican Initiative for WHRDs and the WHRD Middle East and North Africa Coalition, in promoting and strengthening collective action for protection - emphasizing the establishment of solidarity and protection networks, the promotion of self-care, and advocacy and mobilization for the safety of WHRDs;
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Increasing the visibility and recognition of WHRDs and their struggles, as well as the risks that they encounter by documenting the attacks that they face, and researching, producing, and disseminating information on their struggles, strategies, and challenges:
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Mobilizing urgent responses of international solidarity for WHRDs at risk through our international and regional networks, and our active membership.
Related Content
Download your faciliation guide:
"A Feminist Approach to Understanding Illicit Financial Flows and Redirecting Global Wealth"
Download your facilitation guide in English
This Guide is also available in Spanish and Russian
Thanks to the co-creators of this facilitation guide:
- Daniela Fonkatz and Ana Ines Abelenda (AWID)
- Zenaida Joachim (Mesoamericanas en Resistencia - El Salvador)
- Olga Shnyrova (Ivanovo Center for Gender Studies - Russia)
- Leah Eryenyu (Akina Mama Wa Afrika - Uganda)
- Daryl Leyesa (Oriang and PKKK/National Rural Women Congress - the Philippines)
Сколько ответов на опрос вы хотели бы получить?
Мы стремимся в общей сложности получить 2000 ответов, что почти вдвое больше, чем в последнем опросе, проведенном в 2011 году.
Snippet FEA Principles of Work S4 (EN)
HORIZONTALITY
“Where is the Money for Women’s Rights?" AWID’s WITM Toolkit (landing page intro)
A new edition of the Where is the Money? research is underway.
Learn more.A Do-it-Yourself Research Methodology
AWID offers the WITM Toolkit to support individuals and organizations who want to conduct their own research on funding trends for a particular region, issue or population by adapting AWID’s research methodology.
AWID’s WITM Toolkit builds on 10 years research experience. AWID’s WITM research and WITM Toolkit is a political and practical demonstration of the resources and steps it takes to conduct solid action-research.
Learn more about the context around the WITM research methodology
The Resourcing Feminist Movements team also offers technical and political support before and during the research process. Review the toolkit and contact us at fundher@awid.org if you need more information.
Janet Benshoof
Janet Benshoof était une avocate des droits humains oeuvrant aux États-Unis et défenseure de l’égalité des femmes et de leurs droits sexuels et reproductifs.
Elle a milité pour l’élargissement de l’accès à la contraception et à l’avortement dans le monde entier, et s’est battue contre des décisions anti-avortement dans le territoire américain de Guam. Arrêtée en 1990 pour son opposition à la loi anti-avortement la plus restrictive de son pays, elle a remporté une mise en demeure [MB1] au tribunal local à Guam qui a bloqué la loi, pour ensuite remporter l’affaire devant la Cour d’Appel de Ninth Circuit, décision qui devait supprimer définitivement celle-ci.
« Les femmes à Guam sont dans une situation absolument dramatique. Je n’ai nullement l’intention d’arrêter d’en parler », Janet Benshoof pour People Magazine
Janet a créé plusieurs précédents juridiques, dont l’approbation par l’US Food and Drug Administration de la contraception d’urgence, ainsi que l’application du droit international afin de garantir leurs droits aux victimes de viol lors des poursuites pour crimes de guerre de l’époque de Saddam Hussein, devant la Cour Suprême iraqienne.
Janet était présidente et fondatrice du Global Justice Center, ainsi que fondatrice du Center for Reproductive Rights, la première organisation internationale pour les droits humains, centrée sur le choix reproductif et l’égalité. Elle a siégé pendant 15 ans en tant que directrice du projet pour les droits reproductifs de l’American Civil Liberties Union, où elle a mené de nombreuses procédures juridiques qui ont contribué à façonner la loi constitutionnelle des États-Unis sur l’égalité de genre, la liberté d’expression et les droits reproductifs.
« Janet était connue pour son brillant esprit juridique, son sens de l’humour vif et son courage face à l’injustice », Anthony D. Romero.
Nommée l’une des « 100 avocat·e·s les plus influent·e·s d’Amérique » par le National Law Journal, Janet a reçu de nombreux prix et distinctions.
Née en mai 1947, Janet est décédée en décembre 2017.
Vuyisa Dayisi
Holding up the Skies
A Film Series on Feminist Realities from Africa and the African Diaspora
by Gabrielle Tesfaye
When I created my short animation film, The Water Will Carry Us Home, my mind was plugged into a magical world of fearless resilience and ancestral mermaids who transformed their deepest scars into a new generation of life. Set during the time of the transatlantic slave trade, I was pulled to show this history of African enslavement in a different way than it has ever been told on screen. I wanted to give my ancestors the commemoration they never received. I was motivated to reclaim the history that continues to paint us as helpless victims. Essentially, I wanted to tell the truth. To reclaim and reimagine our history and perspective, means to simultaneously heal our generational traumas that exist today. It is this important work that so many women through the African continent and the African diaspora are doing today, igniting our collective Feminist Realities.
In the making of the film I researched religiously, and in what was written, I saw what was not. There were many times I felt I was hitting a wall trying to find something that was not there, and it was in those voided places that I realized the storytellers of today are filling the voids. I found the most useful stories in contemporary art, film, and African diaspora folklore.
“... a truly unique, raw and representation of feminist power in action.”
- Hers is Ours Collective, organizers of the Outsider Moving Art & Film Festival
The Water Will Carry Us Home carried itself around the world into the hearts of the Diaspora. It also led me here, as the curator of the African and Diaspora film screenings of AWID’s Co-Creating Feminist Realities initiative. Whilst curating this collection of films, I looked for stories that were completely unique, raw and representational of feminist power in action. Consisting of three shorts and one feature, they reveal stories through many communities in Africa and the diaspora, including Ethiopia, Uganda, The Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa and Kenya. These films reposition African women as what they truly are- self governing and empowered through the unfiltered lens of their work.
“An incredibly beautiful, attentive, finely observed telling of the connection between Africa and its Diaspora formed form the trans Altantic slave trade. The visual universe it creates is just gorgeous… an echo of the fusion of spiritual traditions and non-linear time that speak to how we are still experiencing the moments of the past that formed 'new' worlds of diaspora blackness.”
- Jessica Horn, PanAfrican feminst strategist, writer and co-creator of the temple of her skin
Our short documentary film, Women Hold Up the Sky, created by the WoMin African Alliance, tells the story of women activists in Uganda and the Democractic Republic of Congo who are actively reclaiming their land rights, threatened by mining and other extractives in their homes. The film not only exposes the corruption of extractivism, but finally shares what we have been missing on screen - how grassroots African women are actively organizing, strategizing, and analyzing within their communities to create women-centred and community-driven alternatives. Margaret Mapondera of WoMin explains it beautifully, that they are the “custodians of lands, forests, waters, rivers and territories; the ways in which women hold and transmit the stories / herstories of our past and our futures; the powerful and transformative ways of being that women embody in their relationships to each other, to the environment and in themselves.”
“A refreshing and much-needed piece of cinema highlighting the many ways African women are coming together to create women-led and community-driven alternatives… The fight is on and
women hold the key.”
- Hers is Ours Collective, organizers of the Outsider Moving Art & Film Festival
Pumzi, created by critically acclaimed director Wanuri Kahiu, bridges Africa and science fiction around climate and environmentalism. Pumzi imagines a futuristic world where humankind has been forced to settle on another planet. While Pumzi seems afro-futuristic and new for Africa on the surface, Kahiu reveals the truth that science fiction and fantasy is something that has always existed in African storytelling, but never recognized. Kahiu creates a world where women are truth seekers and heroes who pioneer us into a new world, the opposite of images that position Africans as victims of war and destruction. Instead, Pumzi writes the narrative of African women being their own saviors and problem solvers, who stop at no cost to follow the cryptic visions they channel in their dreams.
“A pioneering African sci-fi film, situating women as scribes of the future and opening up our visions about other worlds, other universes we might occupy as Africans - always an important exercise as we imagine our way out of present crises.”
- Jessica Horn, PanAfrican feminst strategist, writer and co-creator of the temple of her skin
Our feature film of the program, Finding Sally is set in 1970’s Ethiopia during the time of The Red Terror war, documenting the striking history of director Tamara Mariam Dawit’s activist aunt, Sally Dawit. Throughout the film we learn of Sally’s incredible journey as a young and courageous woman activist navigating one of the most violent times of Ethiopian history. Sally’s story not only reveals the gravity of this time, but the reflection of her own personal evolution as a young woman. Dawit was intentional to tell the film through the lens of women, untouched by male voices. Due to so much Ethiopian history being told by men, the making of this powerful story preserved its reality of honoring the feminist perspective. Dawit explains, “Women in revolution and war are often only included as someone's spouse or someone who did cooking or typing work. I wanted to look at the activism around the revolution only through the memories and voices of women.” Finding Sally demonstrates the reclamation of history sought by current filmmakers today. It is an igniting of feminist power and our connected realities throughout time.
“The responsibility falls on us, to remember these women that came before us and their brilliant work so they are not forgotten like the thousands of women already forgotten while fighting the good fight. Sally is such a woman and may she never be forgotten.”
- Hers is Ours Collective, organizers of the Outsider Moving Art & Film Festival
Register here to watch this film from June 18-22
These films have became a part of my own psyche, empowering me to continue building powerful alternatives towards justice from within. They affirm that I am a woman among a world of women, holding up the skies and actively building indestructible Feminist Realities. These films are more than stories of African women - they are globally relatable, inspiring and set the example of Feminist Realities for all of us around the world.
Gabrielle Tesfaye:
Gabrielle Tesfaye is an interdisciplinary artist versed in painting, animation, film, puppetry and interactive installation. Her work is rooted in the African diaspora, Afro-futurism, ancient art practices and cultural storytelling.
Gabrielle Tesfaye is an interdisciplinary artist versed in painting, animation, film, puppetry and interactive installation. Her work is rooted in the African diaspora, Afro-futurism, ancient art practices and cultural storytelling.
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Twitter ENG: @awid
Twitter ES: @awid_es
Twitter FR: @awid_fr
LinkedIn: Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)
Snippet - WITM Our objectives - PT
Os nossos objetivos da pesquisa WITM:
1 |
Fornecer a membres da AWID, parceires do movimento e financiadores uma análise atualizada, robusta, baseada em fatos e orientada para a ação das realidades do financiamento de movimentos feministas e do estado atual do ecossistema do financiamento feminista. |
2 |
Identificar e demonstrar oportunidades para transferir mais recursos de maior qualidade para a organização feminista, expor soluções falsas e interromper tendências que fazem com que o financiamento não seja bem-sucedido e/ou se mova contra a justiça de género e objetivos feministas interseccionais. |
3 |
Articular visões, propostas e objetivos feministas para a justiça no financiamento. |
Snippet FEA No feminist economies without feminist unions (ES)
¡No hay economías feministas sin sindicatos feministas!
A través de la organización laboral y sindical, Sopo, Sabrina y Linda no solo luchan por los derechos de lxs mujeres, lxs trabajadorxs esenciales, lxs trabajadorxs migrantes y lxs trabajadores sexuales, sino por los derechos de todxs lxs trabajadorxs.
La lucha para acabar con la explotación de lxs trabajadores es una lucha feminista, y nos muestra que no hay economías feministas sin sindicatos feministas.
FRMag - Las Triple (ES)
Las Triple Cripples: ¡hablemos de sexo, nena!
por Nandini Tanya Lallmon
Olajumoke «Jay» Abdullahi y Kym Oliver son feministas revolucionarias en más de un sentido. (...)
arte: «Bloomed» [En flor], de Titash Sen >
Mena Mangal
Mena Mangal was a prominent TV journalist, women’s rights advocate and cultural adviser to Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of Afghanistan's national parliament.
For more than a decade, she worked for Ariana TV, Tolo TV's Pashto-language channel Lamar, and the private Afghan national television broadcaster Shamshad TV. As a presenter, Mena focused on women’s rights and cultural talk shows.
"Women's rights activist Wazhma Frogh said Mangal "had a loud voice" and actively spoke out as an advocate for her people."
Off-screen, she also ran popular social media pages that advocated for the rights of Afghan girls and women to education and work. In terms of her private life, Mena wrote extensively about being forced into an arranged marriage in 2017 and the process she had to go through to finally obtain a divorce.
In a Facebook post, Mena wrote she was receiving death threats from unknown sources but would continue to carry out her work.
On 11 May 2019, she was attacked by unknown gunmen and shot dead in broad daylight in a public space in Southeast Kabul.
"We are concerned about the situation because it has a direct impact on women who work outside their homes...Female journalists are changing their professions due to the increasing risks they are facing." - Robina Hamdard, Kabul-based women’s rights activist.
Margarita Pisano
#MeToo in China
En China, el movimiento #MeToo [«Yo También»] se encendió en enero de 2018, empujado por el ímpetu del movimiento #MeToo de todo el planeta. Fue una respuesta a los problemas culturales y sistémicos relacionados con el género y el poder dentro de China. Las bases del movimiento habían sido establecidas durante décadas, y los muchos años de debate y promoción de la igualdad de género, finalmente, hicieron erupción con tremenda fuerza en toda la sociedad. El movimiento #MeToo fue impulsado fundamentalmente por jóvenes, que incluyen a innumerables mujeres anónimas y sus aliadxs, en busca de oportunidades para hacer realidad el principal «sueño chino»: transformar a China en un país con igualdad de género.
En China, el contexto para el movimiento #MeToo es extremadamente adverso: el Estado de derecho, la justicia y la transparencia de las acciones gubernamentales y la libertad de expresión no pueden darse por descontados, pero estos son precisamente los objetivos por los cuales lucha el movimiento. Ha sido, desde el principio, una lucha intensa, y cada víctima o activista que se visibiliza corre enormes riesgos: desde ser silenciadx o humilladx o de sufrir represalias hasta poner en peligro su seguridad. Todos los éxitos del movimiento #MeToo han sido logrados por quienes son lo suficientemente valientes como para asumir los costos de manifestarse y desafiar la censura.
La exhibición «#MeToo in China» fue inaugurada en 2019 y recorrió cinco ciudades. Su objetivo es dar mayor prominencia a las experiencias personales de lxs víctimas y lxs activistas, para inspirar al público a unirse a la lucha a través del contacto con estas historias. La exposición misma se ha convertido en parte de la lucha #MeToo: ha debido enfrentar desafíos en su itinerario por toda China y, en más de una ocasión, fue amenazada con la clausura.
AWID Community Jobs board - FR
Bourse d'emploi communautaire
Êtes-vous à la recherche d'un emploi? L'un des avantages de rejoindre la Communauté de l'AWID est d'avoir accès à notre tableau d'offres d'emploi organisé par la communauté. Vous aurez l'occasion d'explorer de nouvelles opportunités et vous aurez également la possibilité de partager des postes vacants et des appels à propositions avec tous les membres.
Snippet FEA We are living in a world left (FR)
Nous vivons dans un monde où la destruction de la Nature alimente notre économie mondiale actuelle.
FRMag - Roots of Love and Resilience
Kunyit Asam : Les racines de l’amour et de la résilience
par Prinka Saraswati
Les cycles menstruels sont généralement d’une durée de 27 à 30 jours. Pendant cette période, les règles elles-mêmes ne durent que 5 à 7 jours. L’épuisement, les sautes d’humeur et les crampes sont le résultat de l’inflammation qui se produit alors. (...)
< illustration : « Mouvement féministe », Karina Tungari
Lina Ben Mhenni
«Quiero transmitir el siguiente mensaje a todos los tunecinos y tunecinas: Tenemos que unirnos para decir no a la censura y a los juicios contra el derecho a opinar.» - Lina Ben Mhenni (entrevista de 2013)
Lina Ben Mhenni fue bloguera, activista y docente de lingüística tunecina. Se expresaba en contra de la censura en Internet, defendía la libertad de expresión, y era una defensora de los derechos humanos y de las mujeres. Lina luchó también por la liberación de lxs estudiantes arrestadxs durante el gobierno del anterior presidente Zine El Abidine.
«Es cierto que la información y la Internet son importantes, pero para hacer una revolución es crucial estar en el territorio. Algunas personas aquí en Túnez piensan que el cambio se dará mediante un simple “me gusta” en Internet. Yo creo que hay que estar activxs en el terreno. Y, por supuesto, que hay que combinar las acciones en el terreno con la acción en las redes.» - Lina Ben Mhenni (entrevista en POCIT)
En 2010 co-organizó una protesta que desafió la decisión gubernamental de suprimir medios de comunicación e instalar la censura de Internet. Lina era muy conocida por su blog «A Tunisian Girl», y por su trabajo durante la revolución tunecina de 2011. En su blog, difundió la información sobre el levantamiento, compartió imágenes que documentaban las protestas, y fue una de las pocas voces que hablaron sobre los asesinatos y la represión de lxs manifestantes de Sidi Bouzid. Lina publicaba en su blog utilizando su nombre real en lugar de un seudónimo que protegiera su identidad, y fue una de lxs pocxs bloguerxs en hacerlo.
«Nuestra libertad de expresión corre verdadero peligro. Me temo que estamos perdiendo los extraordinarios frutos de la revolución: la desaparición del miedo y nuestra libertad de expresión. Tenemos que seguir luchando para proteger y preservar este derecho.» - Lina Ben Mhenni (entrevista de 2013)
Lina tenía solamente 36 años cuando falleció, el 27 de enero de 2020, debido a complicaciones derivadas de una enfermedad autoinmune.
«Libertad, mejor educación y mejor salud—eso era lo que todxs queríamos. Cuando fracasábamos, ella nos empujaba.» - Hala, maestra de Lina