Dear Members of the UN Commission on the Status of Women,

We the undersigned organizations write to express our deep concerns about the latest restrictions on civil society participation at the 2017 UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meetings. This year's CSW is taking place under the shadow of the United States’ escalated anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, and anti-Muslim policies, which are preventing some women from exercising their right to political participation at UN Headquarters in New York.

By Essar Batool

In 2016, the Indian-occupied state of Kashmir once again erupted in valley wide protests, in collective expression for freedom, after the killing of a popular militant leader Burhan Wani. The protests continued for over six months and resulted in the killing of around 100 civilians.

Fat activism has links to the civil rights movements as well as to some feminist and radical lesbian expressions, in English-speaking countries. In recent years, it has started to exist in Latin America. AWID spoke with Laura Contrera, bodily diversity activist, about fat activism and the book she co-authored.

"I tell the girl how thoughtful it is of her to reach out. And then I ask her why she is so tired. She explains she has splinters in her palms from the umbrella she has been carrying all evening; and all the grown ups are still making her carry all the bags." By Fungai Machirori

As Sonya Renee’s poetic words washed over a room of women at the 13th International AWID Forum in Bahia, Brazil, I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding.

This poem was developed by the facilitators and participants in the session on: ‘Visions through the arts: Rights and justice for disabled and non-disabled women’ AWID 2016 Brazil conference

Connections for feminist futures.

The prominent Syrian human rights defenders Razan Zaitouneh, Samira Al-Khalil, Wa’el Hamada and Nazim Hammadi, who remain missing three years after armed men abducted them, should be released immediately, 56 human rights organizations said today, on the anniversary of their abduction.

IFEX bears witness to an unending stream of reports of people who are responding to acts of expression, with violence. This violence targets human rights defenders, it targets journalists, and it targets individuals based on their gender identity.

Women’s rights defender, writer and blogger Ghada Jamsheer remains in jail in Bahrain serving a combined ten-month sentence for exercising her right to free expression on Twitter.