CSW 59 – Beijing Betrayed
Two decades after the Fourth World Conference on Women, women and girls around the world deserve better than this year’s CSW outcomes.
Two decades after the Fourth World Conference on Women, women and girls around the world deserve better than this year’s CSW outcomes.
On April 24, 2013, the Rana Plaza, a building housing garment factories, collapsed in Dhaka, killing 1,138 people, mostly women textile workers. Two years later, feminists around the world are organizing "24 Hours of Feminist Solidarity" in memory of the victims of this disaster.
One of the most profound social transformations of the past century is in the status of women, and importantly, in the worldwide acceptance of the notion of women's rights and gender equality as desirable goals.
FRIDAY FILE: On January 31, president Michelle Bachelet sent a Bill to the Chilean Congress to decriminalize abortion on three grounds: fetal malformation, when the mother's life is at risk, and where pregnancy is the result of rape. AWID spoke to feminist activists about this Bill and other pending sexual and reproductive health rights issues in this South American country.
FRIDAY FILE - Amidst the continuous struggle for women’s rights and social justice globally, it is important that we keep our collective hopes alive for a better world. With this in mind, AWID spoke to a number of feminists and women’s rights activists from around the world about their hopes, dreams and aspirations for 2015. Read theirs, and tell us what your hopes, dreams and aspirations for this year are.
FRIDAY FILE – To commemorate World Radio Day on February 13 AWID spoke with Anna Mayimona Ngemba, Director of Union Congolaise des Femmes des Médias [1] (Congolese Union of Women in Media - UCOFEM) to learn more about how radio, and media in general, is used do advance or hinder women’s human rights in Democratic Republic of Congo.
FRIDAY FILE: As we commemorate the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence (25 November to 10 December) under the theme “let’s challenge militarism and end gender-based violence”, AWID speaks to Lisa Davis, Human Rights Advocacy Director at MADRE, and to Nurcan Baysal, Kurdish activist and writer for the Turkish electronic journalT24, to learn more about the sexual and other violations of women’s and girls’ rights with the insurgency of the self-proclaimed "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS).
FRIDAY FILE: Palestinians, and people globally who stand in solidarity with Palestine, commemorate Land Day every March 30. On this day in 1976 thousands of Palestinians embarked on a general strike and protests against the Israeli government’s announcement to confiscate large portions of Palestinian lands for new Israeli settlements. The protests resulted in six Palestinians being killed, and hundreds injured and arrested by Israeli forces. Land Day has been commemorated every year since.
By Mégane Ghorbani

When you are faced with the task of moving an object but find it is too heavy to lift, what is your immediate and most natural response? You ask someone to help you lift it. And it makes all the difference.
And so in the face of unprecedented economic, ecological and human rights crises, we should not hunker down in our silos, but rather join together and use our collective power to overcome the challenges.