By Lejla Medanhodzic
BERLIN, Dec 9 2016 (IPS)

AWID’s 5th online tribute to Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) who have died in recent years, commemorates sixty feminists and activists. Thirty eight of these defenders died violently, and were murdered as a result of who they were, their identities, and the rights they defended.

Their biographies submitted to AWID include the following hard facts:

…shot and killed at point-blank range, brutally raped and murdered, beaten, home destroyed, killed by car bomb, abducted, her death considered a hate crime, received death threats, stabbed, disappeared, died of gunshot wounds, assassinated, shot dead in front of her children, went missing, circumstances of death unclear, sexually assaulted and murdered, stoned to death, kidnapped, tortured and publicly executed, message left by criminal gang next to her body, denied proper medical treatment, killed by unidentified gunmen…

These crimes are not coincidences and over the five years that AWID has honoured WHRDs who have died, we have seen an alarming increase in the number of activists who are murdered or disappear as a direct result of their activism. Although all WHRDs are at risk to some extent, there is a trend of increasing violence against certain groups of WHRDs. In this years’ Tribute alone close to 65% of those who were killed were part of one or more of the following groups: environmental justice activists, journalists, indigenous rights activists, LGBTQI rights defenders, and sex workers’ rights advocates. From Honduras alone, AWID commemorates six WHRDs murdered for either working to protect indigenous and environmental rights or trans and LGBQI rights. Amongst the defenders commemorated this year were  eleven journalists who had been murdered.

Context-specific risk

Protection International states that “vulnerability means the degree to which people are susceptible to loss, damage, suffering and death in the event of an attack. This varies for each defender or group, and changes with time.” The violence that WHRDs face is multifaceted and global with specific regional, social and political context affecting risk levels faced by activists. For the afore mentioned groups, threats and vulnerabilities are higher than the existing protection capabilities, which results in a corresponding increase in risk for these groups of defenders.

For three years Nilce de Souza Magalhães opposed the construction of a dam in north-western Brazil that would rob her community of their home, and cause  them to move to a place without running water and electricity. She went missing in January 2016, and her body was subsequently found in June 2016. Berta Cáceres, a Lenca woman from Honduras, fought to protect the Gualcarque river and the indigenous people who loved and lived by it against the world’s’ largest dam builder.  Berta Cáceres was murdered in March 2016 after numerous death threats.

The perpetrators of such crimes against environmental and indigenous rights activists mostly are not arrested and there is rarely accountability for the corporations and state actors that are suspected to be behind these murders. Before her death, Berta Caceres had stated in 2014 that the patriarchal alliances between corporations, states and repressive institutions resulted in an onslaught of violence that“… is three times worse for an indigenous woman”. For Trans and LGBQI defenders, especially in countries where the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) rights are violated and threatened, where society is widely homo and transphobic, and a lack of legal protection is chronic, there are multiple vulnerabilities and an increased risk of being targeted not only due to the type of work they do, but additionally because of their identities.

Hande Kader, a trans woman, sex worker and LGBTQI activist from Turkey, fought against discrimination and persecution in her country. In August 2016 she was brutally raped and murdered. Like Hande, Alesha, a trans woman from Pakistan who defended trans rights was shot in May 2016 and, after reportedly being denied proper medical treatment, died from the injuries she suffered.

Another group of WHRDs increasingly facing threats across the globe are those working as journalists especially in unstable and conflict environments. In these contexts, activist journalists experience violence as a result of investigating crimes, uncovering human rights abuses, reporting government corruption, abuse of authority and the wrongdoings of political establishments.

In the Philippines, Melinda “Mei” Magsino a journalist, was known for her political exposés that revealed corruption and injustices in her province. She was shot and killed by an unknown gunman in April 2015. Elisabeth Blanche Olofio, a radio journalist in the Central African Republic, worked in a community-based media setting to provide information to a population for whom radio is one of the main sources of news in a country that has been marked by conflict and violence in the past years. She died of injuries she sustained from a Seleka rebels attack in June 2014.

Who protects those that defend our rights?

Too often, States are failing to adequately protect Women Human Rights Defenders even though they have the obligation to do so under international law. A 2016 report by AWID and the Solidarity Centre shows that on the contrary, collusion amongst corporate actors, and the political elite is strengthened by state structures such as the police, and military. The rising power of corporate interests is an urgent challenge which oppressively, and in some cases lethally, negatively impacts on the rights of communities, and the defenders who stand up for human rights and justice. States need to centre, and prioritise human rights above corporate interests.

Funders who support the work of WHRDs also need to adequately resource, and support protection mechanisms beyond the immediate needs of physical safety. The wellbeing and care of WHRDs is political and essential, and needs to be fully funded as part of a holistic approach to safety and security.

Feminist, human rights, and social justice movements, also need to continue to build solidarity with one another, whilst amplifying our calls for security, safety and collective self-care in our political agendas. AWID’s Tribute to WHRDs is a contribution to the collective memory and recognition of defenders,  our struggles and, reminds us that we need to honor WHRDs we have lost and protect those living that defend our rights.

The 2016 WHRD Online Tribute is co-created with diverse feminists, activists, and organisations who contributed details of WHRDs who have passed away or have been killed recently. This year’s Tribute commemorates activists lost mainly between September 2014 and November 2016.

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Feminists and activists in plenary at the 13th International AWID Forum in Bahia, Brazil. Credit Claudia Ferreira

By Inna Michaeli
BERLIN, Nov 22 2016 (IPS)

“One challenge we are facing is that we are invisible as a region, and the feminist movement is invisible, both inside and outside the region.” Natalia Karbowska, Board Chair of Ukrainian Women’s Fund said at a session on Eastern and South-East Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia: Getting (back) on global feminist map during the recent AWID Forum held in Bahia, Brazil from the 8^th-11^th September, 2016.

You might recognize your own region in the trends Natalia described: women’s organizations wrongly perceived as service providers, rather than drivers of advocacy and policies; gender mainstreaming shifting the focus and funds away from feminist movement-building; and, governments dismissing policies on gender because “there is a war in the country.”

Changing national formations, contested colonial histories and violent conflicts, and the vast ethnonational and cultural diversity, make it impossible to speak of Eastern Europe, North Caucasus, the Balkans, and Central Asia as one region. And yet, many voices in the session on Eastern and South-East Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia at the AWID Forum emphasised the need to work together and to develop unified messages around thematic areas.

The destructive role of Russia for civil society in the region came out strongly. Its draconian laws and repressive practices against NGOs are having a negative effect far beyond its borders. Irina Maslova – leader of the sex-workers’ movement Silver Rose, based in the city of St. Petersburg, Russia – could not have said that more clearly: “I am deeply ashamed that in my country, in my city, the law against ‘gay propaganda’ was passed. That the law criminalizing NGOs as ‘foreign agents’ was passed, and now it hits everyone, hits hard. It spreads throughout the region and incites repression of civil society, especially women’s organizations and the most marginalized.”

Highlight on Sex Workers and LGBT People

Sex workers in Russia and the region, explained Irina, “are either invisible or seen as criminals. The existing laws untie the hands of the police, of the state, of society, to steal, to attack, to kill us”.

Migrant sex workers are particularly vulnerable. In one of the criminal raids on brothels, Sandra, a young African sex worker, suffered extreme injuries. Silver Rose supported her through the long surgery and rehabilitation process and the struggle to file a police complaint. Transnational migration and associated vulnerability make a strong case for feminist cooperation across regions.

Danyar Orsek, Director of Kyrgyz Indigo, outlined the challenges for LGBT movements. “In some countries like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, there are laws against sodomy since Soviet times. In others, like Russia, they are passing new laws, like the one on gay propaganda. In Kazakhstan, transgender people need sterilization if they want a legal recognition, their gender in the passport”. Legal obstacles are enhanced by violence in the family and society, discrimination in universities and workplace.

A selection of activists marching for rights and justice at the 13th International AWID Forum in Bahia, Brazil. Photo credit Claudia Ferreira

Working Together, Working Regionally

While collaboration has a long way to go, there are positive examples to build on. Irina told with excitement about a great diversity of women coming to meet the CEDAW committee to tell the truth about Russia: “…women working on drug policy, women human rights defenders, women of Caucasus and even women from Ukraine came. We joined forces because we are joined by the desire to live, to live as women, as happy women.” As a result, Russia received strong recommendations, including to repeal the ‘gay propaganda’ law.

Natalia emphasised the importance of mobilizing people. “We had the bill on foreign agents in Ukraine and many people out on the streets, people who don’t know the term civil society, but they came and stopped it. A lot depends on us, and strong movement consists of strong organizations, and this is why it is important to have strong funds“.

“We are often so isolated in our problems. But when an activist is killed in Honduras - we need to react, to connect with them, to raise solidarity. This is how people start getting interested.” -
Lara Aharonian, Director of Women's Resource Center in Yerevan, Armenia
“This Region Isn’t Interesting for Funders”

Mariam Gagoshashvili, from Astraea: Lesbian Foundation for Justice shared from her experience. “I thought it is because of lack of knowledge of what’s happening in the region. But I understood that the funding that came in 1990s had a lot of geopolitical interests that are not there anymore.”

Natalia suggested to go “beyond women’s rights or human rights rhetoric and talk about policy and politics. Women’s rights and gender equality are also questions of national and regional security. And, we also lack data and stories from our country”.

There is a need to get creative on sustainability and alternative sources of funding: national and regional women’s funds, emigrants who maintain strong ties and commitment to the civil society.

Why Should Feminists Care?

So how do you get (back) on the feminist map? And why should feminists worldwide care about these parts of the world?

First, there are strong geopolitical reasons. Totalitarian trends and religious fundamentalisms currently on the rise will not stop at national borders. In Irina’s words, “Russia is looking to its imperialistic past, and tries to transmit its politics, its laws and practices onto the global level. It tries to call people back to the fascist past. We must speak about this, and speak loudly.” In such extremely repressive and increasingly isolated settings, cross-border solidarity becomes critical. “Support our voices, we are few, because it is frightening. We need this support to survive.“

Then, there is much to discover in learning from each other. “Together we are strong. This is why I am interested in other regions. We can exchange knowledge and experience, and there is much valuable experience in Central Asia we can share.”- Danyar.

Perhaps most importantly, to get on the feminist map, you can make the first step towards it. Lara Aharonian, Director of Women’s Resource Center in Yerevan, Armenia, reminded us that the best way to get people more interested in one’s region, might start with the genuine interest we take in others: “We are often so isolated in our problems. But when an activist is killed in Honduras – we need to react, to connect with them, to raise solidarity. This is how people start getting interested.” Certainly this insight can inspire us across regions and movements, whenever we feel invisible and marginalized in the global agenda. By reaching out and extending our solidarity to others, we embark on a journey of mutual recognition and solidarity.

The Eastern and South-East Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia: Getting (back) on global feminist map session took place at the 2016 AWID Forum in Bahia, Brazil. Read more reflections on ‘Feminist Futures: Building Collective Power for Rights and Justice’

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By Lydia Alpízar Durán
SAO PAULO, Apr 2 2015 (IPS)

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.

The recent World Social Forum (WSF) in Tunis, showed that ‘Another World Is Possible’ if we work collectively to address the structural causes of inequality.

It is for this reason that the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) has pledged to work together with ActionAid, Civicus, Greenpeace and Oxfam.

The gathering of approximately 70,000 activists in Tunis, the various workshops held on alternate economic models – including an AWID-led session on ‘Feminist Imaginations for a Just Economy’ – the protests against shrinking spaces for dissent and the calls for social justice are critical in a world where the economic, ecological and human rights crises are interconnected and getting worse.

This is the power of the World Social Forum (WSF). This 13^th edition, held for the second time in Tunisia’s capital, Tunis, is a reminder, and a call to action that it is people power that will change the world.

Changing the world, especially where women’s rights and gender justice is concerned, means recognising and bringing visibility to the interrelatedness of issues.

While in the past 20 years there have been notable achievements for women’s rights and gender justice, there is still so much more to be done.

At the centre of the current global crisis is massive economic inequality that has become the global status quo. Some 1.2 billion impoverished people account for only one percent of world consumption while the million richest consume 72 percent.

The levels of consumption in the global North cannot be sustained on this planet by its peoples or the Earth itself. They are disappearing whole ecosystems and displacing people and communities.

The challenges are not only increasing, but also deepening. Many women and girls, trans and intersex people continue to experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and vulnerability throughout their lives.

These include the disproportionate impact of poverty, religious fundamentalisms and violence on women, growing criminal networks and the increasing power of transnational corporations over lands and territories, deepening conflicts and militarisation, widespread gender-based violence, and environmental destruction.

Women have been caretakers of the environment and food producers for centuries, and are now at the forefront of its defense against habitat destruction and resource extraction by corporations.

Violence against women who defend the earth occurs with impunity, at precisely the moment when ‘women and girls’ are also receiving the attention of various corporate philanthropic actors as drivers for development.

Government and institutional commitments to address inequalities for the most part have been weak. And while people’s mobilisation and active citizenship are crucial, in all regions of the world the more people mobilise to defend their rights, the more the civic and political space is being closed off by decision-making elites.

This year’s Political Declaration from the United Nations’ 59^th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW59) is just the latest example.

Twenty years after the Beijing Declaration – the most progressive ‘blueprint’ for women’s rights of its time and the result of 30,000 activists from around the globe putting pressure on 189 participating government representatives – women’s rights and feminist groups were shut out of the CSW ‘negotiations’ with the result that the Declaration is weak and does not go far enough towards the kind of transformative change necessary to truly achieve the promises made in Beijing.

The forces of justice, freedom and equity are being relentlessly pushed back. There is an urgent need to strengthen our collective voices and power, to further expand our shared analyses and build interconnected agendas for action.

The WSF contributes to doing just that. At this year’s WSF, there was a diversity of feminist activists in attendance and the systemic causes of global inequalities were addressed in intersectional ways linking new relationships to land, and land use to patriarchy, food sovereignty, decolonisation and corporate power.

These connections make the struggle seem huge but also make possible solidarity between movements.

As a global network of feminist and women’s rights activists, organisations and movements, AWID has been working for over 30 years to transform dominant structures of power and decision-making and advance human rights, gender justice and environmental sustainability. In all that we do, collaboration is at the core.

I strongly believe that we cannot achieve meaningful transformation unless we join together in all of our diversity. So for AWID, joining with the struggles for environmental sustainability, just economies and human rights, is another step in a long trajectory of working with and for other movements.

Together we can take bolder steps, push each other further, and draw upon our combined knowledge and collective power to amplify our voices. Working together is the only way to reverse inequality, and to achieve a just and sustainable world.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

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