Association for Women's Rights in Development

Activities

AWID was founded in 1982, toward the end of the United Nations Decade for Women, as a U.S.-based association focused on promoting dialogue on women in development issues among academics, policy makers and development professionals, i.e. staff in the large development organizations.

A dynamic network of women and men around the world, AWID members are researchers, academics, students, educators, activists, business people, policy-makers, development practitioners, funders, and more. The former executive director of AWID was Lydia Alpízar Durán, with Myrna Cunningham Kain as board president.

Since the turn of the century AWID worked to become a more global and less US-centric organization, centering voices from the south and voices of marginalized groups. AWID's 2005 forum "We cannot change the world without changing ourselves" challenged the gender binary and centered transgender identities and rights. AWID's 2016 forum in Bahia, Brazil, "Feminist Futures: Building Collective Power for Rights and Justice" featured 1800 participants, many of whom had taken part in the preceding "Black Feminisms Forum".

Since 2016 the organization has been led by Hakima Abbas and Cindy Clark as Co-Executive Directors, with American feminist author Charlotte Bunch joining as board president. Formerly headquartered in Washington, D.C., the organization now has offices in Toronto, Mexico City and Cape Town and staff working across the globe.

A policy brief, Illicit Financial Flows: Why we should claim these resources for gender, economic and social justice, was issued to explain stricter financial regulations which would replace corporate privileges against the people and planet. In that, initial policies to support feminist and gender justice organizations were also recommended to influence relevant decision-making and to involve policy-makers, not limited to mentioning potentially complement bodies as well as those existing engagement and positions.

AWID has received funding from UN Women and its predecessors, several government development agencies and development banks, the Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Sigrid Rausing Trust and other organizations. In 2021 AWID received a $15 million donation from progressive philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.

A notable member is the feminist economist Dame Marilyn Waring, who became involved with the association upon leaving parliament and who served on its board from 2008 to 2012.

Observatory on the Universality of Rights

AWID coordinates the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs), a collaborative project with over 20 other NGOs, that aims "to monitor, analyse, share information and do collaborative advocacy on [...] anti-rights initiatives threatening international and regional human rights systems" from a feminist perspective. OURs' working group includes Planned Parenthood, the World Council of Churches, Muslims for Progressive Values and other organizations.

Focus area

AWID works on issues of gender justice and women's human rights worldwide through supporting women's rights advocates, organizations and movements, granted by the Channel Foundation since 2011 with initial travel grant program for the "12th AWID International Forum on Women's Rights and Development: Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women's Rights and Justice" which was held in Istanbul, Turkey, in April 2012. The organization has been focusing its work around five priority areas: Resourcing Women's Rights, Economic Justice, Challenging Religious Fundamentalism, Women Human Rights Defenders, Young Feminist Activism. The global membership with over 7000 members consists of both individual and institutional, coming from 180 countries.

AWID supports LGBTIQ rights and opposes the anti-gender movement, and has described trans-exclusionary feminists as "trojan horses in human rights spaces" that seek to undermine human rights; AWID said that anti-trans activity is "alarming," that "the 'sex-based' rhetoric misuses concepts of sex and gender to push a deeply discriminatory agenda" and that "trans-exclusionary feminists (...) undermine progressions on gender and sexuality and protection of rights of marginalized groups." In 2023 AWID published the open letter "There Is No Place for Anti-Trans Agendas in the UN," endorsed by 550 feminist NGOs.

References

Publications

• • publication between 1995 and ca.2005
• {{cite book|editor = Association for Women's Rights in Development

References

1. Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. "Association for Women's Rights in Development". [[Georgetown University]].
2. "Our Board of Directors". AWID.
3. "40 Years of AWID: The Scrapbook". AWID.
4. (16 December 2016). "Goodbye from Lydia".
5. (2014). "Feminism and pan-Africanism". African Gender Institute.
6. (2016). "Auf den Ruinen der Imperien : Geschichte und Gegenwart des Kolonialismus". TAZ.
7. "Watering the leaves, starving the roots : the status of financing for women's rights organizing and gender equality". [S.l.].
8. (August 4, 2017). "AWID publishes brief advocating for stricter financial regulation". International Network for Economic, Social & Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net).
9. [https://www.awid.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/AWID-2022-Annual-Report_ENGLISH.pdf 2022 Annual Report]
10. "Visionary Leader: Marilyn Waring—a pioneer visionary". [[The New Zealand Herald]].
11. "Rights at risk: the 2021 report of the Observatory on the Universality of Rights".
12. "The OURs Working Group".
13. "AWID".
14. "Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) : Channel Grants".
15. "Our Priority Areas". AWID.
16. "Frequently Asked Questions".
17. Ahmad, Umyra. (17 June 2021). "Trojan horses in human rights spaces: anti-rights discourses, tactics and their convergences with trans-exclusionary feminists". Association for Women's Rights in Development.
18. (2023). "There Is No Place for Anti-Trans Agendas in the UN". AWID.