The COVID-19 pandemic showed the world how important essential workers are. We’re talking about cleaners, nurses, paramedics, domestic workers, transport workers, grocery shop workers, among others. Their work is to tend to and guarantee the wellbeing of others, and they make our economies function.

But while they take care of us…

Recursos

(Disponível em inglês)

Notre nouveau rapport de recherche Le Diable est dans les détails aborde les lacunes du secteur du développement en termes de connaissance des fondamentalismes religieux et vise à améliorer la compréhension de la façon dont les fondamentalismes religieux entravent le développement et les droits des femmes en particulier. Il offre des recommandations aux acteurs-trices du développement quant aux manières d’éviter de renforcer les fondamentalismes par inadvertance et sur les stratégies pour les contrer. [CTA download link: Lire le document]

Seven pointers to consider

L'influence des acteurs fondamentalistes religieux ont augmenté à l'échelle mondiale

Le Diable est dans les détails détaille les violations graves à l’encontre des droits humains, et ceux des femmes en particulier, légitimées par des fondamentalismes parrainés par les États ainsi que par des acteurs fondamentalistes non étatiques, tels que les milices, les organisations communautaires religieuses et les particuliers. Le renforcement fondamentaliste de normes sociales patriarcales régressives conduit à la montée de la violence contre les femmes, les filles et les femmes défenseuses des droits humains (WHRDs).   La rapport met en avant ces éléments-clé pour comprendre et affronter la situation :

• [icon] Les fondamentalismes religieux gagnent du terrain au sein des collectivités
• [icon] Des systèmes politiques
• [icon] Des espaces internationaux, avec des effets dévastateurs pour les gens ordinaires et pour les femmes en particulier.

Les acteurs du développement doivent d'urgence d'agir.

Les acteurs du développement sont en mesure de jouer un rôle important dans ce contexte. La capacité collective des acteurs du développement à reconnaître les fondamentalismes religieux et à les affronter de manière concertée est essentielle pour faire progresser la justice sociale, économique et de genre et les droits humains pour tous, dans un contexte de développement durable.   En donnant la priorité à des partenaires progressistes dans le cadre de leurs activités, les acteurs du développement peuvent éviter d’octroyer des ressources ou de la légitimité aux fondamentalistes religieux. Les organisations de femmes ont de l’expertise sur le sujet et ont développé des stratégies pour lutter contre les fondamentalismes : Les acteurs du développement pourraient s’appuyer sur ces connaissances et s’engager à leurs côtés au sein de coalitions intersectorielles pour faciliter leur diffusion

Группы, организации и движения, работающие исключительно или главным образом в интересах женщин, девочек, гендерной справедливости, прав ЛГБТКИ+ людей во всех регионах и на всех уровнях, как недавно созданные, так и давно существующие.

Keeping an eye on anti-rights actor at the Human Rights Council

Anti-rights mobilization at the United Nations constitutes a response to the significant feminist and progressive organizing. It involves a constant threat for women's rights, especially when it comes to sexual and reproductive rights and an open door to racism, xenophobia and all kinds of discrimination.

Get to know all their tactics and discourses worldwide.

Read our full report

Main resolutions and organizations to follow on the 38th session

We’re looking at an attack on the human rights system, and all of these fundamentalisms are coming together to try to weaken the fabric of multilateralism, and that’s happening in large part at the expense of marginalized groups of people. It’s happening at the expense of women, and it’s happening through tactics that are often about gender and sexuality.

Cynthia Rothschild

Independent human rights expert, OURs member

We’ve experienced a lot of pushback from different states, from different civil society actors, from private corporations and large donors who are funding the activities of these anti-rights actors.

Meghan Doherty

Director of Global Policy and Advocacy with Action Canada

Read more on what we do at the Human Rights Council

More interviews at HRC38

Zhan Chiam

ILGA's Gender Identity and Gender Expression Senior Programme Officer

Paola Salwan Daher

Global Advocacy Adviser at the Center for Reproductive Rights

Sim! Reconhecemos e valorizamos diferentes motivos pelos quais as feministas nos seus respetivos contextos não dispõem de financiamento externo: desde não serem elegíveis para se candidatar a subsídios e/ou receber dinheiro do exterior, até dependerem de recursos gerados autonomamente como uma estratégia política por si só. Queremos saber mais sobre vocês, independentemente da vossa experiência com financiamento externo.

Six thematic anchors hold the Feminist Realities framework of the Forum. Each anchor centers feminist realities, experiences and visions, on the continuum between resistance and proposition, struggle and alternative. We seek to explore together what our feminist realities are made of and what enables them to flourish in different spheres of our life.

These realities may be fully articulated ways of living, dreams and ideas in the making, or precious experiences and moments. 

The anchors are not isolated themes, but rather interconnected containers for activities at the Forum. We envision many activities to be at the intersection of these themes, at the intersection of different struggles, communities and movements. The descriptions are preliminary, and continue to evolve as the Feminist Realities journey continues.

Resources for Communities and Movements & Economic Justice

This anchor centers questions of how we -- as individuals, communities, and movements -- meet our basic needs and secure the resources that we need to thrive, in ways that center care for people and nature. By “resources” we mean food, water, clean air, as well as money, labor, information, knowledge, time, and more. 

Drawing on feminist resistance to the dominant economic system of exploitation and extractivism, the anchor highlights the powerful and inspiring feminist proposals, experiences and practices of organizing our economic and social life. Food and seed sovereignty, feminist visions of work and labor, just and sustainable systems of trade, are just some of the questions to explore. We will bravely face the contradictions that emerge from the need to survive in oppressive economic systems. 
This anchor positions funding and resourcing for organizations and movements in a broad feminist analysis of economic justice and wealth creation. It explores how to move resources where they are needed, from tax justice and basic income to different models of philanthropy and creative & autonomous resourcing for movements.

Governance, Accountability and Justice

We seek to build new visions and amplify existing realities and experiences of feminist governance, justice and accountability. In the face of the global crisis and rising fascisms and fundamentalisms, this anchor centers feminist, radical and emancipatory models, practices and ideas of organizing society and political life, - locally and globally.

The anchor will explore what feminist governance looks like, from feminist experiences of municipalism to building institutions outside of nation-states, to our visions of multilateralism. We will exchange experiences of justice and accountability processes in our communities, organizations and movements, including models of restorative, community-based and transformative justice that reject state violence and the prison-industrial complex.

Centering experiences of travel, migration and refuge as well as feminist organizing, we seek a world without deadly border regimes; a world of free movement and exciting journeys.

Digital Realities

The role of technology in our lives is ever increasing and the line between online and offline realities blurred. Feminists make widespread use of technologies and online space to build community, learn from each other, and mobilise action. With online spaces, we can expand the boundaries of our physical world. On the flip side, digital communications are largely owned by corporations with minimal accountability to users: data mining, surveillance and security breaches have become the norm, as well as online violence and harassment. 

This anchor explores the feminist opportunities and challenges within digital realities. We’ll look at alternatives to privately owned platforms that dominate the digital landscape, well-being strategies for navigating online spaces, and uses of technology to overcome accessibility challenges. We’ll explore the potentials of technology in relation to pleasure, trust and relationships.

Bodies, Pleasure and Wellbeing

We hold feminist realities also within ourselves -- the embodied experience. Control of our labour, mobility, reproduction, and sexuality continues to be central to patriarchal, cis-heteronormative and capitalist structures. Defying this oppression, people of diverse genders, sexualities and abilities create encounters, spaces and sub-cultures of joy, care, pleasure and deep appreciation for ourselves and each other.  

This anchor will explore multiple ideas, narratives, imaginations, and cultural expressions of consent, agency and desire as held by women, trans, non-binary, gender non-conforming and intersex people in different societies and cultures. 

We will exchange strategies for winning reproductive rights and justice, and articulate social practices that enable and respect bodily autonomy, integrity and freedom. The anchor links different struggles and movements to inform each other’s perceptions and experiences of wellbeing and pleasure.

Planet and Living Beings

Imagine a feminist planet. What is the sound of the water, the smell of the air, the touch of the earth? What is the relationship between the planet and its living beings, humans included? Feminist realities are realities of environmental and climate justice. Feminist, indigenous, decolonial and ecological struggles are often rooted in transformative visions and relations among people and nature. 

This anchor centers the wellbeing of our planet, and reflects on the ways in which humans have interacted with and reshaped our planet. We seek to explore aspects of traditional knowledge and biodiversity as part of sustaining a feminist planet, and learn about feminist practices around degrowth, commoning, models of parallel economies, agro-ecology, food and energy sovereignty initiatives.

Feminist organizing

While we see all the anchors as related, this one is truly cross-cutting so we invite you to add an organizing dimension to whatever anchor(s) your proposed activity links to.

How is feminist organizing happening in the world today? This question turns our attention to actors, power dynamics, resources, leadership, to the economies we are embedded within, to our understanding of justice and accountability, to the digital age, to our experiences of autonomy, wellbeing and collective care. Across all anchors, we hope to create a space for honest reflection on power and resources distribution and negotiation within our own movements.

The Forum is a collaborative process

The Forum is more than a four-day convening. It is one more stop on a movement strengthening journey around Feminist Realities that has already begun and will continue well beyond the Forum dates.

Join us on this journey!

Lines of work:

FOR