March 8, International Women’s Day, honors the achievements of women across the globe as they lead movements for equality and justice. Over the decades, women have made important strides in expanding rights and freedom, but we know that the campaign for gender equality is far from over.
Today we are celebrating the collective power of women working in partnership. WLP partners have advanced legal and social reforms in their own countries and around the world. Here are some recent examples of initiatives led by the extraordinary women of WLP.
1. WLP Partners made commitments to working in collaboration on climate, democracy, and women’s rights: In an in-person, transnational gathering of 30 leading human rights and gender equality advocates convened by WLP in Stockholm, Sweden, participants prepared strategies to advance climate justice and rights.
2. WLP led global messaging on the powerful movement for women, life, freedom in Iran: To build international awareness and solidarity with the movement for rights and justice in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, WLP issued a global message of solidarity and press releases, as well as media interviews with WLP president and former Iranian Minister for Women’s Affairs, Mahnaz Afkhami, to amplify the demands of the people in Iran.
3. WLP partners in Pakistan and Turkey launched continuing women-led relief responses following devastating natural disasters: After massive flooding in August 2022 left millions without shelter or their livelihood in Pakistan, WLP’s partner established the ongoing delivery of clean water, food, medicine, and women’s hygiene products across the most affected provinces. WLP’s partner in Turkey is working with over 70 women’s cooperatives to provide women and girls with safe and healthy housing and resources to rebuild their lives after the catastrophic earthquakes last month.
4. WLP brought feminist perspectives to the UN Stockholm +50 Forum on climate change: WLP hosted an event at the international forum, where WLP partners from Brazil, Nigeria, and Morocco shared their knowledge and recommendations with state representatives from around the world.
5. WLP established new connections between civil society organizations across regions: WLP partners hosted regional convenings–in the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, Sub-saharan Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia–that built regional networks for family law reform, ending GBV, and increasing women in governance.
6. WLP supported a peacebuilding training for civil society organizations in Central Asia: WLP Kazakhstan hosted 26 civil society representatives from eight countries to promote democratic citizenship in Central Asia and to advance their peacebuilding initiatives.
7. WLP’s regional training for young African leaders built their skills to support political engagement and democratic elections: WLP Nigeria hosted a regional Youth Democracy Institute where youth leaders from eight countries learned about using technology to increase the political participation of young people in West Africa.
8. WLP archived and published the stories of women’s rights advocates from the Global South: To date, WLP has archived over 450 records as part of our Women Making History project.
9. WLP began a new initiative on digital democracy: WLP held a capacity-building event for national civil society organizations on online violence against women and the effects of digital attacks on women’s political participation.
10. WLP published four resources on democracy and leadership: Ahead of presidential elections in Brazil and Nigeria, WLP published our training manuals Leading to a Culture of Democracy and Beyond Equality in Portuguese and Leading to Action in Hausa. In collaboration with WLP Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, WLP published Beyond Equality in Russian. WLP also worked with our partner in Senegal to translate our latest documentary It’s Up to Us into Wolof.
11. WLP promoted climate and gender activists and their women-led climate initiatives at the UN 66th Commission on the Status of Women: At WLP's CSW66 parallel event, activists from Brazil, Kyrgyzstan, Senegal, and Turkey gave presentations on their work for climate justice at the local, national, and international levels.
____