Resourcing women’s rights organisations
Diverse women’s rights organisations, firmly rooted in local communities and context, are the most effective drivers of change for women and girls.
That’s why IWDA resources diverse women’s rights organisations, primarily in Asia and the Pacific, with the money, skills and access they need to do their work.
We currently partner with women’s rights organisations in Myanmar, Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa and Tonga.
We support organisations’ work primarily across three interconnected themes:
Power, leadership and civic space
Women have the right to lead and make decisions in all spheres – from their homes and communities to global spaces.
Increasing diverse women’s access to leadership and expanding space for civil society is critical to transforming power.
IWDA supports work to ensure women who support gender equality have access to leadership and decision-making roles in all spheres, and are connected with feminist movements.
We support safe spaces for feminist movements to come together to resist backlash, advance progress on gender equality and advocate for meaningful space for civil society.
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Freedom from violence
Gender based violence remains one of the most persistent human rights violations in the world today.
To ensure every woman and girl can live free from violence, we must transform the gender norms which underpin violence, while addressing the connection between violence at the individual and systemic level.
IWDA supports women’s rights organisations to implement survivor-centred and rights-based approaches to sexual and gender based violence across the spectrum from prevention to response, services, and access to justice.
IWDA works with women’s rights organisations on conflict prevention, and to advocate for and contribute to robust reporting frameworks and accountability under national and international legal and policy frameworks relating to gender based violence, including the women peace and security agenda.
Read more:
This gender-based violence service in Solomon Islands is ensuring rural women are not left behind
Gendered climate justice
Climate change is the greatest existential challenge the world has faced. The impacts of climate change are gendered – meaning that people are impacted in different ways based on their gender and other factors.
For example, women and girls are often responsible for gathering and preparing household food, water and fuel. As water, fuel, fish and other food sources become scarcer, women and girls must spend more time on these aspects of unpaid domestic labour, increasingly risking exposure to environmental and interpersonal hazards. Further, the food shortages and financial hardship associated with climate change can increase violence against women and LGBTQIA+ people. Increased gender-based violence in the aftermath of natural disasters is well documented.
Addressing climate change requires connections across feminist and environmental movements. As a relatively new entrant to the climate space, IWDA will learn from others and determine where we can best add value.
We recognise the need to support work at the intersection of climate justice and gender equality, resource women’s rights organisations to participate in decision-making spaces relating to climate policy, and engage in advocacy which leverages our locational power to call for accountability to international agreements.
Read more:
Policy Paper on Gender and Climate Change in the Pacific and Asia