WAVE Annual Report – 2019

International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA), in partnership with 18 women’s rights organisations, collaborates to deliver the Women’s Action for Voice and Empowerment (WAVE) program in five countries. With powerful support from the Government of the Netherlands, WAVE increases the voice, agency, representation and diversity of women in leadership and movements, striving for gender equality.

WAVE’s goal is for women to lead transformative, sustainable change towards gender equality through strategic feminist engagement. IWDA is committed to ongoing, long-term partnerships with women’s organisations in Asia and the Pacific, and builds on partners’ skills and interests to provide capacity strengthening tools, resources and support to build WAVE partners’ effectiveness and resilience.

As women’s rights organisations face closing civil spaces and increased backlash against women’s human rights and feminist agendas, a strategic and transformative advocacy response is more critical than ever. Ensuring that women’s voices and women’s rights organisations are heard loud and clear is a key priority of the WAVE program. Read about the ways in which the WAVE program supported individual women’s leadership, systemic change, women’s movements and civil society organisations, and research, evidence, and learning throughout 2019.