More than 80 Women’s Rights Groups Get Support by the Fund for Global Human Righ

Posted by sabina on October 19, 2009

The Fund for Global Human Rights finds and funds the best on-the-ground activists and gives them resources to do their work. Women’s rights has been a major focus of the Fund since its inception in 2002, and a grant from the MDG3 Fund has enabled the Fund to support the work of more than eighty frontline women’s rights grantees; underscore the connection between legal, economic and social discrimination against women throughout the world; and expand our grant-making on the range of critical human rights issues affecting women’s everyday lives.

The Fund’s grantees speak different languages; utilize numerous strategies, such as legal advocacy, community-organizing or public education; and tackle diverse issues—rape as a weapon of war, the right to education, and land and inheritance rights. But they share a common challenge: breaking down the power structures—some centuries old—that were created to relegate women to second-class status.

The Fund’s women’s rights grantees are achieving concrete results on the ground in each of the 15 countries in which it funds. Below are two examples of recent victories worth special attention:

• Two years of persistent activism by the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia (AFELL) led the Liberian government to create a special court, inaugurated in February 2009, to handle rape cases and other cases of violence against women. During the recent civil war, the rape of girls and women was widespread, and impunity for such crimes persists throughout the country. With the regular courts backlogged, rape cases were taking years to move through the system, and AFELL expects this new, dedicated court will increase prosecutions, speed justice, and help end impunity for violence against women.

• In September 2009, thanks to an advocacy campaign spearheaded by Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc (Democratic Association of Moroccan Women – ADFM), the Moroccan Minister of the Interior guaranteed women from the Soulaliyate tribe – whose collective land is being sold by the state – the right to an equal share of the funds generated from the sale. Previously, the funds were distributed only to men. The decision, which came on the eve of the celebration of the National Day of Moroccan Women, was reached after ADFM helped to organize and train Soulaliyate women from different regions to defend their rights, petition a local court to freeze the sale, and draw media attention to this injustice.

This month, with the support of the MDG3 Fund, the Fund plans to award over $400,000 in new grants to more than twenty women’s rights groups in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mexico, Guatemala, and the Philippines.

For more information, please visit http://www.globalhumanrights.org/