Spotlight On

Fund launches women's human rights field of interest fund

The Fund is pleased to announce the launch of a new field of interest fund on women’s human rights.  This new fund will enable us to highlight the work of more than eighty women’s rights grantees; underscore the connection between legal, economic and social discrimination against women throughout the world; and attract new financial resources to the Fund—enabling us to expand our grant-making on the range of critical human rights issues affecting women’s everyday lives.

The Fund is a leading supporter of community-based and national women’s rights organizations in each of the fourteen countries in which it has a grants program. Well-organized and strategic, women’s rights organizations across the world have accomplished much with few resources. Our 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, honor killings, 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.

In the photo above, members of Justice for Our Daughters gather for a demonstration in northern Mexico to demand action by the police to investigate the murders of hundreds of women along the border.

The Fund’s women's rights grant-making program aim to bring frontline activists the resources they need to build their organizations, take on more ambitious campaigns to promote women’s rights, cultivate women’s leadership, and build alliances with other women’s rights groups as well as with their colleagues in human rights organizations that have not historically focused on women’s human rights.

As you will see from the descriptions of several women’s rights organizations we support, our grantees are achieving concrete results on the ground—in fact, it was difficult to choose just a few grantees to highlight for you.  A few points worth special attention:

• In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it is not hyperbole to state that rape is at epidemic proportions, the Fund’s grantees have helped attract desperately-needed international attention to this issue, and are assisting hundreds of women in filing cases, and defying the culture of silence and stigma against rape survivors.
• In Mexico, Fund grantees are taking advantage of recent openness in government to women’s rights, and have achieved major policy victories at the state and national levels—including, in the state of Tlaxcala, criminalizing trafficking in women and children; and in Baja California Sur, criminalizing domestic violence and winning strong protections against sexual harassment.

Read more:
» Women's rights victories in 2007
» Selected list of women's rights grantees

Take action:

By making a gift today, you can help the Fund increase its giving to women's rights groups that have great promise and minimal access to funding.

» Make a gift to the Fund