Rutgers University
Center for Women's Global Leadership
http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu

Contact Information:

160 Ryders Lane
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Charlotte Bunch, Executive Director
Lucy Vidal, Information Manager
Phone: 732/932-8782
Fax: 732/932-1180
Email: cwgl@igc.org

human rights; international issues; leadership and leadership development; violence against women

Human Rights

• The policy and advocacy program encompasses CWGL's efforts to integrate gender and women's human rights into the work of local, national, regional and international institutions. This program informs and mobilizes advocates for women's human rights around specific events and builds linkages among them to enhance their capacity to influence policy making. The Center, working in collaboration with women leaders and NGOs around the world, helped secure international policy commitments that clearly state "women rights are human rights." With these policy benchmarks in place, the Center has turned its energy toward implementation of this concept and holding policy making bodies accountable to their promises to the world's women. Core activities in this program area include UN Monitoring and Advocacy and the coordination of International Mobilization Campaigns.

Leadership and Leadership Development

• Since 2000, CWGL has convened Strategic Consultations and Conversations that provide opportunities to examine world situations and to discuss strategies and venues for work on women’s human rights. Given the overwhelmingly positive response to these meetings, the Center decided to continue organizing “strategic conversations” both globally and locally as the core of its leadership development work. This builds on the Center’s history of convening people to think and plan strategically about specific initiatives and also addresses the need expressed by many for spaces where they can re-think how to work in the ever-changing world environment. CWGL sees this as making a further investment in the leadership of the women's human rights movement, which needs such opportunities to craft next steps as well as a way to generate new ideas and strategies. CWGL recently convened a Strategic Conversation on the future of Women's Human Rights Leadership Development.

Violence Against Women

• More than 2,000 organizations in over 154 countries have participated in the 16 Days Campaign since its launch in 1991. This annual campaign, November 25 to December 10, has been used as an organizing strategy by individuals and groups from around the world to call for the elimination of all forms of violence against women. Growing out of the Center's first Women's Global Leadership Institute, the Campaign links violence against women and human rights, emphasizing that all forms of violence, whether perpetrated in the public or private sphere, are a violation of human rights. The dates that participants chose for the Campaign symbolically make this link: November 25 marks the International Day Against Violence Against Women and December 10 is International Human Rights Day. The 16-day period also highlights other significant dates including December 1 which is World AIDS Day, and December 6 which marks the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre.
• In coordinating the Campaign, the Center assists individuals and organizations in planning activities which focus on developing and calling for the implementation of local, national and global policies aimed at eliminating violence against women. The Center develops and publicizes the theme of the campaign in collaboration with activists from around the world. Resources available for the 16 Days Campaign include an International Calendar of Campaign Activities, a "take action kit," and an interactive website which has been instrumental in promoting the Campaign on a global scale.

PUBLICATIONS

International Issues
Human Rights

• Strengthening Resistance: Confronting Violence Against Women and HIV/AIDS (2006)
• Women Testify: A Planning Guide for Popular Tribunals and Hearings (2005)
• Written Out: How Sexuality is Used to Attack Women's Organizing (2005), available on IGLHRC's website at http://www.iglhrc.org/files/iglhrc/WrittenOut.pdf
• Women at the Intersection of Racism and Other Oppressions: A Human Rights Hearing (Video & Study Guide) (2003)
  • Video: This intriguing video explores the meaning of intersectionality and women's strategies for overcoming oppressions through focusing on highlights of three hearing testimonies: violations in war, conflict and genocide - ethnic Chinese women in Indonesia; violations of bodily integrity and sexuality - Roma women in Serbia; violations on account of migration and immigration - Haitian women immigrants in the Dominican Republic. The video also celebrates the organizing strategies used by women's groups to work against intersectional discrimination. Center for Women's Global Leadership, 2003. (30 minutes)
  • Study Guide: A companion video study guide utilizes interactive methodologies to help groups develop strategies for analysis and action by gaining better understanding of intersectionality as presented in the video testimonies and by developing skills to use an intersectional human rights methodology in their work to overcome racism and the multiples oppressions women face. By elmira Nazombe and Bojana Blagojevic, Center for Women's Global Leadership, 2003; 58 pages. ISBN 0-9711412-2-3.
  • Video and Study Guide Order Form:Women at the Intersection of Racism and Other Oppressions
• Woman at the Intersection: Indivisible Rights, Identities and Oppressions (Publication) (2002)
• Holding on to the Promise: Women's Human Rights and the Beijing +5 Review (2001)
• Feminism in the Muslim World Leadership Institutes: 1998 & 1999 Reports , Center for Women's Global Leadership and Women Living Under Muslim Laws (2000), available on WLUML's website at http://www.wluml.org/english/pubs/pdf/misc/fmw-institute-eng.pdf
• Los derechos de las mujeres son derechos humanos: Crónica de una movilización mundial (Spanish) (2000)
• Les voix des femmes et «les droits de l´homme» (French) (2000)
• Written Out: How Sexuality Is Used to Attack Women's Organizing , a report of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the Center for Women's Global Leadership (2000), available on IGLHRC's website at http://www.iglhrc.org/files/iglhrc/reports/Written%20Out.pdf
• Lesbians Travel the Roads of Feminism Globally/La travesía de las mujeres lesbianas por el feminismo internacional (English/Spanish) (2000)
• Local Action/Global Change: Learning About the Human Rights of Women and Girls (1999)
• Migrant Women's Human Rights in G-7 Countries: Organizing Strategies (1997)
• Without Reservation: The Beijing Tribunal on Accountability for Women's Human Rights (1996)
• The Indivisibility of Women's Human Rights: A Continuing Dialogue (1995)
• From Vienna to Beijing: The Copenhagen Hearing on Economic Justice and Women's Human Rights (1995)
• From Vienna to Beijing: The Cairo Hearing on Reproductive Health and Human Rights (1994)
• With Liberty and Justice for All: Women's Human Rights in the United States (1994)
• Demanding Accountability: The Global Campaign and Vienna Tribunal for Women's Human Rights (1994)
• Testimonies of the Global Tribunal on Violations of Women's Human Rights (1994)
• Gender Violence and Women's Human Rights in Africa: A Symposium (1994)
• International Campaign for Women's Human Rights: 1992-1993 Report (1993)
• Women, Violence and Human Rights: 1991 Women's Global Leadership Institute Report (also available in Spanish) (1992)
• Gender Violence: A Human Rights and Development Issue (also available in Spanish and French) (1991)