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.
