Policy and Advocacy Program

Policy & Advocacy Program

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.

UN Monitoring & Advocacy
Click here for information on CWGL's thematic areas at the UN.

CWGL plays a major role at various UN meetings addressing the implementation of commitments from Vienna, Cairo, Copenhagen and Beijing, in particular at the UN Commission on the Status of Women, the UN Commission on Human Rights, and at the reviews of these UN World Conferences. These meetings are critical opportunities for the women's human rights community to put the spotlight on the successes and failures in implementing commitments to women. CWGL facilitates planning sessions so that women's human rights advocates can monitor and contribute to these meetings effectively; convenes a women's human rights caucus and other gatherings; organizes monitoring and other advocacy trainings; and sends out alerts and reports both before and after such meetings. The Center has played a significant role in securing commitments from governments including,

the recognition by governments of violence against women, whether by public or private perpetrators, as a human rights violation;
the growing acceptance of gender-based persecution as grounds for asylum and refugee claims;
an understanding of rape in armed conflict as a war crime;
the appointment of a UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, its causes and consequences;
a commitment to the integration of a gender perspective throughout the entire UN Human Rights machinery, and not just in those areas specifically mandated to address women's concerns; and,
the increased attention paid to a variety of women's rights issues as human rights concerns by governments and the international community, including human rights and other non-governmental organizations.

CWGL activities at the UN

International Mobilization Campaigns

16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence

click on logo for 16 Days site

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.

Global Campaigns for Women's Human Rights

Global Campaigns for Women's Human Rights have been organized by the Center to coincide with a number of significant international events, including the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights; the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women; the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1998; and, in 2000 around the five year UN review of the Beijing Platform for Action. Supported by thousands of individuals and organizations from around the world, the Global Campaigns focus attention on women's rights as human rights with activities such as,

a "Petition to Promote and Protect the Human Rights of Women" which gathered nearly 1 million signatures and was circulated in 115 countries in more than 27 languages;
a series of Global Tribunals which have inspired women's human rights advocates from around the world to organize tribunals and hearings in their communities to promote the human rights of women; and,
the publication and dissemination of a poster and a "take action kit" that are still used as tools to pressure governments to ensure the realization of women's human rights.

Policy & Advocacy Archives

Vienna + 10 Updates