Gender Policy LGBTI

The rise of the far-right movement and recent shifts in global politics have led to significant cuts in foreign development assistance. What are the impacts on feminist and civil society organizations?

Women in Nepal have resisted oppression for decades, both through personal acts of defiance as well as participation in creative expressions of protest. Nirvana Bhandary in conversation with Bhawana Raut and Kailash Rai.

While the voices of women in Zambia have often been overlooked throughout history, feminist movements are fighting for social justice and equality. Is feminism a colonial construct or the key to liberation?

The 68th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) has shown, how interlinked economic and gender justice are. At the same time, the linkage between feminist grassroots and UN institutions has drastically weakened, benefiting anti-gender actors.

In parallel to the newly-issued guidelines for Germany’s feminist foreign policy, the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has also launched a new strategy on feminist development policy. Here’s a look back at key moments in international development institutions’ back-and-forth on gender policy.  

“The main achievement of Safecity is that we managed to make the violence visible [...]. The second achievement is that we made the data available, so that individuals and communities can use them - to advocate for their own safety, to demand for a better infrastructure or better institutional accountability.”

Germany’s government likes to consider itself a global pioneer in the field of international criminal law, and yet the German Code of Crimes against International Law (Völkerstrafgesetzbuch, CCAIL) contains a gender bias that hampers the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence in armed conflict in accordance with the Statute of the International Criminal Court.

In the Syrian case the international community failed to prove that human rights are also for the Syrian people, that everyone has the right to be protected. Twelve years of this ongoing war – and the international community did not do anything for the democratization of the country, they only offered humanitarian help. Interview with the winner of the Anne Klein Women's Award 2023, Joumana Seif.

Joumana Seif has been working in the human rights field since 2001 and supported the democratic movements in Syria with a focus on political prisoners. She left Syria in 2012, a year after the start of the uprising against the Assad regime.

Since 2020 a war has been ongoing in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. The conflict quickly spread to the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar, leading to a humanitarian crisis. Sexual violence is being employed deliberately and systematically as an instrument of war by all parties to the conflict in northern Ethiopia. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic draws to a close, it will leave the vulnerable, especially countless LGBTQIA+ persons, desperate for deliverance and justice. In this regard, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) has become more significant than ever. It calls us to seek those who are scared and traumatized, and lift them from the rubbles.

Left-wing identity politics must be more about foregrounding people’s common concerns and not their common characteristics, says Dr. Julia Ehrt, Executive Director at ILGA World.

Why are identity politics and criticism of discrimination often equated with one another and what consequences does this have for dealing with the ongoing reality of social violence in a serious way?

Physical or sexual violence is part of women's everyday experience in many places - also in the workplace. Often it is about abuse of power. There have also been cases of gender-based violence in some non-governmental organisations in recent years. Protective measures have been taken as a result. But is that enough? An interview with Christine Ash Büchner.

In the 1990s, excesses of ethnonationalism led to the devastating Balkan Wars. Today, left-wing liberal agents are trying to free themselves from these destructive forces.

This two-day digital conference, organized by the Humboldt University of Berlin’s Department of Diversity and Social Conflict in cooperation with Brown University and the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation, aims to bring together researchers, activists, and community organizers to discuss how discourses on gender and sexuality have evolved in the Middle East and Europe amid the rise of far-right and authoritarian movements.

The climate crisis is the result of relations of power and exploitation, between the Global North and the Global South as well as between people and nature. A decolonial approach in climate activism stands for a radical break with colonial principles of economic, political and social systems – including industrial agriculture and landgrabbing. A conversation with Ruth Nyambura, climate activist from Kenya. 

It was a long way before the implementation of UN Resolution 1325 on the prevention of war and sexual violence against women got on track. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the resolution, Barbara Unmüßig speaks about what steps and actions have to be taken to approach the goal of female participation in phases of conflict.

The women presented in this dossier are living proof of the difference, the big improvements we can make if we strengthen female and diverse voices in peace and security. – The use of Resolution 1325 in the EU.

How do we establish peace? Is there such a thing as feminist security policy? What role do women actually play in international conflicts? How do feminists around the world use Resolution 1325 to fight for their rights?