whrds

The Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition (WHRD IC) has expressed deep concern regarding the safety of five staff from the Uganda sex worker organization, Women’s Organization Network for Human Rights Advocacy (WONETHA). On May 7, police authorities raided WONETHA's small office and arrested two staff and three members. The staff members face ongoing harassment and criminal…

For those of you that don't know the appalling vitriol that Anita Sarkeesian has been subject to, you can read a summary of it here. It's worrying that there are people out there who are capable of perpetrating this campaign of hatred. But what's more worrying is that we don't seem to know what to do…

In early April 2012 in Istanbul thirty people from six continents met at the APC “Dialogue on digital security and women's human rights defenders” to discuss regional and global trends on digital security, freedom of expression and freedom of association, and their impact on women's human rights defenders. Katerina Fialova and Sonia Randhawa interviewed two of the participants to interrogate/…

“Sex work may be illegal in Uganda, but providing services for sex workers is clearly not,” reads a statement put out on May 9 by WONETHA, a health and human rights organisation, in reaction to a serious crack-down on its activities by Ugandan municipal police.

Today Gita Sen said “we are in a fierce vicious unequal new economic world where battlegrounds are many” and a few hours later in the session on “Commodification of knowledge: how increasing access and availability of the internet had transformed the way knowledge is produced and shared” a participant made us notice that “We were being watched." And it's true behind the gorgeous beauty of…

As the day passed I saw myself surrendering to the fact that there is nothing good in the laziness of a routine that prevent us from thinking about technological abuse that we as women activists can suffer and make the other suffering. When on the 18 we had the feminist tech exchange I understood that I need, I have to anonymize myself.

From 21 May to 4 June 2012, the second cycle of the Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) will begin at the UN Office at Geneva. The UPR is a unique mechanism for states and governments to tell other countries what they have achieved in promoting human rights – but also for non-state actors to raise issues of concern in a non-confrontational fashion. This edition of GenderIT.org…

A girl growing up in the 80s in Central America, in Honduras, who went to state schools had few chances to access any type of technology. It was even difficult for us to access books as a source of knowledge, and letters were a form of communication to which only some of us had access. All of the music - other than the music that my mother listened to - was only available in English...

The submission to the UPR process elaborated by the Women´s Legal and Human Rights Bureau, Inc from the Philippines addresses the issue of women’s access to justice in the country, which highlights technology-related violence against women (VAW) as an emerging form of VAW. The submission also looks at the gaps and challenges in available domestic remedies to survivors of violence and abuse…

This joint submission has been prepared by the APC Women’s Networking Support Programme in consultation with Instituto Nupef and is endorsed by Sexuality Policy Watch. The submission focuses on human rights and the internet in Brazil. It highlights areas where Brazil is doing well, specific areas of concern, and makes five recommendations for follow-up and implementation. The submission focuses…