The International Womens Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific or IWRAW Asia Pacific was founded in 1993 to work towards the realisation of the human rights of women through the use of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (the CEDAW Convention) and other international human rights instruments. The founders, a group of Asian women, wanted to link activism taking place at the local level with that at the global level. By understanding and participating in international activities, women working at the local level would be able to monitor and facilitate the implementation of the CEDAW Convention domestically while contributing to standard-setting at the international level. Thirteen years later, IWRAW Asia Pacific works in 14 countries in South and Southeast Asia and over 100 countries globally.

IWRAW Asia Pacific focuses on women and women’s NGOs from the South. They work primarily through collaborative projects at the international, national and local levels with women activists and NGOs; human rights advocates; lawyers; governments and international organisations.
As stated above, one reason for IWRAW Asia Pacific’s uniqueness lies in its positioning as an international NGO based in the Global South, rather than in Geneva or New York. This positioning and their close contacts with local NGOs allows them to ground their analytical approach in the realities of NGOs and activists in the South so that they can better address the structural causes that permit the violation of rights. Through this informed approach, they examine underlying causes of rights violations and strengths and weaknesses of State efforts and identify factors that are needed to create a culture of compliance with human rights norms and institutional frameworks and legal instruments that are needed for the administration of justice. This allows them to develop programmes that aim at developing the capacity of people to claim rights and strengthen the institutional framework necessary for this.

The joint project, called Forging Intersectional Feminist Futures involves eight regional networks in an effort to strengthen intersectional movement building in Asia. This forms the key to developing transformative advocacy strategies that center the voices and lived experiences of diverse groups of marginalised women and challenge multiple systems of oppression to achieve systemic gender equality. The countries involved in this project are Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, India and Pakistan, with regional and global spheres of impact.

Over the 33-month period, the project partners organise online and offline activities to:

• build their collective capacities on intersectionality theory and practice;
• understand how to engage in CEDAW advocacy and activism from an intersectional perspective;
• facilitate capacity building and intersectional movement building among national partners in all five countries;
• reflect on their experiences of seeking to apply intersectionality in advocacy and movement building, and document these practices;
• engage in strategising and advocacy planning to offer a collective and systems response to specific manifestations of gender equality;
• develop an intersectional feminist, cross-movement advocacy roadmap, addressing issues such as bodily rights, health rights, migrant rights, digital rights, decriminalisation and decarceration;
• network and build cross-movement solidarity at regional level;support national partners to put into practice collective, intersectional advocacy, research or campaign actions;
• and create and share knowledge with our movements on practical ways to apply intersectionality in advocacy, movement building and organisational practices, through creative communications.

The specific results include:

• Strengthened collective understanding of intersectionality and intersectional feminism among nine key networks and organisations working to eradicate gender inequality in Asia Regional and national cross-movement roadmaps for joint advocacy outlining intersectional entry points for collective action towards eliminating gender inequality
• Documented good practices and strategies for applying an intersectional approach to eliminating gender inequality in Asia Due to COVID-19 and related restrictions, activities taking place over the first 18 months will be organised virtually.
• Strengthened their own capacities to organise online by undergoing training on digital advocacy, and digital and holistic security during the inception phase.

In order to overcome challenges to wellbeing and inter-personal connection posed byprolonged COVID-19 measures, they organise quarterly wellness sessions involving activities such as meditation, online workouts, group discussions, etc. Seeking to ensure accessibility for all, they have dedicated a standard amount in all activity budgets to meet accessibility needs ranging from audiovisual aids to language interpretation.