Taking Urgent Action to Defend and Promote Women's Human Rights

This month, WLP spoke with Julie Shaw, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights (UAF), about providing urgent assistance to women's human rights defenders. A long-time activist in the international women's movement, Julie Shaw has more than twenty-five years of management experience in the non-profit sector and has been involved in the creation of two non-profit organizations focused on violence against women.

History has shown that women are often victims of physical violence during times of armed conflict and political upheaval. Crises in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone have demonstrated the enormous burden women bear during war. Even in post-conflict areas, such as Afghanistan, women still face serious threats to their physical safety and freedoms, preventing their full participation in public life and the rebuilding of their country. Women's human rights continue to be a negotiable terrain, rather than an inseparable part of international human rights doctrine, despite a decades-long campaign to institutionalize women's rights as human rights.

The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna declared women's rights an "inalienable, integral, and indivisible part of universal human rights." Following the conference, human rights networks developed strategies for mainstreaming women's concerns. The Urgent Action Fund is a unique funding organization grounded in the principles established by the 1993 Vienna conference and the subsequent 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Launched in 1997 by Ariane Brunet, Margaret Schink, and Julie Shaw, UAF fulfilled a need in the women's human rights sector to provide short-term support to activists during critical moments of intervention. The organization developed as a rapid response grant-making organization to support activists who needed to respond quickly to uphold and ensure women's rights in times of crisis.

WLP spoke with Julie Shaw, Executive Director and founding member of the Urgent Action Fund, about how her organization is unique within the funding world. The organization is defined by its ability to provide quick funding for strategic action in response to an unanticipated event that either opens up an opportunity to advance women's human rights or threatens to undermine gains already made. Grants are made when a group can demonstrate that if it does not act quickly the opportunity will pass or the situation will worsen.

When conflict and crisis emerge, women are extraordinarily resourceful and creative.  According to Shaw, "UAF provides a rapid funding response to external, unanticipated, and time-urgent events. We support activists who already have a women's human rights strategy in place and are working to provide a quick response when something unexpected happens." These critical moments of intervention can fall within three broad categories: areas of armed conflict, escalating violence, or politically volatile environments; protection and security of women's human rights defenders; and potentially precedent-setting legal or legislative action. UAF usually responds within 72 hours to requests from activists with a strategic course of action in place, by providing funds to support the immediate intervention. "When conflict and crisis emerge, women are extraordinarily resourceful and creative. When they come up with a strategy that costs money; they can come to us," said Shaw.

In 2002, UAF provided 60 grants to support women's rights efforts, primarily in the Global South. To improve women's security, they have supported efforts to combat violence against women and uphold their basic human rights both in the home and in times of war. UAF makes funds available to key activists to increase their own security and that of their colleagues when they are being threatened because of their activism. UAF has supported the evacuation of activists when they are no longer able to stay in-country. The Urgent Action Fund also supported three precedent-setting cases in Trinidad and Tobago, Botswana, and Lebanon in which battered women's syndrome was accepted as a legitimate defense for victims of domestic violence who killed their abusers.

UAF has provided immediate resources to organizations seeking to expand women's participation in processes of peace-building. In Sierra Leone, an organization trained individuals to record and broadcast radio programs through which women shared their traumatic experiences during war and directly informed the newly established Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A workshop was organized in Nepal to address escalating violence in the country and bring about a greater understanding of conflict transformation. In Somalia, a women's political movement lobbied for women's equal representation in peace negotiations. In Uganda, grassroots women leaders participated in a forum to strategize about ways to understand the roots of conflict in the northern part of the country and expand women's role in peace-building efforts. According to Shaw, "We provide support to get women to the table. We can make money available for women who are creating strategies to ensure women's voices are taken into account during reconstruction and in the development of laws. In times of transition, like the current situation facing post-war Iraq, the important thing for us is that women are present in the formation of the new government." In the ever-changing global landscape, the Urgent Action Fund will continue to promote women's rights, ensure that women are protected in times of crisis, and foster gender-sensitive conflict-resolution initiatives in the Global South.