Amidst the violence of recent global events, I am finding hope from Global Washington members providing shelter from the storm for refugees. There are over 110 million refugees and displaced people worldwide, the highest number on record since 1951. However, GlobalWA members provide vital programs, credible advocacy, and build awareness of the plight of refugees at different stages of their journey.
The statistics can be overwhelming, but when you read about the effective programs reaching children and families, it brings hope for the future. Here are some programs being provided by GlobalWA members:
Safe Passage for Children: Efforts to support refugee children and families during transit, including providing basic necessities, psychosocial support, and child-friendly spaces.
Shelter and Health: Initiatives to provide healthcare, education, and support services to refugees in camps and host communities, addressing their basic needs and long-term well-being.
Relocation and Resettlement: Programs facilitating the relocation and integration of refugees into new communities, including sponsorship programs and evacuation efforts in crisis situations.
Job Training: Efforts to empower refugees through employment opportunities, vocational training, mentorship programs, and tech-focused job training, aiming to help them rebuild their lives and contribute to their new communities.
Please also listen to my interview with IRC Washington’s Executive Director Kathleen Morris on the GlobalWA podcast here. It is a good reminder that refugees are our neighbors, my kid’s classmates, and part of our thriving communities. It is also important to understand the root causes and why refugees are forced to leave their homes.
Ultimately, our GlobalWA members are helping to create a world where refugees feel welcomed, empowered, and embraced as valuable members of the global community.
Creating a World Where Refugees Feel Welcomed, Empowered, and Embraced
By Cady Susswein
Sudanese mother comforting her child. Photo: Wadi Lissa/Unsplash
There are more than 110 million refugees and displaced people worldwide – the highest number on record since the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention. That’s 110 million individuals, more than a third of which are children, with unique and usually traumatic stories. But that number – roughly the population of Egypt – becomes so easily dehumanizing, too large to imagine. GlobalWA members are doing incredible work to humanize and protect refugees along their journey, assisting them with basic necessities and psychosocial support from the start and eventually helping them create new lives for themselves around the world. These are some of their stories.
Safe Passage with Children
The beginning of a refugee’s journey can be the hardest. Seven-months pregnant with an 18-month-old son, Ana resisted the thought of leaving her home in Ukraine until one day two rockets exploded over her town, and she felt like she had no choice. She left her husband to defend the city and fled to Moldova, where she found herself in a church. The pastor did not refer to her as a refugee, but instead a guest. With support from World Vision, which helps 3.5 million people like Ana every year, she has hope for her future.
While Ana might not have encountered one of UNICEF’s Blue Dot Centers, they assist displaced children and families at dozens of transit routes out Ukraine in a joint effort with Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), local authorities, and other partners. Up to 1,000 people use these centers every day in neighboring countries like Moldova, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Belarus to access drinking water and hygiene supplies, health care, psychosocial support, legal information, and more. At each Blue Dot center, there’s a play area where kids can be kids.
Similarly, ChildFund established three child-friendly spaces at Palorinya Refugee Settlement in Uganda, which hosts the largest refugee population in Africa with refugees heavily from the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. Here children receive basic education and participate in trauma-informed activities designed to facilitate healing. Children can play while their families are working to rebuild their lives. Other ChildFund programs around the world help address the root cause of violence and poverty to prevent refugee scenarios, such as their Protected Passage, which aims to protect children along migratory routes.
Shelter and Health
Since 2017, over 700,000 Rohingya refugees have escaped ethnic and religious conflict in Myanmar and made it to Cox’s Bazar camps in Bangladesh. The Spreeha Foundation runs the health clinic in the camp, providing primary care and maternal and pediatric health services, as well as a team of health educators who train the community on basic health and hygiene issues. The foundation also provides child friendly centers to provide basic education, social and emotional support, and just plain fun.
As thousands of Venezuelans cross the border into Colombia fleeing their country’s economic and humanitarian crisis, Americares works to meet their health needs in 10 health centers and mobile clinics throughout the country, alleviating strain on the local health system. Americares responds to more than 30 crises around the world each year, establishing long-term recovery projects in other conflict areas such as Gaza, Syria, and South Sudan.
Adequate living standards is one of the most basic human rights. In its 13th year of conflict, the shelters that many displaced Syrians live in need critical repairs. Working in the country for the last decade, Global Communities has helped upwards of 480,000 Syrians rehabilitate their accommodations to maintain their privacy and dignity. Also working in response to the crisis in Syria, Concern Worldwide US has rehabilitated 45,000 shelters for Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
Relocation and Resettlement
While there’s a common misconception that refugees are flooding into places like North America and Europe, more than 75% of refugees are hosted by poor, low, and middle-income – usually neighboring – countries. More than half of these refugees are currently from Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine with major conflicts in Gaza, Myanmar, and South Sudan to name just a few. But for the small percentage of those that do make their way to the United States, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has partnered with the U.S. State Department to help everyday Americans sponsor refugees through the Welcome Corps.
Take the Sebatware family for instance. They lived in a refugee camp for 20 years after escaping conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With the help of IRC, they happily resettled in Phoenix, Arizona, where they were greeted by their Welcome Corps sponsors – a group of least five adult American citizens or permanent residents. To apply, the group submitted a welcome plan, passed background checks, and committed to raising $2,425 for each family member and supporting their integration for at least 90 days while they got their feet on the ground. The Sebatware’s sponsors helped them find housing, jobs, school for the kids, learn English, and apply for necessary documentation in their new life.
In Afghanistan, Operation Snow Leopard has evacuated 1,800 high-risk Afghans since the Taliban retook control of the country in August 2021. Their goal is to evacuate at least 700 more this year with over 4,000 active cases, including women and human rights leaders, children, journalists, and other vulnerable minorities. They work with refugees from evacuation to resettlement. Like Operation Snow Leopard, Jewish Humanitarian Response launched as a reaction to the Taliban takeover as a joint venture between the Aleph Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. They have evacuated 1,500 Afghans, 500 of which have now made it to their final destination.
Oxfam America helps displaced people not only with immediate needs for clean water, shelter, food, and work, but also advocates for their long-term wellbeing. They engage with governments to find solutions to conflict and advocates for policies and services that refugees need in host countries. Kadidiatou Barry is a mother of four from Burkina Faso. After escaping from the violence of armed groups with only what she could carry, a family hosted hers in the village of Sera, still in Burkina Faso but 70 kilometers away from the violence. With a cash grant from Oxfam and partners, she was able to start a new business, find her own home, and get back on her feet.
Resilience
As part of its their mission to enrich the communities in which they serve, Starbucks has committed itself to employing refugees around the world, hiring more than 5,500 in the last six years. While their original goal was 10,000 in five years, they are working with partners to continue to crack away at the problem, especially in Europe. To do this, Starbucks works with International Rescue Committee (IRC), the Refugee Council in the UK, and other NGOs including Tent, an organization dedicated to matching refugees with corporations, in the U.S, France, and UK.
Working with Starbucks, the IRC assisted Gift Handson, a Zimbabwean native and asylum seeker, with resettlement and transition services to the United States. He participated in IRC’s economic empowerment program called Hospitality Link, which gave him the skills he needed to land a job with Starbucks as a shift supervisor in Silver Spring, MD. He’s hopeful about his future and dreams of one day open a café or an African restaurant. His story is unique but not alone with others like Asma and Tam, who rebuilt their lives with this program.
Last year, Amazon also pledged to hire 5,000 refugees in Europe by 2026, working with the same organization Tent to support immigration and legal fees as well as mentoring and training. Amazon Web Services is also providing IT training to 10,000 Ukrainians around the world.
While refugee organizations and governments offer support, it is usually designed to be short-term. To help close the gap and unlock the potential of young Syrian refugees in Jordan, Mercy Corps reimagined a proven poverty relief model with a human-centered design process to focus on what young refugees really wanted. “Masaruna” is a holistic program that provides tech-focused job training, leveraging digital technology for financial planning and coaching for toxic stress and gender issues that so often plague refugee camps. The hope is that these young Syrians refugees and their families – representing up to 10% of Jordan’s population – can take control of their bright futures. Mercy Corps is working with partner organizations and universities to study the program and expand it.
Global Mentorship Initiative helps underrepresented graduates land their first career-focused jobs through their mentorship pathway. The organization works with universities, nonprofits, and youth partners in more than 90 countries, including eight refugee camps. But while Alnarjes, a young Syrian woman now living in Turkey and pursuing a medical degree, might have directly benefitted from the program, it’s the mentors that often say they learn more from the mentees by putting themselves in another person’s shoes.
While the current refugee crisis presents immense challenges, it also embodies the incredible resilience, strength, and compassion of humanity. Across the globe, individuals, communities, and organizations, like the GlobalWA members mentioned above, are coming together to support and uplift refugees, offering shelter, assistance, and opportunities for a brighter future. Despite facing unimaginable hardships, refugees are not defined by their circumstances but by their unwavering determination to rebuild their lives and contribute to their new communities. GlobalWA members are creating a world where refugees feel welcomed, empowered, and embraced as valuable members of our global community.
In addition to the above-mentioned members, the following GlobalWA members and Pangea grant partners have programs and services in the communities where they work to assist refugees and displaced persons:
ChildFund is a global development organization working to connect children with the people, resources and institutions they need to grow up healthy, educated, skilled and safe. Founded in 1938, we work in 23 countries, reaching about 21.1 million children and family members in 2023, mainly through local partner organizations who lead social change efforts within their communities.
But not all children are able to remain within their communities. Worldwide, there are currently about 50 million children on the move, 14 million of whom are refugees, and many more are experiencing the effects of migration or facing the possibility of it.
ChildFund’s approach to working with Children On the Move, which includes refugees and other children fleeing their homes or at risk of doing so due to violence or disaster, aims to address needs related to both immediate and long-term well-being, including protection and basic services. Our programs offer livelihood opportunities for children and families wishing to stay in their origin communities and others reintegrating into new communities. For those leaving their communities to find safety, we offer psychosocial services, health services and continuity of education along the way.
Global Communities has a rich history of providing emergency aid and protection services to refugees and internally displaced people in many crisis settings, from Ukraine and Gaza to Syria and Guatemala. This includes our Child Protection in Emergencies programming, which supports the well-being of children and addresses risks created or exacerbated by crises, such as abuse and family separation. We build protective environments, strengthen children’s resilience and work to prevent further harm. In Syria, for example, we manage several Child-Friendly Spaces (CFS) for children living in displacement camps. Given the dire conditions in the camps, CFS create safe and welcoming environments where children engage in age-appropriate activities, receive psychosocial services and learn positive coping mechanisms. We also offer parenting sessions and cash assistance, for instance, to ensure that children have stable housing. In Ukraine, we partner with community-based organizations to fill gaps in state services. We engage children in art therapy classes, learn and play activities, and community events to support their healing and recovery. We also foster social cohesion between displaced people and host communities. For example, our recreational activities bring children from the community together with those who have fled the fighting to encourage integration and minimize tensions.
Global Mentorship Initiative is a US-based global nonprofit bridging the gap between graduation and first career jobs for underrepresented young professionals and refugees from diverse communities. Through leveraging digital resources, mentorship, AI, and human connection, we are building a more equitable workforce of tomorrow’s leaders.
GMI’s flagship program is a structured, 12-week, virtual, one-to-one mentorship with a career professional. In four years, GMI has scaled from supporting 20 students to now over 7,000 in 100 countries, including 8 refugee camps.
GMI has supported over 500 refugee learners, many living in camps across Africa and Lebanon. 72% are employed within six months of graduating, in camps where the formal employment rate can be as low as 10%. GMI has partnered with the UNHCR to mentor 1,000 refugee learners over the next two years and support our corporate partners in hiring these bright, motivated candidates. For more information about how you can mentor, sponsor, or hire refugee learners, please contact ravenna.hennane@globalmentorship.org.
The International Rescue Committee responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic well-being, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC works in more than 50 countries.
The IRC has 29 offices across the United States that support newly arrived refugees by providing immediate aid, integration support, and employment services. The IRC is proud to have resettled over 400,000 refugees into the U.S. since World War II. In the United States, we help Afghans, Syrians, Ukrainians, and other refugees as they arrive in their new communities by finding homes, connecting to employment and education, and providing essential items.
When refugees arrive, we welcome them at the airport and connect them to housing. We also donate essential items, including food, clothes, kitchen utensils, and hygiene items. We offer cultural orientation, job training, and English classes while helping newcomers find employment and apply for benefits. We also help enroll children in school, provide immigrant legal assistance, and support finding health care.
At Mercy Corps, we assist refugees through emergency response, providing immediate aid like food, shelter, and hygiene supplies. We offer long-term support by improving access to livelihood opportunities. Through vocational training, refugees work to rebuild their lives and generate income. We also provide essential psychosocial support to help refugees cope with trauma and mental health challenges. We foster social cohesion between refugee and host communities through community engagement activities, promoting understanding and peaceful coexistence. We run campaigns addressing climate-related challenges faced by refugees, advocating for sustainable solutions and resilience-building measures. Additionally, we advocate for refugee rights and needs on a broader scale, engaging with governments and international organizations to shape policies that protect refugees and enhance their access to assistance.
Operation Snow Leopard (OSL) is a US-based nonprofit founded immediately after Kabul’s fall in August 2021. OSL’s primary mission is to safely evacuate and resettle at-risk Afghans, with a strong focus on women and children. We assist vulnerable groups, including women leaders, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, interpreters, doctors, activists, and religious minorities. Entirely run by volunteers, including former military personnel, civilians, and Afghans, OSL has conducted dozens of missions, helping nearly 1900 at-risk Afghans evacuate and relocate. OSL raises funds for mission essentials like food, lodging, medical care, travel, and documentation (passports, visas) for Afghans.
Since August 2021, OSL accepted a specific mission to help female Afghan Parliamentarians who were at risk of Taliban retribution. Despite engaging with over forty nations for resettlement pathways over the past two years, OSL was surprised to receive only a few offers. In 2022, OSL partnered with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, participating in international dialogues to aid at-risk Parliamentarians. OSL’s efforts included attending IPU General Assemblies in Bahrain and Geneva and coordinating with the UN. However, despite some progress, government and international institutions have not resolved these high-profile individuals’ resettlement issues. OSL actively renews calls for countries to accept these courageous women and their staff, who bravely risked everything when they stood up for democracy.
Around the world, Oxfam partners with local organizations to help refugees and other displaced people with their immediate basic needs for clean water, shelter, food, and work as well as advocate for their long-term wellbeing—both in their own nations, and in the countries that host them. We engage with allies and government officials at all levels to focus on peace and find sustainable solutions to the conflict and violence that ruin so many lives. We push for wealthy countries to welcome refugees and boldly attend to their needs. And we advocate for public policies that protect the rights of displaced families as they strive to rebuild their lives and fight to provide for their children a more equal future—in their own countries or the ones in which they settle. Read more.
Seattle International Foundation (SIF) believes in just, peaceful and prosperous societies in Central America, and that Central Americans should not be forced to leave their communities in search of refuge and safety. We work to build good governance and equity in order to address key political and social challenges in the region, including authoritarianism, human rights violations, corruption, impunity, violence, gender inequality, and discrimination, as they are push factors for forced displacement and migration.
We invest in organized civil society and independent actors at the forefront of advocacy efforts and to serve as the voice of the public and in independent media whose work increases transparency and accountability of actors in power. We bring together donors and international actors supporting Central America with Central American civil society leaders, including those who have gone into exile for political persecution, so that they can exchange experiences and build strategies to address the main drivers of irregular migration. Above all, we champion the visions of local communities in their efforts to demand political and social change and build the countries they dream of.
Pangea Grant Partners – Refugees
East Africa
Solidarity Eden Foundation, Uganda
2023 funds were used to expand the Women on Wheels program to equip 100 refugee women to gain financial independence: extensive tailing and business training combined with mentoring, mental health support and internships with established tailors. This is a comprehensive program ameliorating the trauma of refugee reality with training and gainful employment.
SE Asia
FORTUNE, Thailand
FORTUNE, a grassroots organization in Fang District in Northern Thailand, is the newest grant partner in Southeast Asia. It was founded in 2009. Its mission is to address the community and human rights needs of Myanmar ethnic migrant workers (many undocumented) who live and work in migrant camps on agricultural farms along the Thai-Myanmar border. FORTUNE provides support to Myanmar refugees and migrant workers living in Thailand.
Empowering Communities: CARE’s Response to the Global Crisis of Internally Displaced People
By Amber Cortes
CARE partner PARC (Palestine Agricultural Relief Committee) distributes 596 hygiene kits to displaced families in two shelters in Rafah, a town on the border with Egypt that used to have around 200,000 inhabitants before October 2023 and now hosts over one million people, crowded in a small space in harrowing conditions. Each hygiene kit covers the needs of a family of five during one month and contains a bath towel, soap, shampoo, laundry powder, toothpaste and toothbrushes, wipes, sanitary pads, and disinfectant. Rafah, southern Gaza, 6 January 2024. Photo: CARE
In her 16 years working with CARE’s Humanitarian Team, Camille Davis has never seen anything so dire as the situation in Gaza.
“And that’s because the situation is really so desperate and horrific,” says Davis, who is now the Senior Director of Humanitarian Resource Mobilization and Planning at CARE, an international humanitarian organization that delivers emergency relief and long-term development projects in 109 countries around the world.
“I mean, we’re six months into this crisis. There is mass displacement, we’re talking about most of the population of Gaza being displaced. And it is a really small area.”
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world, with over 2 million people in an area no bigger than 141 square miles.
Along with the effects of mass displacement, like crowded conditions, low access to safe water and basic sanitation, there is famine due to limited passage of food and other essential needs across borders.
“It’s also a very young population, a lot of children, a lot of young people and children. So, the situation is just heartbreaking. People are already dying from malnutrition…mostly children.”
Despite the challenging operating environment and access issues, CARE is still active in Gaza—doing everything from providing lifesaving medical equipment, safe water, and other relief supplies, to support for maternal health and newborn care, like at their mobile health clinic in Northern Gaza where trained midwives helped deliver 100 babies in the last two months.
CARE partner PARC distributes hygiene kits to displaced families in two shelters in Rafah, southern Gaza, 6 January 2024. Photo: CARE
As one of the oldest relief organizations in the world, CARE has a long history of working in Gaza. Right now, CARE is one of a few organizations with extensive reach throughout the Gaza strip including in the harder to access North where there is active conflict, and Davis credits this in part to the fact that the organization has been working with Palestinian communities since 1948 and has established a network of trusted partners and vendors that they’ve worked with for years.
“To the extent that we’re making progress, it’s entirely because of these relationships and how embedded CARE has been with communities in Gaza for so long,” says Davis.
The situation in Gaza is bringing attention to the plight of internally displaced people, or IDPs, around the world.
An internally displaced person is someone who has been forced to leave their home because of violence, conflict, or natural disasters, and though they are forced to leave their home, their neighborhood, their village, their community, they are unable to leave the country and remain within its borders.
According to the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, there are 62.5 million internally displaced people globally, which accounts for 58% of the world’s forcibly displaced population. Since IDPs cannot leave the country, they may not have the same protections as refugees under international law.
This puts many IDPs in the vulnerable position of either trying to leave the country or trying to survive and rebuild there while being trapped within its borders (during whatever conflict or disaster may be occurring).
For example, in Ukraine, CARE has reached nearly 1.3 million people since the crisis started two years ago. About 3.7 million people are displaced within the country’s borders, and hundreds of thousands are returning to the safer areas of Ukraine to try and rebuild their lives.
The ‘Your Support’ shelter in Lviv supported by CARE, hosts around 200 displaced individuals, helping them with nutrition and shelter, and wraparound support services like psychosocial support.
Leona in a shelter in Ivano-Frankivsk, two hours by car from Lviv. The 57-year-ol fled with her daughter from the Donetsk region to Western Ukraine. “The explosions made the whole house shake. My daughter and I slept on the floor in our apartment because we were afraid the windows would break. It was so cold, so we sometimes got up and started jumping up and down,” she says.Now, she manages a shelter in Ivano-Frankivsk. The shelter hosts up to 76 people, but many more are in need for a place to stay. “It is difficult if you have to say no to someone who just arrived at the train station. But we do not have any more beds at the moment,” says Leona. CARE and its partners support shelters for internally displaced people in Ukraine financially and with rehabilitation measures, furniture, and kitchen appliances. Additionally, CARE and its partners help with food, water, hygiene products, and other daily necessities. Hospitals and health facilities are supported with medical equipment and medicine. Photo: CARE
“Your Support” is much more than a shelter, says Davis. It’s about finding strength and hope in being together.
“It’s a place for displaced Ukrainians to celebrate special days together. They cook together they do handicraft workshops and, and just, you know, share stories about their life before the war and what they might be looking forward to.”
CARE is particularly interested in the safety and wellbeing of women and girls, who are at increased at risk of exploitation, sexual abuse, and starvation than their male counterparts in crisis situations.
CARE understands that when it comes to humanitarian assistance, it’s not one size fits all. Their initial emergency assessments include a Rapid Gender Analysis- a flagship tool for understanding the differentiated needs of men, women, girls, and boys in crisis, what risks they face, and what their needs are, so that humanitarian programs can be tailored to address those needs.
They also uphold the principles of Safe Programming to ensure that our humanitarian programs are appropriate and do not increase the risk of harm to program participants, particularly Gender-Based Violence (GBV). This means continuously monitoring these risks throughout the program cycle, building mitigations and controls into program design, implementation and closeout, thus reducing the likelihood of harm, exploitation and abuse.
“For example,” Davis explains, “in a refugee or IDP camp situation, we might build a block of latrines, but they’re not gender segregated, the paths to the latrines are not lit. There are no locks on the latrines.
“So even though we go in, and we’re providing the services, what we might be doing, not intentionally, is exposing women to and girls to gender-based violence, and we don’t want to do that.”
Habib (in green) receives a CARE package from a CARE staff member at an IDP camp. Divorced women face stigmatization due to their married status and CARE offers psychosocial support to them. Photo: CARE
When it comes to emergency preparedness and response in general, Davis would like to see a focus on resilience and anticipatory action in the global humanitarian sector and among the communities they serve.
“We are here to respond,” says Davis. “But by the time we’re responding, it’s already too late. We’ve lost lives, we’ve, you know, people’s livelihoods have been destroyed.”
Davis says investing in disaster risk reduction and anticipatory action is key. Like working with communities to come up with evacuation plans and early warning systems in disaster prone areas, and pre-positioning relief supplies ahead of time.
Though the cycles of war, conflicts and natural disasters will continue, Davis feels hopeful about CARE’s, and other humanitarian organizations’, presence in communities. Gone are the days of “truck and chuck,” where an organization drops in aid and then leaves.
These days, Davis says, “we are seeing a more deliberate attempt to truly first understand people’s needs. To listen to them and understand that communities are complex. I’m happy that we’re doing it better. We’re shifting power to local actors, instead of being, you know, Westerners that show up to save the day and then leave. We are helping to build resilience and respond better by empowering communities.”
“So many people who are in some of the worst situations humanly imaginable are the most optimistic and hopeful and resourceful people out there. If we put vulnerable people at the forefront of change and give them even a fraction of the resources that we have, that we throw away in leftover food, or instead of buying a new upgrade on our phone, for example, if we just put aside a little bit of that, it will make a huge difference.
“I see the kids who are in the refugee camps all over the world, and I don’t see hatred in them. I don’t see them saying things or have feeling things like, ‘the first thing I’m gonna do when I get out of here is get revenge on the person who kicked me out of my home.’ That’s not what refugees say. That’s not what I’m seeing. What I’m seeing is: ‘if I had a moment, if I had a chance, I would go back, I’d rebuild it better. I would make sure nothing like this could happen again. I would help anyone who’s displaced, anyone who’s a refugee.’
“That’s the hope for me. Knowing that the people who are the most affected, they themselves want us to move forward into peace, into prosperity, into change.”
– Emtithal “Emi” Mahmoud
Emi Mahmoud is a Sudanese American and former refugee who is a celebrated poet, activist, founder, and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador who now lives in Philadelphia. Her refugee experience is singular, though not atypical.
Emi was born in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and her family is from Darfur. Her mother is a medical lab technologist and her father is a surgeon. When she was one year old, she and her family escaped to Yemen. Sudan was in the midst of its second civil war.
After several years in Yemen, when Emi was 4, she and her family were able to enter the US having been awarded visas through the US Diversity Visa lottery. They settled first in Virginia where a few other family members resided, then moved to Indiana, then Philadelphia where she has lived since.
Emi attended preschool in the US, then kindergarten, and in 2000, before starting first grade, she, her younger sibling, and her mom went back to Sudan to visit family when she experienced a harrowing life-changing event:
“I remember hiding under the bed with my sibling and cousins. I remember, I just remember so much. I wrote about it in this poem called People Like Us. I remember the blood on the soldiers—the blood on their ankles. But I just remember that there was blood. We were hiding, and these young girls came knocking on our door. We thought it was the soldiers, but it was these two girls, and they said, we have to hide now. Because after the people protested, the army chased them into the town, and we were kids home alone, and we didn’t really know what was going on. So much of what I saw and what I learned, what we experienced, is a lot of what essentially changed childhood for me, and what it was like, or what it meant.”
After 6 months, they were able to make it back to the US safely and she started first grade.
“And I just remember everything being different from then. You just have to pretend like nothing happened. It was very, very hard…” she reflected. “I remember my first-grade assistant teacher asking all of us like, ‘Oh, so what did you do over the summer?’ And so, I just completely made up a story. I said I went to Sudan, and then the rest of it was just all a lie. I said that we had a pet monkey and my sister liked to eat bananas, but the monkey kept taking the bananas, you know, and the teacher was like, Wow! And he just moved on.”
Now as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, and through her award-winning writing and powerful performances on global stages, including the UN General Assembly, COP, the World Economic Forum in Davos, and the Women’s Forum in Paris, Emi has raised awareness of the global refugee crisis, creating empathy, and advocating on behalf of the forcibly displaced.
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UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency: A Rich History of Helping Refugees
During the Second Sudanese Civil War, roughly two million people died from fighting, catastrophic hunger crisis and disease caused by the conflict between the northern part of Sudan and the south, and eventually led to a referendum resulting in South Sudan gaining independence from Sudan in 2011. Four million people in southern Sudan were displaced at least once, normally repeatedly during that war. The civilian death toll from that time is one of the highest of any war since World War II and was marked by numerous human rights violations, including slavery and mass killings.
Chad / Darfurian refugees from Sudan / Djabal camp (17,766 refugees, 4,681 families), 4 kilometers west from Goz Beida UNHCR sub-office located 217 km south from Abeche, located 900 kilometer east from N’Djamena the Chadian capital. The camp, created on 4/6/2004, is located 80 km from the Sudanese border. Ahmed Mahamat Khamis, 8 years old, on his way back home from the grocery where he bartered millet for sugar and onions. He carries in a bucket on his head a bag of sugar, some onions (in plastic pocket) and the “change”: some millet. The barter economy is common practice in the camps. A refugee brings a product to the grocery to get what he lacks (sugar, onion, soap,…). A koro of mill (measure of a big iron bowl) is equivalent to 400 CFA (0.85 USD). Photo: UNHCR / F. Noy / December 2011/ CC by 2.0
As of September 2023, globally those displaced by war, violence, persecution, and human rights abuses stood at 114 million, well over double the figure of 10 years ago. The number of people forced to flee their homes has increased every year over the past decade and stands at the highest level since records began, a trend that can only be reversed by a new, concerted push towards peacemaking.
“The situation of civilians in Sudan and in Ukraine, including millions who are refugees and displaced, demands our attention and support,” said Junia Geisler, Senior Director of Communications at USA for UNHCR, “as do protracted crises like the plight of the Rohingya, the Syria situation, Afghanistan, the ongoing struggles in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the growing insecurity in the Sahel, the dramatic population flows across the Americas, the Mediterranean and the Bay of Bengal, and many others.”
UNHCR knows. They have been on the front lines of providing vital protection and assistance to refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced, and stateless people since 1950. Formally known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR was established by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1950 in the aftermath of the Second World War to help the millions of people who had lost their homes. Today, UNHCR works in 135 countries and provides life-saving assistance, including shelter, food, water, and medical care for people forced to flee conflict and persecution, many of whom have nobody left to turn to.
In addition to emergency response, UNHCR works with many local partners around the world on local integration programs which benefit both host communities and refugees. A great example of this is the Local Integration Program in Mexico led by UNHCR and supported by USA for UNHCR that gives refugees and asylum seekers in Mexico the resources and opportunities they need to start rebuilding. The goal of this program is to provide an option for refugees who are interested in integrating into communities in Mexico. The initiative supports refugees from their arrival all the way through to naturalization.
“Depending on the circumstances of those participating in the program, UNHCR either offers relocation within Mexico, or they offer integration support to refugees wherever they reside,” says Junia. Since the beginning of the program in 2019, more than 30,000 refugees and asylum seekers have participated in the relocation option and more than 80,000 have received integration support in their city of residence. Currently, the program is active in 21 cities across the country.
A Refugee Processing the Unthinkable
Emi’s parents did what they could to shield her and her sibling, Fofo, from the atrocities happening around them. “Every day, every morning they’d play a little piano keyboard and sing to us, and then they’d go to work, and you know we were refugees hiding in Yemen, and we didn’t know what was going on because we were kids, but my parents tried to make it as innocent of a childhood as possible.”
“It was a time after that before I started really processing what happened,” she remembers. “[When I was young] I liked science, and I wanted to be a paleontologist, and then I changed my mind to neurosurgeon, and I wrote poetry. I wrote poetry when I was 7, and then it changed when I was 10, when I found out about the conflict. And then my poetry changed from being about innocent things like lions… then it started to be about the war in Darfur.”
Emi gained a lot of recognition and prominence with her spoken-word poetry – a more powerful and accessible modality because you hear the words spoken how they are intended to be heard (and it connects back to oral traditions in Sudan and many other cultures). Hearing and seeing the poet recite a piece, “you essentially transport them to the moment you’re talking about,” she explained.
“In college I was doing slam poetry (spoken word poetry in competitions) and by senior year I had entered the individual World Poetry championship, and I won, and I became the youngest one ever to do that. So that was the first world record that I broke, spoken slam poetry. And then I won the Women of the World championship right after that. And so, I broke another world record because I was the youngest one to do that.” And, she is the youngest and only person to have held both records simultaneously as well.
In between, Emi became one of BBC’s 100 most inspirational women and gained even more recognition for the work she was doing.
Then one day in her senior year, she received an email that altered her life in profound ways.
A Life-changing Invitation
Emi received the email from UNHCR, inviting her to join them in Geneva for the Nansen Refugee Award. (Established in 1954, the UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award “honours individuals, groups and organizations who go above and beyond the call of duty to protect refugees, as well as internally displaced and stateless people.”)
UNHCR invited her to visit areas where they work. She went to Lesvos, Greece, “and again everything changed. It was just very, very harrowing to see how much had been done to everyone, and how it was all gone in that moment. I saw all of the life jackets and so much more. And I saw the work that our Nansen Honoree was doing that year.”
(The 2016 award recognized Greek volunteers Efi Latsoudi and the Hellenic Rescue Team and the work of all volunteers in Greece and Europe in 2015, when Europe faced its biggest refugee crisis in decades, as over one million people arrived during the year. Over 850,000 people reached Greece by sea, with more than 500,000 of these arriving on the island of Lesvos alone.)
“It was the first engagement [with UNHCR], and I wrote something about what I saw there, and I performed it at Nansen.”
She wanted to do more, “because in that moment I felt like I was standing on the other side of so many struggles just like mine,” she said. “I remembered that when I was a kid my parents were the ones speaking about it, and nobody believed us at first, but the first people to believe us were survivors of other conflicts… It was that we were related, all of us, we were in the same boat. And I remember it was this moment of unity and moment of understanding.”
She sensed a recognition with other refugees, between people who have gone through similar struggles, whether it’s different time periods, different peoples, or different contexts. And it helped her gain a deeper understanding of her childhood experiences.
This wasn’t her only eye-opening moment. Earlier, in 2013, in her freshman year of college, Emi gained deeper awareness when she went to Al-Fashir, the capital of Darfur, and worked in a birthing hospital in a refugee camp.
“I understood then that it’s not enough to be a good doctor. The limiting factor isn’t how well you do what you do, or how much knowledge you have to take away pain and such. If you don’t have medicine, if you don’t have supplies, if you’re working in a literally half-built hospital. If you are dealing with centuries of inequality that’s coming to fruition. There you get stuck. And so, I understood right then and there that I would need to have more reach and more knowledge and more collaborators to be able to make any kind of difference in any space, at all.”
As a UNHCR Global Goodwill Ambassador, and one of the first who was a refugee, Emi now has more ability to affect change – or more succinctly, how she can channel her energy to affect change she wants to see.
The True Value of Peace
Now that she is “at the table,” she understands international law better, and how different governments interact with each other, how different INGO’s operate. She also realized that she had an opportunity to evolve her role from not just building awareness and inspiring empathy – which is the main formula of the Goodwill Ambassador role – but to go beyond in a way that will really change the status of refugees and displaced people around the world.
“It’s not just about empathy or compassion. It’s about shifting perspective and shifting the paradigm.”
Now, when she meets with heads of state she talks about the benefits of helping refugees resettle, with a new message: “here’s why helping refugees and helping displaced people – here’s why setting a precedent for our world in general – can actually change the world for the better and affect all of us in the long run. When I go in there, I say it’s not just the right thing to do, but it’s a smart thing to do economically. It’s a smart thing to do geopolitically. It’s a smart thing to do from a humanitarian perspective. And it’s a smart thing to do for our future.”
Just as war is a de-stabilizing force, causing economic hardship and exodus, peace is a stabilizing force resulting in economic stability, growth, and prosperity. There is true value in peace.
“Peace is not just a word, peace is a tool that we could use to rebuild our world,” she told me.
And many times it takes deeper discussions to help others truly understand what it is like for those whose lives are disrupted and threatened, to understand why it is important to help. The civilian populations forced to flee simply want peace, to move back to their homes, and to get back to their lives. In Sudan, “if given the opportunity, if given the safety, they’d go back home and rebuild it like we were already doing or starting to do after 2019,” observed Emi.
Chad / Darfurian refugees from Sudan / Oure Cassoni camp (Head of Office in Bahai said 31,800 refugees, december 2011), 18 kilometers north from Bahai UNHCR sub-office located 361 km north-east from Abeche, located 900 kilometer east from N’Djamena the chadian capital. The camp is located 17 km from the Sudanese border, and was opened in July 2004. A couple of female refugees go with difficulty because of the sandy, cold and strong wind to the well in Oure Cassoni to fetch water. Photo: UNHCR / F. Noy / December 2011 / CC by 2.0
Most wars start without the consent of the affected populations. Refugees don’t choose to be displaced. Climate refugees don’t choose to leave their homes due to flood or drought. No one chooses to become a refugee. Refugees are people who are forced to leave their home country due to persecution, conflict, violence or other circumstances that threaten their safety and life. The risks to their safety and life were so great that they felt they had no choice but to leave and seek safety outside their country because their own government cannot or will not protect them from those dangers. And refugees have a right to international protection.
Dispelling Misconceptions, Shifting Perspectives
There are still a lot of misconceptions about who refugees and displaced people really are, Emi said, and this is one of the most pressing problems she sees about the plight of refugees and displaced persons.
“There’s the clear stuff that people see on the news, that there’s a crisis, that emergency aid is needed. But imagine being a refugee, and you don’t have soap and you can’t shower, or you can’t wash the few clothes you have. Or you have a baby and you have no diapers and you have to change your baby’s diaper, or in some cases through distributed aid you can get only one diaper a day.”
Especially problematic is if you lose your papers, your passport – one of the main elements that define your place in this world today – that you belong.
These situations are not captured by the media or shown to the world. But these are very real situations that refugees and displaced people must deal with every day.
“And so, all of a sudden, not only your autonomy goes out the window, but your dignity. And the humanity that is between us… I think one of the most powerful and most important things that I hope to help people understand is that refugees and displaced people are part of the world.”
And we live in this world, we are part of this world, she continues, “and what’s so painful about that is that people start to just expect refugees and displaced people to be the responsibility of organizations that are mandated to deal with or support refugees and displaced people.”
“I think that refugees and displaced people – that vulnerable people in general – are the responsibility of all of the world because it is a measure of our world. And it’s something that is part of our world, and us allowing it to go without help, without support, allowing people to be forced from home, or killed, or to die from lack of access to food or safety, and allowing it to happen, is essentially condoning it.”
“We’re essentially setting a precedent and saying that we are comfortable living in a world where, if tomorrow, Americans were forced out of their home and had nowhere to go, it would be totally fine if the rest of the world turned our backs, turned their backs.”
We Are in This Together
“There’s stuff that we can move forward together that none of us can move alone, and that’s what keeps me in it. I don’t think anyone who really knew what was happening, wouldn’t try and do something,” Emi said.
She was reminded of a quote by a former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata: “There are no humanitarian solutions to humanitarian problems.”
“A lot of people believe that means that there’s no solutions to humanitarian problems,” Emi explains, “but that’s not what it means at all! It means that there are no humanitarian solutions because these problems aren’t created by our humanity. And I think a lot of people miss that point when they hear that. ‘Humanitarian problems’ is a misnomer because they’re not created by humanity, they’re not created by humanitarianism. They’re created by imbalances. There are political solutions, there are economic solutions, there are state solutions that could help fix it.”
We asked Junia Geisler, Senior Director of Communications at USA for UNHCR, what’s the best way for an average American to get involved in helping refugees? Here are her answers:
Donate. USA for UNHCR helps to protect refugees and people displaced by violence, conflict, and persecution. We support UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, in providing lifesaving essentials for refugees including shelter, water, food, safety and protection. During an emergency, your donation ensures that UNHCR can send relief supplies and cash assistance vulnerable refugees and displaced families. Even small amounts make a big difference.
Advocate. Join our global community of advocates who are standing with refugees. You can support refugees with your voice by engaging with elected officials and community leaders to protect refugee rights and ensure they are welcomed into your community. By advocating for refugees, you are empowering them to rebuild their lives.
Welcome. A refugee’s story doesn’t just end once they’ve been resettled in a new country. After their long journey to safety, they still need your support. You can welcome new refugees who are arriving in your community by offering shelter, support or even a job. Look for volunteer and sponsorship opportunities near you to support refugee families.
Connect. The more we understand, the greater sense of belonging we create. Stay up to date on situations around the world—from Afghanistan to Sudan and Myanmar to Ukraine. Learn more about refugees and emergency situations from reliable sources and share that information with your networks to spread awareness and empathy.
By Jason Hatch and Karen Kraft, Operation Snow Leopard
Interior of the newly inaugurated Wolesi Jirga Hall of Afghan Parliament (Photo Credit: Wolesi Jirga Website 2015)
Background
The Fall of a Republic
The last tragic iteration of a democratically elected government in Afghanistan came to an end on 15 August 2021.
It had been established in 2005, with its electoral branch consisting of a lower house (Wolesi Jirga – 250 seats) and an upper house (Meshrano Jirga – 120 seats). The Afghanistan Constitution, ratified in 2004, explicitly stated that men and women had equal rights and duties before the law. It reserved specific seats in both chambers for female candidates, reflecting a commitment to gender equality supported by male leaders advocating for women’s representation in the newly formed republic.
By Radwa el Manssy, ChildFund Director for Protecting Children in Crisis
Migrants, refugees, commuters and cargo cross the Suchiate River that forms the border between Guatemala and Mexico. Photo: Jake Lyell for ChildFund
Lately, I have started to collect what I sometimes call “fairy tales” when I visit the areas where my organization, ChildFund, works with children and families who have fled their homes for a better, safer life. One girl I met in Mexico had come all the way from Colombia. I said to her, “Oh, you must be tired!” But she was so optimistic: “We’re very close!” She told me her love story, about a boy that she had left behind.
By Emily Galloway, Tarek Fakhereddin, Nataliia Biloshytska and Tania Dudnyk, Global Communities
Children from the Atmeh Camp, Syria participate in art classes organized by Global Communities’ CiPE teams. Photo: Global Communities
Global Communities has a rich history of providing emergency aid and protection services to refugees and internally displaced people in many crisis settings, from Ukraine and Gaza to Syria and Guatemala. This includes our Child Protection in Emergencies (CPiE) programming, which supports the well-being of children and addresses risks created or exacerbated by crises. In emergencies, children are often the most vulnerable and at-risk population group. They face a range of threats, including violence, exploitation, family separation and a loss of education.
By Gul Siddiqi, Development Manager, International Rescue Committee WA
Three of five of Ms. Isac’s children. Ms. Isac and her family, refugees of DRC, relocated to the Puget Sound Region with the help of IRC’s Co-Sponsorship Program. Photo: IRC
The human spirit shines brightest in the face of adversity; such is the story of Ms. Isac and her children. Fleeing conflict and uncertainty in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ms. Isac navigated the harsh realities of life in a refugee camp in Tanzania, determined to provide a better future for her family. However, upon arriving in the Puget Sound region, they faced new challenges, particularly in finding stable housing.
By Jon Browning, Co-Founder of the Global Impact Sourcing Coalition and CEO of Global Mentorship Initiative
GMI Founder and CEO Jon Browning with the first student cohort – South Africa, 2019. Photo: GMI
The refugee crisis isn’t going away, and though assisting with basic needs or helping one refugee at a time helps, there are broader solutions available.
More companies are committed to hiring refugees and providing career development opportunities tailored to their needs. This process, called “impact sourcing,” supports groups with limited prospects for formal employment and is an important way companies can champion diversity, equity and inclusion.
FORTUNE site visit, 2024, Thailand. Photo: Emily Ho
Each year, Pangea Giving evaluates current and potential grant partners for new funding to be provided. This March, Pangea awarded 17 grant partners a combined total of $118,100! The grant pool is divided into regions including East Africa, Latin America, and SE Asia. Pangea members cultivate relationships with grant partners over several months, or more often over years of continuous partnership. Often, partners are referred by trusted advisors in the region or other grantees. Pangea does not take unsolicited grant requests.
Visit with FORTUNE school, Thailand. Photo: Emily Ho
Periodically, Pangea Giving “Pod” committees, composed of members interested in a particular geographic area, organize site visits to meet with existing grantees and prospective new grantees. The purpose of the site visits is to observe the grantees’ work, talk with organization leaders, and evaluate first-hand the viability of a renewed grant. Additionally, site visit teams try to identify, and if possible meet with the leaders of prospective new grantees
On March 8, the world celebrated International Women’s Day and the need for a global, inclusive movement to value gender equality. While progress has been made, we are not on track to achieve the targets outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. More must be done. In fact, gender equality is interconnected with, and is the foundation of, numerous SDGs and could unlock the potential to improve lives in low- and middle-income countries.
Several Global Washington member organizations and Pangea Giving partners are addressing gender equality with multifaceted approaches, such as data disaggregation, primary education of girls, crisis support, food security, financial inclusion, rule of law, health, women in leadership, and advocacy. These efforts aim to empower women and girls, challenge gender norms, and combat violence and discrimination.
There are also several Pangea Giving partners in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America that are working with local communities in rural areas on fundamental aspects of gender equality. You can read more about these grassroots organizations below.
Last December, Ghanaian author and advocate Yawa Hansen-Quao spoke about the power of girls when they find their voice to become leaders in their communities. You can watch her presentation here from the 2023 Goalmakers Conference and view other recorded sessions from the conference here.
Despite the work that still must be done, I am hopeful given the determination of Global Washington members and their collective efforts to fight gender inequality. Please learn more about these organizations in the articles below.
Achieving Gender Equality Through Data, Government, and Communities
By Cady Susswein
Tanzanian woman in government. Photo: Jumacada/Pixabay
The world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030. Full stop. According to the World Economic Forum, it will take 131 years at our current rate to reach full parity. That may feel like a daunting figure – an end we will not see in our lifetimes – but this should be a cause for further determination, not despair. GlobalWA’s members are doing incredible work to accelerate the pace of change, which can be done.
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, Gender Equality, acts as a keystone for the rest of the SDGs, i.e. it is incredibly complex and intrinsically linked to the success of every other SDG. Without gender equality, we cannot fully eradicate poverty. Without gender equality, we cannot completely achieve food security. Without gender equality, we cannot truly enhance global security. And the list continues. This makes the work of gender equality even more important as we approach 2030, and it means we need to look at all the causes of gender inequality across society. As a result, we see GlobalWA’s partners tackling gender equality from a multitude of angles from data disaggregation to food and financial security to rule of law and advocacy. Each etching away at the problem to create a collective, centrifugal force against gender inequality.
Data Disaggregation
One of the most important building blocks of gender equality is disaggregated data. Gender qualifiers reveal patterns with an outsized effect on women and children that could be missed when looking only at the general population. Better data is essential for creating effective, gender-informed policy, and more effective policy produces better gender results. However, according to APCO (the world’s largest majority woman-owned communications firm), and their partner Data2X, only 13% of UN member states are collecting data for half or more of the SDG gender indicators. They key, they say, is not only collecting the data but financing and publishing it to make it more accessible to wider audiences who can further leverage the data.
Education for All – Men and Women, Boys and Girls
CARE is working to reach 50 million people with greater gender equality by 2030 through a comprehensive Gender Equality Framework. This means not only empowering women, but addressing issues like gender norms, toxic masculinity, homophobia, and transphobia for women and men. This approach is intended to transform societal structures.
Similarly, a major pillar of Global Communities’ approach is to engage men and boys in ways that challenge unequal gender norms and power dynamics. They conducted a study in Tanzania to test the efficacy of various mothers-only interventions compared with interventions with both mothers and fathers. They found that interventions with both mothers and fathers increased the time fathers spent on domestic chores, mothers’ decision-making power, leisure time, and nutritional diversity, decreasing gender-based violence. However, educating mothers and fathers together had the most lasting impact.
In 2012, the Sehgal Foundation took a novel approach to the education for all concept, funding a community radio station called Alfaz-e-Mewat, or “Voice of the Mewati” people, in the northwest Indian state of Haryana. The station talks about issues that matter to locals like water conservation and agricultural practices, but because most of the people who do the farming are women, the station became much more, offering a platform for empowerment and entertainment. Today still, the station provides a source of information, therapy, and solidarity to women, some of whom consider the station to be an inspiration for their success in life.
Tostan (meaning “breakthrough” in Wolof) empowers communities across West Africa through an evidence-based education model called the Community Empowerment Program (CEP). CEP is a three-year, holistic curriculum that includes human rights, gender equality, health, literacy, and economic empowerment topics in local languages. CEP participants then go on to share their new knowledge in their communities, a process called “organized diffusion.” To ensure sustainability beyond the program, communities create democratically elected community management committees (CMC) that are further trained in project management and social mobilization skills that continue to lead development projects. Further, CMCs are connected to each other through an empowered communities network to amplify resources and skills.
Education for Women and Girls
Everyone benefits from better educated women. They tend to know more about health and nutrition, have fewer children, marry later, and therefore experience better health outcomes for themselves and their children. They are also more likely to participate in the formal labor market and earn higher incomes. A 2018 World Bank study estimated that limiting education for girls costs countries up to $30 trillion in lost lifetime earnings. All these factors combined can help lift households, communities, and countries out of poverty.
The Mona Foundation’s approach is to address the root causes of poverty and inequality by educating children in India, and therefore empowering women to be the next generation change agents. They do this through grassroots partnerships. Similarly in India, Sukarya educates adolescent girls in the Delhi and Haryana regions on topics such as menstrual hygiene, sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, and life/leadership skills so that they can better navigate misinformation, myths, and social stigmas surrounding gender. The program also provides basic digital skills to improve employability.
When the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, they banned education for girls beyond 6th grade. This abruptly ended Sahar Education’s school projects in the region. But they did not abandon their efforts. Instead, they created a stealth program to provide vital skills for Afghan girls, including learning English, technology and coding skills, and educating on gender roles, health, and wellness. The Stealth Sisters and Underground TechSheroes programs are conducted in secret with local schools for girls beyond the Taliban age restrictions.
Crisis Situations
UN Women estimates that the cost of violence against women and girls is $4.7 trillion, or 5.5% of the global economy. That figure is astounding. As Hillary Clinton famously laid out in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, “women’s rights are human rights.” And nearly 30 years later, women in conflict situations are still specifically targeted for sexual violence and rape.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) works to protect women and girls in some of the world’s most dangerous places. In 2022, IRC trained over 1.1 million women and nearly 580,000 men in gender-based violence awareness-raising activities. One way IRC protects girls is through Safe Healing and Learning Spaces. Research shows that access to caring and predictable learning spaces can have a profound impact on children’s learning and wellbeing. IRC created an opensource toolkit so that anyone can create safe spaces where children in crisis settings can learn with improved social, emotional, reading, and math outcomes. Similarly, Global Communities implements Project ROOTS, an after-school program that addresses the root causes of gender-based violence with the goal of preventing human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and unhealthy relationships.
Homelessness is another major problem for women. Almost half of young women who face homelessness are pregnant or already a parent. Homelessness is traumatic and can have lifelong effects on both the parent and the child, especially those under five years old, which are critical years for brain development. Covenant House cares for young people overcoming homelessness, survivors of human trafficking, and migrant youth without a family member.
Food and Financial Security
According to CARE, there is a $1.7 trillion credit gap for women-owned businesses globally – that’s 70% of women-owned small- and medium-sized business or approximately 1 billion women without access to the capital they need. That’s why CARE started CARE Enterprises, a for-profit subsidiary that empowers women through private capital. The initiative is aligned with the 2X Gender Challenge, a commitment by the G7 donor financial institutions and others to invest nearly $30 billion in women where they need it most. Meanwhile, CARE’s Women’s Entrepreneurship (WE) program aims to empower 3 million women economically and mobilize more than $500 million in private capital by 2030.
Studies show that food insecurity coupled with gender inequality increase the risks of gender-based violence for women and girls. For this reason, Heifer International comes at gender inequality from the lens of food and financial insecurity. Gender is still one of the biggest sources of income inequality in the world with women, not to mention trans/non-binary people, earning a fraction of what men do. Heifer supports women with financial literacy training, access to credit, impact investing, and lending groups to name a few initiatives. A family with healthier resources means that families in places like Rajasthan, India might marry off girls later. It might mean that girls stay in school longer, and, with the right gender training, families might start to begin questioning long-held beliefs about gender roles in the household.
37% of people live in coastal communities around the world, and overfishing remains a huge concern. Future of Fish is an organization that works with communities to look at local ocean challenges and collaborate with stakeholders to transform them into sustainable ecosystems that will bring wealth, nutrition, and prosperity for years to come. But sometimes that means coming at an issue from on land because healthy communities means healthy oceans. In 2021, the organization began working with the La Islilla community in Northern Peru, where fishing was one of the only economic drivers. However, due to long-held local cultural norms, women did not fish and therefore had very little way to contribute to the local economy. A group of women who they call “Las Mamás” (the Mothers) wanted to learn a marketable skill. In a participatory process, Future of Fish and Las Mamás developed a sewing program, teaching the women to sew, coupled with financial literacy and women’s rights topics. In late 2023, the Las Mamás finished the first stage of the program.
Women represent less than 15% of landowners, yet they are often the ones responsible for feeding their families. Landesa takes the land rights approach to gender equality. Land can be one of the most powerful tools for wealth generation, giving women a clear seat at the table that can wholly change gender power dynamics across the board. It can mean better access to nutritious food and funds for educational costs that further enhance gender equity. Even more, emerging studies are showing that when women securely own land, it could help mitigate climate change as a result of sustainable land management and long-term investments.
Rule of Law
In 1979, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). It is often described as an international bill of rights for women and is the most widely ratified convention with 189 nations. However, it’s now 45 years later and “femicide” or gender-related killings are breaking records. According to a 2023 UN Women report, 2022 was the highest year on record with over 50,000 women killed in pandemic propotions. The Every Woman Treaty is a coalition of more than 3,000 women’s rights advocates and 840 organizations from 147 countries. Their goal is advancing a new optional protocol to CEDAW that codifies ending violence against women and girls into binding law. Such a treaty would hold nations accountable on women’s safety and security benchmarks.
Also fighting gender equality from the legal lens, Women’s Link Worldwide is an organization that uses the power of the law to promote women and girls through social change. It runs the Gender Justice Observatory with over 400 searchable legal decisions to foster creative and innovative legal arguments on women’s human rights issues.
Health
According to CARE, approximately 800 women die from preventable causes in pregnancy and childbirth every day. The organization not only provides health services, it works to address the barriers that prevent access through programs like their Social Analysis and Action and Community Score Card programs. In 2022, skilled health workers in CARE’s programs attended over 500,000 births, and provided numerous programs to support women and married adolescent girls with education, family planning, and access to contraceptive tools that work for them.
Every year, up to 100,000 women worldwide are affected by obstetric fistula, mostly in developing countries. Obstetric fistula is a hole between the vagina and rectum or bladder that develops after prolonged, obstructed labor. It can be avoided by delaying the age of the first pregnancy, preventing female genital mutilation, and increasing access to care, which can be challenging in rural areas. Women who endure an obstetric fistula risk leaking feces or urine and suffer a tremendous amount of physical, emotional, and social stress. The Worldwide Fistula Fund treats its patients holistically as humans, not statistics, to give them the surgery, physical therapy, and support they need recover.
Women in Power and Advocacy
Outright International is an organization that fights for better lesbian, gay, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) lives. Its LBQ Connect program strengthens support for lesbian, bisexual and queer (LBQ) activism because these women (including all cisgender, trans, intersex, and nonbinary people who identify as women) are uniquely marginalized. According to organizations in the field, only 5% of LGBTIQ funding is specifically directed to LBQ issues. The program offers training and mentorship, grants for projects, research on areas of data gaps, and larger advocacy projects.
Oxfam International is building a world where “the future is equal.” They do this in myriad ways, but their Sisters on the Planet program is a quintessential example. Their Sisters on the Planet Ambassadors are a group of American leaders in business, politics, and the arts that unite to fight inequality and empower women and girls around the world.
Global WA: Together, Stronger
The organizations mentioned here are just a few of the great GlobalWA organizations whose work touches women and girls, and the projects highlighted are just a taste of the incredible work they are doing to fight gender inequality from the state of Washington to around the world.
In addition to the above organizations, the following GlobalWA members work on gender equality through their programs in communities where they work.
As healthcare access disparities persist for marginalized communities, the Tegan and Sara Foundation (TSF) has emerged as a beacon of change. APCO Impact is proud to have worked with TSF to create the LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory, a resource aimed at providing inclusive healthcare access to LGBTQ+ individuals.
In collaboration with GLMA, the largest association of LGBTQ+ doctors in the U.S., this directory was created to connect individuals with affirming healthcare providers.
Since its launch in 2022, the directory has connected more than 2,700 providers and facilitated more than 43,000 searches across all 50 states and 10 out of 13 Canadian provinces. With over 60,000 engaged users, the directory has become a trusted resource for LGBTQ+ individuals seeking inclusive healthcare services.
Recent updates, including state-specific search functionality and options for remote healthcare services, have further enhanced the directory’s accessibility. These improvements ensure that LGBTQ+ individuals, regardless of geographical location or social background, have access to quality healthcare.
APCO’s team has worked with TSF since the Foundation’s inception, and the directory is just one of the many programs we develop and execute for TSF. APCO is committed to driving positive change through collaborative, innovative efforts like this. By leveraging our expertise and resources, we support initiatives that advance equity for gender-diverse communities in healthcare and beyond.
Global Communities recognizes that gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) are vital to realizing human rights, achieving sustainable development goals and delivering effective humanitarian assistance. We also know that achieving gender equality requires intentional efforts to overcome multiple barriers to women’s empowerment. We employ both crosscutting and gender-focused interventions to foster GESI. First, we strive to integrate GESI across all programs. Second, we implement women- and girl-centered programs to promote their leadership, economic empowerment, and civic engagement; advance their health and well-being; and address gender-based violence, including child marriage. One example is Women Empowered (WE) – our signature savings group program designed to promote financial inclusion and the social and economic empowerment of women. While supporting women in building sustainable livelihoods, WE promotes women’s participation, leadership, and collective action, positioning them as confident agents of change in their homes and communities. Finally, we engage men and boys in gender-transformative interventions that challenge unequal gender norms and power dynamics. To learn more, visit our blog, explore our visual story, Women Saving for Resilience: Transforming Lives Through Innovative Savings Group Solutions, and join our upcoming NGO CSW68 parallel virtual event, Fostering Women’s Entrepreneurship at Every Stage: A Cross-regional Exchange on March 21, 2024 at 9:30-11 am EST.
Through our locally led approach, Heifer International identified a demand from smallholder women farmers for training, tools and financing to build agribusinesses in service of feeding their families and securing sustainable incomes.
Support for farmer-run cooperatives is central to Heifer’s work with women globally. For many rural women, cooperatives serve as lifelines, offering friendship, a financial safety net and opportunities to learn the agricultural skills necessary to thrive in resource-poor environments.
In Senegal, Heifer partnered with the Saloum Corn Producers Association to support farmers to improve production, adapt to climate change and bolster food security. Through the co-op, women members have strengthened their collective businesses: growing vegetables and staple crops like corn, peanuts and sorghum and, together, processing them into higher-value products. With more than 2,500 members, the group recently built a storage facility for corn and obtained a loan from Heifer’s impact investment arm Heifer Impact Capital to grow its businesses.
Support in the form of facilitated training workshops — including exercises to help change views on gender equality — with the Chhatre Deurali Social Entrepreneur Women’s Cooperative in Nepal encouraged the growth of practical skills. Recent research found that nearly 87% of women participants in Heifer Nepal projects said they made decisions about their incomes, compared to 52% of women in Nepal’s national Demographic and Health Survey.
In Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, the indigenous women of ADIRA Cooperative are learning enterprise management and planning skills to develop viable businesses in the cacao- and chocolate-making sector as part of Heifer’s Green Business Belt program. This partnership with the cooperative has broadened ADIRA’s impact by providing training to empower women to become project promoters in their communities.
Landesa champions and works to strengthen land rights for millions experiencing poverty worldwide, primarily in rural areas, to provide opportunity and promote social justice.
Land is the foundation for shelter, livelihood, and climate resilience. When a woman holds strong rights to her land, her dignity, household decision-making, and economic freedom increase—benefiting not just her, but also her family and community. Women’s equal rights to land are fundamental to gender equality. Despite recent progress, there remain significant gaps between women’s land rights on paper and the realities of women on the ground.
Landesa serves as Secretariat for Stand for Her Land (S4HL), the global campaign driving collective action on women’s land rights. With national coalitions in nine countries—and counting—and almost 100 member organizations, S4HL elevates grassroots women’s essential leadership and voices to build the movement for women’s rights to land. Activities include law and policy advocacy, capacity building efforts, and shifting social norms in the direction of gender equity: together driving progress toward making strong land rights a reality for millions of women around the world.
Celebrating 25 years of service, Mona Foundation partners with grassroots organizations that educate children, empower women and girls, and emphasize ethics and service to develop next generation change agents who uplift themselves, their families, and their communities. In 2023, working with 24 grassroots partners in 14 countries, we supported the education and empowerment of over 1.35MM students. The consistent and proven result has been that positive social change becomes increasingly visible as the value of gender equality and the education of girls is supported. Community transformation accelerates as social norms that inhibit girls from developing their capabilities evolve and as men champion equality and the right to education for all as inalienable human rights. Our long-term partnerships, built on trust and transparency, enable our grassroot partners to build their capacity to address community needs with increasingly complex solutions, to collaborate with their governments and civic society, and to ultimately scale their reach and impact. Our experience shows that working with grassroots organizations to build local capacity over time is the surest way to overcome challenges and sustain the path towards a more equitable future.
Throughout its 33-year history, Outright International has proudly identified as a feminist organization and advocated for the rights of lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LBTIQ) women through a variety of programs. We work closely with women’s rights activists at the United Nations and around the world because we believe our movements for gender equality and justice are inextricably linked. Outright was founded by queer women, co-hosted the first “lesbian tent” at the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, and works closely with the Women’s Rights Caucus and LBTI Caucus at the UN Commission on the Status of Women and the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. We partner with grassroots LBQ activists in dozens of countries around the world to address and end gender-based violence and launched the LBQ Connect program in 2022 to support and amplify the work of LBQ activists in the Global South and East.
Partners Asia understands that true freedom requires the empowerment of all individuals, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. Despite the persistent challenges of gender-based violence and discrimination in Southeast Asia, Partners Asia remains unwavering in our commitment to building more equitable communities.
Through comprehensive mentorship programs, Partners Asia nurtures emerging women leaders, enabling them to advocate for change through community engagement, policy advocacy, and movement building. One remarkable example of this is seen in a partner organization on the Thailand-Laos-Myanmar border, which works tirelessly to ensure the health and well-being of girls and youth from diverse ethnic backgrounds, especially regarding reproductive health—a critical issue often overlooked. That’s just one example. There are dozens.
Partners Asia’s approach centers on supporting local organizations that work with marginalized groups, including stateless, indigenous, and ethnic minority women, and LGBTQI youth. This strategy not only addresses gender inequality but also intersects with broader issues like labor rights, healthcare access, education, and citizenship challenges in Southeast Asia.
Partners Asia’s steadfast support for women and LGBTQI-led community initiatives underpins an unwavering commitment to a more just and inclusive world where partners drive meaningful and inspiring progress toward equality and justice.
At Perennial, we are deeply committed to advancing Gender Equality (SDG 5) and Reducing Inequalities (SDG 10) through our innovative leadership development program, WOMEN in CLIMATE currently in the fundraising stage. This initiative is dedicated to empowering women in the global south who are at the forefront of combating climate change. Recognizing that these marginalized populations bear the brunt of environmental impacts, our program prioritizes wellbeing and sustainability, offering a support system that is often lacking.
Our approach is rooted in the principles of Leadership 3.0, a model that fosters reflection, awareness, and social construction among leaders. This program is inspired by Dr. Britt Yamamoto’s forthcoming book, “The Soil of Leadership,” which emphasizes the transformational potential of tending to the inner world of leadership. Leadership 3.0 encourages a shift towards sustainability, renewal, and the overall wellbeing of leaders, acknowledging the profound impact of a leader’s inner landscape on their external influence.
By integrating these principles, Perennial aims to nurture global women leaders who are not only equipped to address the pressing challenges of climate change but also to inspire transformational change within their communities and beyond.
Schools for Salone (SfS)’s mission is to advance education in Sierra Leone through local partnerships. One of our key program pillars is to promote education equity by breaking down barriers for girls to complete their education.
In Sierra Leone, menstruation is a significant barrier to education. In our schools, 20% of girls miss school when they are menstruating and 93% of girls lacked knowledge of menstruation before their first period. Shame, stigma, and misinformation discourage girls from attending school while menstruating and prevent schools from teaching healthy attitudes around menstruation. SfS is working closely with Uman Tok Sierra Leone to help keep girls in schools.
Uman Tok, a Sierra Leonean grassroots organization, dismantles barriers to girls’ education by providing sustainable menstrual hygiene kits and vital sexual reproductive education.
Since the SfS began its partnership with Uman Tok in 2016, over 46,500 menstrual hygiene kits have been produced and distributed and around 23,600 boys and girls have received sexual reproductive health education. Most importantly, SfS schools have had zero cases of teenage pregnancy and period-related absences has dropped to nearly zero.
At Starbucks, we have a responsibility to care for people across the entire supply chain who make coffee possible – from bean to cup, farmer to customer. Further to our Community Promise to contribute positively, The Starbucks Foundation has a goal to positively impact 1 million women and girls in coffee-, tea- and cocoa-growing communities by 2030. To do this, we partner with nonprofit organizations focused on promoting economic opportunity and empowerment, advancing women’s leadership and increasing access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH).
“Through our Origin Grants program,” says Kelly Goodejohn, Starbucks chief social impact officer, “we are proud to work with nonprofits across the world to uplift women in coffee-, tea-, and cocoa-growing communities with a goal to create opportunities and ultimately improve lives through the empowerment of women. While we have a responsibility to care for people across the entire coffee supply chain, we know that when we invest in a woman, there are ripple effects and positive outcomes for her family and the larger community.” Read more about our latest grants here.
Women’s Link Worldwide is an intersectional feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and Global South-led organization, working with and for the feminist movement in Latin America and the Caribbean, East Africa, and Europe. We proudly work with more than 60 national partners across those regions and 40 regional and global coalitions and networks.
For over two decades, Women’s Link has been using various legal tools to advocate for women, girls, and gender-diverse people, particularly those facing oppression within societal systems, striving to bring them closer to justice.
To work towards achieving gender equality, we strengthen and transform the feminist strategic litigation ecosystem to break down barriers, challenge oppressive systems, and alter power imbalances by breaking the walls of the legal sphere and bringing in those left out.
Central to our method is an intersectional approach applied through legal strategies that secure rights for women, girls, and gender-diverse people. Our priorities are gender and reproductive justice, especially access to safe and dignified abortion, and prevention of gender-based violence. Climate and racial justice are intricately linked to our work on sexual and reproductive rights and gender-based violence.
CEP’s goal is to create sustainability of women’s empowerment savings model by establishing a women’s SACCO (credit union) and enhance women’s vocational training by offering a higher level of certification.
Ewang”an Kenya
The goal of Ewang”an is to train 60 women and 20 youth in 3 villages to improve food security and develop resilience through gender and entrepreneurship training.
Playmakers Theatre
Playmaker Theater’s “Wezesha Dada” (Empower A Woman) project will equip young and middle-aged women with life skills to empower themselves to realize their full potential socially, economically, and politically.
Renewed funds will be used to expand the Women on Wheels program to equip 100 refugee women to gain financial independence: extensive tailing and business training combined with mentoring, mental health support and internships with established tailors. This is a comprehensive program ameliorating the trauma of refugee reality with training and gainful employment.
Ufanisi Women’s Group Kenya
Ufanisi Women’s Group are currently promoting women-led businesses by expanding their sweet potato product enrichment business and open a market stall in Bungoma.
WISE was founded to address economic uncertainty and sexual exploitation of women fishmongers in wetland villages around Lake Victoria by promoting environmentally sustainable enterprises that empower women and strengthen the community.
AC Esperanza promotes a culture of peace and gender equity through innovative programs for secondary school youth in Chimaltenango and their community.
MUSOR focuses on education, economic empowerment and health promotion for women and children living in poverty. It was founded by a group Mexican women professionals experienced in implementing projects related to basic reproductive and sexual health in marginalized communities.
One of the goals of Taa’Pit is to educate Tzutujil Maya women & children in nutrition, health, culture, sustainable farming, women’s income generation, and environmental stewardship.
UNOSJO
UNOSJO does intersectional work in defense of land rights against mining interests, training isolated rural communities in improving economic independence by bringing agricultural products to market, defending Zapotec language & culture, and shifting attitudes of men and women to reduce gender violence, and encourage women to have a larger role in decision-making at all levels.
Southeast Asia
Cambodia Indigenous Women Association
Cambodian Indigenous Women Association (CIWA) was founded in 2019 at the initiative of 37 indigenous women and 7 men, as an organization committed to gender equity and the protection of fundamental rights of indigenous women. Their goal is building the capacity of indigenous women to lead and take ownership of development processes in Cambodian indigenous communities and society at large.
Muditar
Muditar works to develop and strengthen the Village Development Model. They are also working on the empowerment of women through strengthening the capacity of self-help groups, women led saving fund, reproductive health programs, and income generating projects.
Every Woman Treaty: Charting a Historic Path towards Ending Violence Against Women and Girls
By Amber Cortes
First diplomatic event of the Latin American Coalition. The Latin American Coalition advocating for a new Optional Protocol to CEDAW officially launched in February during an event at the Hall of Presidents at the Legislative Assembly in San José, Costa Rica. The event entitled “A Global Call to Eradicate Violence against Girls, Adolescents, and Women” was hosted by Nosotras Women Connecting, in collaboration with Every Woman Treaty and Congresswoman Montserrat Ruíz. It brought together 81 leaders, activists, congress members, representatives from Costa Rican institutions, and international missions from countries such as Chile, Honduras, Brazil, Canada, and the United States to support the call for a new binding instrument. Photo: Ariela Muñoz for Nosotras Women Connecting
“We are living in a historical moment,” says Patricia Elias, Chief of Global Diplomatic Campaign for Every Woman Treaty, a diverse coalition of more than 3,800 women’s rights advocates working to end violence against women and girls worldwide.
“It’s the start of a new international treaty.”
Elias is talking about a new binding international agreement to end violence against women and girls, a goal that Every Woman Treaty has been working towards for the last ten years.
Every Woman Treaty emerged a decade ago in 2013, spurred by a call for action from various UN bodies, notably the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Professor Rashida Manjoo.
This clarion call gathered a cohort of frontline activists and legal scholars from all over the world, including Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, the UK, Afghanistan, the US, Croatia, and Indigenous reservations.
Every Woman Treaty at the Women Deliver conference, Kigali, Rwanda, July 2023. Photo: Every Woman Treaty
Their seminal meeting, hosted at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, laid bare the stark absence of a binding international norm aimed at eradicating violence against women and girls. Out of this exchange, Every Woman Treaty was born.
Though the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), established in 1979, was a milestone in the international advocacy for women’s rights, it initially only addressed issues of discrimination. Women’s rights activists soon found the treaty had omitted explicit references to violence against women, reflecting the prevailing societal attitudes of the time that these were ‘private matters.’
United in a single purpose, Every Woman Treaty advocates to end violence against women and girls through the formulation of a new optional protocol to CEDAW, aligning with General Recommendation 35, to combat gender-based violence more comprehensively.
“Other organizations, they do many things,” says Elias. “But we have only one goal. So this is it. We need a safer world for women and girls.”
Coalition member Janice Smallwood (Liberia) hosts an event to launch the Safer Now report, February, 2023. Photo: Janice Smallwood Liberia Safer Now launch
Over the years, as awareness about the pervasive nature of gender-based violence grew, so did the need to address this issue on an international level.
As a response, the CEDAW committee created a series of recommendations, including General Recommendation 35, explicitly dedicated to ending violence against women and girls. However, as Elias explains, while these recommendations hold moral weight, they lack the binding force necessary to compel nations to comply.
“The gold standard on eliminating violence against women already exists in General Recommendation 35. But it is not binding to states, and is more like a consensus recommendation.”
And after ten years of deep consultation with 143 nations, Elias says, “it became clear in summer of 2023, when I joined, that the most expedient path to a binding instrument was a new optional protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which is CEDAW.”
Every Woman Treaty at the United Nations. Photo: Every Woman Treaty
The optional protocol will offer more detailed guidelines for legal reforms and enhanced mechanisms for enforcement or monitoring, which may include implementing training and educational programs, survivor support systems, and submitting periodic reports to comply with the protocol’s provisions.
But most of all, Elias says, having the international treaty defines the standards and terms all nations must abide by. This gives a language and a voice to the struggle survivors have been facing worldwide.
“We need to unify the vocabulary, the notions and sanctions, like femicide and gender apartheid, for the international community to understand that these are crimes.”
Right now, Elias says, though there are regional treaties, they leave almost 75% of women in the world without any binding norms to end violence against women and girls.
“The majority of women don’t know they are under violence,” says Elias. “This is the problem. We want to highlight it, we want to put it out there. We don’t want any country or men or any person committing femicide and escaping, because when you don’t have a name, you are not shaming, you are not saying it out loud.”
“When you start talking about it in the UN internationally, ending violence against women, this will, people will understand. International treaties change minds, mentalities, education… everything.”
The South Asian Coalition celebrates a successful diplomatic meeting. Photo: South Asian Coalition
Elias believes in laws. She points out two international treaties, included in Every Woman Treaty’s 2023 Safer Now report, that led to clear accountability and cultural change: The Tobacco Treaty shifted the global norm on tobacco from the “right to smoke” to the “right to breathe clean air,” and the Mine Ban Treaty, which was initially deemed as unnecessary, but ended up winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. According to Every Woman Treaty, a global treaty that requires nations to adopt proven interventions will lower rates of violence worldwide. For example, fifteen years after the US passed the Violence Against Women Act, intimate partner violence had dropped 53% and mortality rates for adult women are 32% lower in nations with domestic violence laws.
Every Woman Treaty’s programs are meant to create advocates for the new optional protocol in communities cross the globe. The Every Woman Fellowship fosters the development of leadership capabilities in advocacy, diplomacy, media relations, and storytelling. Complementing this, the Emerging Leaders Council offers mentorship opportunities, enabling 242 young activists to amplify their impact with essential skills like negotiation and public speaking.
And now, Every Woman Treaty’s advocacy efforts from the last ten years are gaining valuable momentum, and an optional protocol is finally on the verge of being a reality. Building upon the foundational achievement of securing a joint statement by Costa Rica, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Antigua and Barbuda, which calls for the establishment of a new optional protocol to CEDAW, Every Woman Treaty is poised to catalyze into further action.
This historic statement is underscored by the endorsement of the current Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, alongside three former rapporteurs, marking a rare alignment of influential voices within the UN system.
Chief of Diplomatic Campaign Patricia Elias (right) with Ever Woman Treaty Cofounder Dr. Eleanor Nwadinobi at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women General Assembly, New York, March 2024. Photo: Every Woman Treaty
Forming a new international protocol will not happen overnight, says Elias. It will take some time as the initiative gains traction. The four nations who issued the joint statement will spearhead efforts to formalize the protocol at the upcoming General Assembly in Geneva. Then a dedicated working group will convene to craft the initial draft.
The cultural shift needed will also take some time, but Elias is optimistic that the optional protocol that Every Woman Treaty is working towards will herald a new era of accountability and progress in safeguarding the rights of women and girls worldwide, bringing the UN SDG 5 (achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls) closer to fruition.
“We need international unified standards, and we want to unify the feminist movement to work against violence against women. And this is what we are doing,” says Elias.
Meera speaking with girls participating in Sukarya’s programs. Photo: Sukarya
Meera Satpathy’s drive to improve the health, gender, and education circumstances for women and children in India began 28 years ago when she founded Sukarya – a non-profit headquartered in Gurugram, India.
“I am a proud and committed volunteer of ‘Sukarya’ the nonprofit,” she says, and explains that “Su” in India’s Sanskrit language means “good” or “pure.” “Karya” means “work.”
Therefore, “Sukarya” could be interpreted as “good work.”
Meera Satpathy, Founder and Chairperson of Sukarya. Photo: Sukarya
Though fantastic progress has been made in the last two decades – the plight of women and children in India remain concerning when it comes to accessing opportunities that are easily available to men.
India, a prosperous country and the third largest economy in the world, still languishes low at number 140 in the world for the Gender Gap Index (GGI) among 156 countries polled by the World Economic Forum in 2021.
Despite progress in education and healthcare, the female labor force participation rate remains significantly lower than that of men.
Only 32.8% of female aged 15 years and above in India are participating in the labor workforce, as compared to 77.2% male, according to a Ministry of Labour and Employment statistics survey of April 2023.
This is due to a “patriarchal and male-dominated society like ours, women are involved in all kinds of household works and there is less participation in higher education and other decision-making roles,” Meera says.
Graduates of Sukarya’s Gender Equality Program. Photo: Sukarya
Despite an economic boom underway, India is a fitting example of a country where the disparity between economic growth and social development is a jarring contrast.
Meera didn’t want to feel helpless and watch.
“Working more meaningfully for the underprivileged was my priority. That’s why I founded Sukarya,” she says.
When she was young, Mother Teressa’s selfless dedication to treating disease among the poor and homeless across India with compassion shaped her passion to do the same in her unique way.
Hence, the key to Sukarya’s work is the organization’s Gender Equality Programme. It works to provide basic knowledge and awareness to adolescent girls (10-19 years age group) on reproductive and sexual health and build their knowledge and skills on family life.
This priority is for a reason, says Meera.
“Educating girls about their bodies, rights, and health options empowers them to make informed decisions, promotes gender equality, and helps prevent issues like early pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and gender-based violence,” she says.
This foundational knowledge is essential for their overall development and enables them to lead healthier, confident adult lives ahead in the workforce, government, and family life.
The Gender Equality Program has made great strides, she says. For example, since its inception in 2017, the program has reached and empowered over 15,000 adolescent girls across Delhi, Haryana, and Rajasthan, making significant strides in addressing issues of adolescent, reproductive, and sexual health, as well as promoting family life and gender education.
To give a fuller impact, Sukarya has extended its work to educating girls with basic digital skills, enhancing their abilities and employability with a better understanding of gender discrimination, social stigma, issues, and challenges, and teaching them about the impact of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) for maintaining good health.
Sukarya’s Digital Skills program. Photo: Sukarya
“Digital skills open doors to information, resources, and opportunities, enhancing their employability and ability to advocate for themselves and their communities,” she says.
Meera understands the connection. While digital upskilling helps women navigate social challenges on and offline, the knowledge of WASH hygienic practices is crucial to protecting their health.
Sukarya is not a lone hero. It achieves bigger success by creating partnerships with other organizations and the government.
“These collaborations have intensified,” she says, and explains that complex issues require shared expertise and resources.
No gender progress in India can thrive unless young men too are on board to change their attitudes, especially on sensitive violations like rape. According to Statista, 31, 516 rapes were reported across India in 2022.
Until now, the focus has included adolescent girls, but recognizing the critical role of changing men’s attitudes towards decreasing gender crimes like rape, means Sukarya is readying plans to involve boys in the near future, promises Meera.
“They are equally important for the growth of the country and the stereotype has to be removed and it is absolutely crucial,” she says.
In the same vein, it could be hard to get the support of parents when Sukarya wants to engage young girls in sensitive empowerment initiatives like sexual and reproductive health.
“Cultural norms and taboos [exist] around these topics,” observes Meera.
However, through awareness programs and community engagement with the help of lead girls, Sukarya emphasizes the importance of education and health. When educated girls shine in the job and government sector, parents are persuaded to support essential initiatives like Sukarya’s.
Meera with young mothers in the Sukarya health clinic. Photo: Joel Meyers
This is also where Sukarya’s many long-time loyal volunteers – who serve with dedication – make community engagement easier.
India is a huge country geographically. Is it realistic for Sukarya to cover such an expansive country or do better results occur from restricting itself to one city/state?
Achieving better results often comes from focusing efforts on specific cities, districts, and states, Meera emphasizes.
“This allows for more targeted interventions, deeper community engagement, and a greater understanding of local needs,” and outcomes that can become models for other regions of India.
There are thousands of non-profits working with women and children across India. From South Africa to Iraq and even the US, there’s always the uncomfortable reality of the same intervention being duplicated multiple times in one place.
“Sukarya’s Gender Equality Program distinguishes itself through a holistic and transformative approach that transcends traditional education,” says Meera.
By addressing the critical issues of orthodoxy, illiteracy, and ignorance, the program empowers girls not just as beneficiaries but as agents of change within their communities.
Gender and leader training. Photo: Joel Meyers
She praises the program as unique in its certification process, recognizing participants’ commitment and personal growth, and its “Lead Girls” initiative, which “fosters leadership and community mobilization.”
Sukarya recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. Meera reflected on a changing India.
The Periodic Labour Force Survey Report 2022-23 released by the Ministry of Statistics in India shows Female Labour Force Participation Rate in the country has improved significantly by 4.2 percentage points to 37.0% in 2023.
“Over the past 25 years, India has seen significant progress in gender equity, marked by legal reforms to protect women’s rights, improvements in female literacy and education, and increased political representation of women,” she says.
However, challenges remain with fluctuating female workforce participation, persistent social norms, and economic disparities.
Gender equality training in a local village. Photo: Sukarya
The global political, social, and financial conditions and how India fits in them worries Meera.
“My most significant concern regarding current global and Indian events is the deepening inequality and the impact of climate change,” she says.
Climate change exacerbates vulnerabilities, affecting the most marginalized communities, particularly in India, where a large population depends on climate-sensitive sectors like agriculture, she says.
Worryingly, India’s drought-prone area has increased by 57 percent since 1997, The World Bank warned in 2023.
Meera with doctor at a Sukarya health clinic. Photo: Joel Meyers
In the end, Meera feels most hopeful about the potential for technological innovation and global collaboration to address critical challenges such as climate change, health crises, and inequality.
“The rapid advancements in renewable energy, digital education, and healthcare technology, coupled with an increasing global awareness and commitment to sustainable development present unprecedented opportunities for positive change,” she says.
Models of a more connected, resilient, and equitable world can be quickly, cheaply, and effectively shared for global benefit.
By Abdiweli Shariff Ali, GBV and Protection Project Coordinator, Gargaar Relief and Development Organization (GREDO)
Abdullahi Abukar, Senior Protection Officer, conducting Awareness campaign about rights, prevention of sexual exploitation, and how to report incidents. Photo: GREDO
Somalis are one of the tremendous patriarchal societies in horn of African, where men control the power unconditionally and women has no gentle space of participation and decision-making roles except the roles as providers of basic needs and childcaring and nurturing children, and experience sexual gender base violence (GBV) and discrimination.
