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Shaping Our Future Together Through Advocacy
Today is UN Day – and 2020 marks the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations and its founding Charter. 2020 also marks the 25th Anniversary of the Beijing Declaration, which was adopted by the UN at the 1995 World Conference on Women. And it was not until 2010 that UN Women was established. Throughout history and into the present moment, women, LGBTQI, and gender non-conforming human rights defenders worldwide are challenging existing power structures, taking a stand against patriarchy and misogyny, and reimagining a more just and equitable future. Advocacy requires us to interrogate structures of power, strategize to overcome constraints and seize opportunities to drive change.
 
For UAF, advocacy is about using power and influence in a strategic way.
 
In 2018, UAF’s staff and our partners in the Count Me In! (CMI!) initiative met with the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and top officials at the European Commission to discuss the Spotlight Initiative. Spotlight is a landmark initiative that brings focused attention and an unprecedented monetary investment directed at eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls to achieve gender equality.
Despite Spotlight’s admirable and promising goals, we left this early meeting uncertain and unclear about the initiative’s ability to support frontline activists and create change at a grassroots level. Senior Advocacy Officer Nathalie Margi recalls, “At the time we debated whether it was worth our limited time and energy to engage or if it would be more effective to step back and publicly critique it.”
 
Ultimately, UAF recognized the potential good that could come from being a part of this united effort to combat gender-based violence. Urgent Action Fund knew that this was a unique opportunity and we decided to join with our advocacy partners to collectively push to improve this initiative’s ability to deliver concrete results for women and girls worldwide.
Now, 2 years later, we are proud to say that more than half of our recommendations have been implemented. Thanks to our collective advocacy, there is now:
  • a new ‘pillar of action’ dedicated to funding feminist movements,
  • a grassroots action plan for funds to reach activists working at the community level, and
  • an integrated protection plan that provides guidelines on what it means to ensure holistic security for women human rights defenders.
Our advocacy is always in partnership with and at the service of the movements we support. UAF believes that our job as advocates is to amplify and complement the work of our grantees. We are committed to using our voice to speak truth to power.

We believe this is a moment to call for bold, systemic change—because the movements we support and the more just world we collectively envision demand nothing less. The underlying ideals of the UN are noble, but we know that ideals like equality, peace, and justice require all of us to engage and stay engaged. Collective power is the mechanism we have to uproot traditional power structures that exclude us.
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