Every year the global 16 Days of Activism Campaign runs from November 25th (the United Nations Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women) to December 10th (Human Rights Day). This year’s theme is “Invest to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls.” Over the next two weeks, Counterpart will share stories of the important work that our team and our partners are doing around the world to support the rights and safety of women and girls. We are excited to feature these new impact stories and personal profiles of some of the incredible women and female activists we partner with and to highlight a few of the stories about women’s empowerment that you might have missed this past year.
This December, Counterpart convened a group of women’s activists who come together to protect the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. The situation is dire in the country whose regime has placed harsh restrictions on women, to the extent that human rights experts have categorized it as gender apartheid. As part of our 16 Days of Activism series, we share these stories to highlight various forms of gender-based violence, and the courage and resilience of women there.
Last December, we featured a story about how our Open Government Program in Ecuador came together to fight domestic and gender-based violence. With our support 40 local partners examined 400 cases of domestic violence, training and enhancing the ability of more than 10,000 representatives from government and civil society in how to identify, prevent, and manage these incidents.
In March, we launched our Gender Integration Toolkit and heard from Mehreen Farooq, Counterpart’s governance technical expert, on how this tool proved invaluable in Niger in the face of violent extremism and a lack of access to education for women.
In April, we hosted an event with the World Bank’s Global Partnership for Social Accountability to build alliances and highlight women leaders paving the way in the climate sector, while acknowledging the realities of gender based violence and discrimination and how these impact climate work.
In August, we partnered with the Afghanistan Policy Lab at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs as part of our Unifying our Voices series. This hybrid event brought together global thought leaders to discuss and develop recommendations around combatting gender apartheid in Afghanistan.
In October, we shared some key takeaways from our annual Global Women in Leadership Summit. We brought our latest cohort of 17 women to Washington, DC for two weeks of critical meetings, trainings, and collaboration before returning to their home countries to continue their vital work protecting the rights of women and girls in their local communities.
This week we highlighted the story of Fatema Abdulla Hadroom Alghfeli, an alum of the Global Women in Management program who has built a 25-year career in Dubai championing women and girls in her community, fighting for equal pay and equal access to education and opportunities.
These stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Through our women’s empowerment practice area, we partner with women leaders around the world helping to shape opportunities for the next generation. Together, we are fighting against gender-based violence, today and every day. As we heard from Jim Jones, director of global community programs and strategy at ExxonMobil, funder of the Global Women In Management program, “Empowering women economically so they can generate their own income and savings helps reduce their exposure to gender-based violence. Violence against women contributes to poverty by adversely affecting advancement opportunities and magnifies gender gaps in labor participation. We must do better—let’s unite to prevent violence against women and girls.”
To learn more about how Counterpart works to support women and girls and prevent gender-based violence all year long, please look at our impact stories under Women’s Empowerment and explore our work through the Global Women in Management Program.
