Grassroot Women Mobilise for Democracy

Implementation period:

1 June 2019 – 31 December 2020

Regions:

Target audience:

Donor:

About the project:

Threats, reduced rights and physical violence in the field of antidemocratic and antifeminist activities have become part of the daily life of women human rights defenders (WHRDs), feminist activists and women’s organisations: Women are experiencing “shrinking spaces” openly expressed and in official forms as well as subtle defamations. Some actions are more visible, others less – and the latter may be interpreted as insignificant. But they are not.

In this situation, women and other civil rights organisations have to be aware about and to know what is happening. And it is important to raise our voices and stand up for (protect a) strong women’s and human rights movement – and showing the importance of civil society organisations for a vidid democracy.

Based upon this, Women’s Fund Georgia, Ukrainian Women’s Fund, Women’s Fund Armenia (Women’s Resource Center Armenia) and filia Germany are carrying out the joint (collaborative) project “grassroot women mobilise together for democracy”.

With this project, we aim to emphasise the importance of civic engagement against the ongoing antidemocratic movement that nowadays becomes visible amongst others in rightwing populism, nationalism, religious fundamentalism and antifeminist actions.

The first step in the project will be to collect in each country stories about what is happening: Which sort of threats and attacks are happening? Who is the target? Is the goal intimidation or other? Who are the offenders? Starting from the locally collected stories and experiences, we will, in a next step, discuss the results together with women from all four countries. We will develop messages that are leading to a cross-national media campaign. We will discuss The campaign shall be an answer to the shrinking of democratic spaces. It may be a call to action. It may be an empowerment for women to think about and further discuss new strategies to strengthen the women’s movement. It shall be an answer (countering) to the backlash from conservative influential circles.

Project objectives: