Statement on Accelerating Action as the 2025 theme rooted in Pan African Solidarity
● We have done the work. Ranging from Bodily Autonomy & Integrity, anti-GBV, eliminating period poverty for school going girls and their carers, providing basic hygiene products for boys, advancing safe abortion, advancing disability rights, advancing LGBTIQ+ rights, advancing universal health coverage and providing community health referral services.
● We have done the work. Collaborating with partners, uplifting community members, working with our peers, working with global networks and working with different media.
● Yet. It is not enough. It is bold, innovative and systemic, mostly underfunded or not at all. It can’t be enough because we are not resourced to thrive.
● Women and girls in their diversity deserve better. Grassroots organisations can only push as far as the passion for the people behind them can allow them.
● We have done the work. Serving as a fiscal host to queer groups in challenging contexts, further extending unfunded solidarity visits in Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Senegal, Zambia and Zimbabwe. We further call for increased attention and solidarity to multiple crises across the region faced by women and queer groups in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lebanon, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Sudan.
● We are keeping it simple to stakeholders and the public:
1) Fund us to do the work you are failing to do. Coordinate response measures and ensure dignity in seeking justice for survivors of GBV.
Fund us to continue CV development and recruitment readiness workshops so people can sustain themselves.
2) Fund us to scale and strengthen our reach in rural areas, meeting communities where they are without judgement or bias because we live and navigate the same realities.
3) Fund us to fill in the gaps in eliminating harmful gender norms, rape culture and harmful reporting on marginalised communities.
4) Fund us to continue pushing for human rights, SRHR and social justice because all of us deserve dignity and personhood.
● Lastly, we re-iterate our three calls for action to the government of Botswana:
1) A presidential declaration on the state of emergency on gender-based violence to mobilise resources, equitable social participation and improve legal infrastructure.
2) Declare sign language as an official language, ensuring braille and infrastructure accessibility in all public facilities.
3) Ensure universal provision of sanitary pads for all Batswana that menstruate – not just specific groups.
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See our continuously community driven and innovative efforts on Youth, Social Justice, NGO, and Zero Discrimination Day outputs that comprehensively address and illuminate our longstanding and collaborative work in advancing gender equality and equity in law, the workplace (including sex work), health, service delivery, human rights and global policy making.
Download Dialogues PDF with links.
Download Statement PDF.
Lastly, we will be represented at CSW69 in New York. Notably meeting with UN Women leadership, speaking on anti-rights movements amidst Beijing+30 progress, shifting power in philanthropy and attending a retreat of the Civil Society Reference Group of the Spotlight Initiative, a global UN partnership to end violence against women and girls.
