About
About
Together with UN Women Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, we will be hosting a series of online consultations on Beijing+25, starting June and running to December 2020. Together with local feminists and human rights activists, we will be exploring what still needs to happen to achieve gender equality in the Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern and Central European regions? These online consultations will engage decision-makers and give guidance to the Action Coalition leaders about the demands from the region.
Will this generation be the generation in which we achieve gender equality?
The COVID-19 crisis has thrown a spanner in the works of the global processes on achieving gender equality (with the Generation Equality Forums and Beijing+25 processes being postponed). But we need to turn this risk into an opportunity, and engage feminist organisations in agenda setting for a post-COVID-19 gender-equal world. It is essential to the global feminist movement that we make sure that our post-COVID world will not have thrown us decades back in time, but that the recovery will lead to a gender-just transformation of our economies and societies.
That is why we are, in collaboration with UN Women Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, starting a series of virtual consultations on Beijing+25: What still needs to happen to achieve gender equality in the Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asian, Eastern and Central European regions? We need feminist civil society from these subregions to make their voices heard, because we are part of achieving gender equality and shaping a feminist post-covid world! Young feminists play a central role in this.
These virtual consultations will be open spaces for discussions among feminists from the region, working on the themes from the Generation Equality Actions and input for the post-covid world. They will be safe spaces for open discussion about the challenges that lay ahead of us and how we can fight them together. We will ensure that the discussions are as accessible as possible, with simultaneous translation into different languages, internet and technical support where necessary,
The first phase focuses is building feminist solidarity and capacity building. We will bring feminists together from around the region to share their experiences and build their common views for the future. Furthermore, we need to build our collective online capacities and learning the digital skills we need to organize ourselves for this digital post-covid world. That’s why we will hold a virtual ICT training.
The second phase is focused on bringing feminists together from the different subregions to ensure that their demands for their region are formed. Three subregional consultations with feminists from Central Asia, Western Balkans and Turkey, and the Eastern Partnership region will take place. We will discuss the current state of affairs regarding gender equality and the Beijing Platform implementation, as well as discuss our proposals and demands for a gender-just recovery from COVID. These positions will be summarized in position papers to feed into the discussions of the Autumn.
The third phase will focus on bringing together all feminists from the region for thematic discussions on the six themes of the Generation Equality Action Coalitions. Decision-makers and stakeholders from the different Action Coalitions will also be part of these consultations.
Countries covered in the consultations
- Western Balkans & Turkey – Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, North-Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Kosovo
- Eastern Europe – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Russian Federation
- Central Asia – Kyrgyzstan, Kazakstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
Moderators
Leyla Zuleikha Makhmudova
Co-founder at FemAgora Central Asia Feminist Foundation, Kazakhstan. Leyla is an educational and gender empowerment consultant from Kazakhstan. Leyla has designed and implemented several women empowerment platforms, including TEDxWomen and Women Entrepreneurship Conference. She currently co-organises FemAgora Feminist Festival that celebrates and discusses the women’s work, its visibility and resource ownership in Central Asia.
Olga Djanaeva
Director of the Rural women’s association “Alga” in Kyrgyzstan and leader for the Generation Equality Forum's Action Coalition on Climate Justice
Dildora Amirkulova
Dildora has over 20 years of experience working in the field of gender and women's and girls' rights in her country. For 17 years she has been leading a regional non-governmental organization in Uzbekistan, designed to strengthen the role of women and youth in the development of civil society. She is a member of the public council on women's issues, created under the regional local authority, and is also a member of the women's network of non-governmental organizations on gender issues, which operates in partnership with the Gender Commission of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Currently she is also a national expert on gender issues in projects of the UNFPA office in Uzbekistan.
Nodira Abdulloeva
Nodira is a lawyer and human rights activist from Tajikistan. For the last fifteen years, Nodira worked for Human Rights Center (HRC) - a prominent Tajik NGO. She was dedicated to protecting migrant workers' rights and enhancing access to justice to marginalized groups. In particular, Nodira initiated and conducted research and human rights monitorings, actively participated in drafting legislation and policy formulation concerning labor migration and access to justice, advocated for women and migrants' human rights at the national and international levels. Currently, being a member of the Board of Human Rights Center, Nodira support HRC's activity on promoting gender equality in Tajikistan. She also is UN Women Tajikistan's Civil Society Advisory Group member. As a national expert, Nodira provides consultancy to development partners in Tajikistan on labor migration governance, access to justice, and gender equality.
Assiya Khairulina
Born in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Since 1994, she has been the Chair of Public Association "Women's League of Creative Initiatives". In 1995 took part in the Global Women's Forum in Beijing, which influenced the choice of the sphere of civic activism. The organization's activities are focused on promoting the principles of gender equality, protecting the rights of women and girls, monitoring issues related to the implementation and implementation of the requirements of international legislation on women's rights in the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.From 2008 to the present - member of the National Commission for Women Affairs and Family and Demographic Policy under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. From 2011 League has focused on preventing child marriage, ensuring the sexual and reproductive rights of adolescents and youth in Kazakhstan.
Anna Hovhannisyan
Anna is a women’s rights activist and inter-sectional feminist dedicate to advocating for gender equality and the feminist agenda, joining voices of different marginalized groups of women in Armenia. Currently she’s working at the Women’s Resource Centre Armenia, where she specializes on the policy environment in the field of women rights targeting SRHR, gender-based violence and the feminist agenda in Armenia. She’s active as an author and researcher and represents the organization in different local and international Networks, including Astra Network, VAWE Network and Advisory group at Beijing+25.
Salome Chagelishvili
Salome is a feminist activist from Tbilisi, Georgia, devoted to social and gender justice. She holds a Master's degree in gender studies, and has been engaged in feminist, queer and green movements for the past nine years, working amongst others on issues of gender based violence, domestic violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, LGBTIQ rights, and holistic and digital security and rights. Since 2014 she has been actively working on safety and security issues of activists and Women Human Rights Defenders, providing integrated security and digital security workshops specifically for activists from under-privileged groups (queer persons, ethnic and religious minorities, rural women and girls, etc) as well as bigger feminist organisations. Salome is a member of the Independent Group of Feminists - a non-formal, non-hierarchical and non-registered initiative that unites feminists with diverse backgrounds in Georgia. Currently, she works with Women's Fund in Georgia, fully engaged in women's/feminist movement building, providing feminist funding, and encouraging local feminist philanthropy. Salome is also a member of AWID board of directors.
Oksana Potapova
Trainer, practitioner of critical pedagogy, gender specialist and feminist researcher. She works with groups and communities on issues of human rights, dialogue, gender and women’s rights. In 2014 Oksana co-founded «Theatre for Dialogue» NGO where she has been working with communities affected by conflict, internally displaced and other marginalized groups of women, to build dialogue and cohesion within communities and to advocate the rights of vulnerable groups of women at the national and international level. Oksana is also a feminist researcher. Her work is based in action-oriented methods, and her advocacy is rooted in stories backed by data. Oksana combines her dialogue work with activism , research and advocacy for gender sensitive peace. In September 2020 Oksana has started her Master’s program in Gender, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics.
Valentina Bodrug-Lungu
Valentina is an Associate Professor and holds a PhD. She has 18 years’ experience in Gender Analysis, Gender Mainstreaming, GBV, Women's political and socio-economic empowerment, Women, Peace ans Security. She contributed to elaboration and advocacy of Gender Equality Law, Domestic Violence Law, Policies on Gender Equality and Domestic Violence in Moldova etc. During many years she was member of Governmental Committee on Gender Equality (representative of CSOs). She represented Moldova at consultations with European Commission, ECOSOC, CEDAW Committee. Mrs. Bodrug-Lungu has worked with EU, UNDP, UNWomen, UNFPA, UNICEF, OSCE Mission to Moldova. Author of more 130 books and articles in gender issues, gender based violence, family problems/ counselling, gender education (published in Moldova, USA, Romania, and Russia). She is President of NGO “Gender-Center”/Co-founder of Platform for Gender Equality, Republic of Moldova. At international level she contributed as speaker, co-organiser to public consultations on Sustainable Developmen, Beijing+25 etc. Science 2020 Valentina Bodrug-Lungu is a OP Women’s Major Group.
Safe space protocol
Safe space protocol
We want to ensure that this is a safe space for our diverse civil society, in particular for representatives from marginalized groups, to come together and voice their concerns. Feminists and activists will come together on the basis of what unifies us in solidarity.
Organised by
Organised by
Moderators
