Women driving cars is not a common sight in Chechnya. Grantee partner, Women’s Dignity, challenged this gender prejudice by organizing a campaign to help women to learn how to drive. Fifty-six women received driving lessons, access to automobiles and with the group’s help, obtained their licenses. Because of the group's campaign, the number of women-drivers in the Republic has noticeably increased.

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The driving campaign is one of a few strategies that Women’s Dignity uses to promote and advance the rights of women. Two Chechen wars in the past 15 years left many women widows and children orphans. Many are still experiencing psychological trauma and are financially dependent on their extended families. Women are subject to bride kidnapping and forced marriages, often into multi-wife families. Sometimes they are denied their inheritance, and experience physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Women’s Dignity responded with psychological services and group trainings on healthy living and family planning to over 1,400 women.

Women’s Dignity also organizes seminars about civil rights for Chechen youth. They lobby for laws against women’s rights violations, and provide legal counseling and education. And to help women get jobs, the group offers computer and sewing courses.

Rates of violence against women have increased all over Iraq. In Baghdad, women face daily violence from occupation forces and insurgents. Tribal leadership and fundamentalist groups make it extremely difficult for women to step outside their homes without a veil, let alone go to school or seek employment.

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But, the Baghdad Women’s Association (BWA) is determined to change their society. They opened “decision-making centers” where women discuss electoral campaigns and the democratic process. These centers and other BWA services, led to a monumental win: Two women who went through BWA’s training at these centers were elected to the Baghdad Provincial Council, where less than 20 percent of the members are women.

Additionally, in a recent peace building and conflict resolution training series, BWA trained 163 youth leaders, men and women, on how to discuss tolerance and conflict resolution. The group also uses media and direct services, like counseling centers, to empower community members to shift the status quo.

In a country marred by a violent history of rivalry between political-military factions, Asha Hagi Elmi proudly says that, “My only clan is womanhood.” As chairwoman of Global Fund grantee partner Save Somali Women and Children (SSWC), Asha’s words are more than symbolic.

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In 2000, SSWC led a cross-clan group of women to lobby for women’s inclusion in an historic national peace conference. This group, dubbed the Sixth Clan, made it possible for women to participate in the 2004 signing of peace accords between warlords. Subsequently, women gained their right to participate in politics for the first time in Somalia’s history. SSWC used a Global Fund renewal grant to train 360 women “agents of change” to deepen their understandings of key national and international protocols such as CEDAW and the Beijing Platform. This initiative enabled Somali women to hold their government accountable to good governance and women’s rights.

While SSWC has taken bold actions to ensure that women are at the decision-making table, their work is far from over. Currently, heightened fighting between clans coupled with extreme drought and famine has intensified displacement across the region. In response to the devastating famine in August, SSWC used an emergency grant from Global Fund to distribute nutrition and dignitary kits to 1,000 women and girls in five IDP camps in Mogadishu.

Latin America and the Caribbean have become increasingly dangerous for women and families. Women’s rights and freedoms are under serious threat, and the safety of women human rights defenders is particularly precarious. From 2009 to today, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras top the list of reported cases of violence against women human rights defenders and social activists.

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To put it mildly, women in the region are fed up. So fed up that grantee partner, Iniciativa Mesoamericana de Defensoras de Derechos Humanos decided to take on the most powerful perpetrators in society, with little support and few alliances. They set an ambitious goal: to map the reality of women’s rights defenders in Mesoamerica and to offer mechanisms to protect the lives of those women in the struggle for social justice and equality.

The 50 plus women activists involved in the project discovered political threats and sexual violence are used across the region to silence women.

United and representing diverse social movements including: feminist, labor unions, rural, peasant and LBTQ communities, these women activists give greater visibility to women’s resistance. Invaluable to the women’s movement, they strategize across the region to demand their rights and fundamental freedoms.