Kvinna till Kvinna’s advocacy is aimed at international and national agreements, laws, conventions and policy documents. Within these frameworks, we push for legislative and policy changes. We also call for the implementation of existing legislation on women’s rights. Where discriminatory structures and attitudes persist, we advocate to alter these. All our advocacy efforts have a rights-based approach, with feminist analysis as a starting point.

Kvinna till Kvinna’s advocacy work centres on two issues:

• Promoting meaningful participation of women in peace processes
• Countering shrinking space for civil society, including security threats against women’s rights activists

How we advocate for change

We do advocacy work in two different ways:

Firstly, Kvinna till Kvinna lobbies as an individual organisation. In that capacity, we advocate at the Swedish, European and global level. While we use our platform to amplify our partners’ voices, our agenda includes other issues too. Sometimes, we cooperate with like-minded civil society actors or umbrella organisations such as Concord, EPLO and EuroMed Rights.

Secondly, we are involved in advocacy work by supporting the advocacy agendas of our partner organisations in conflict-affected countries. We do so by offering our partners strategic advocacy skills-training, facilitating networking and coalition-building, and acting as a door opener, to offer our partners access to new arenas of advocacy.

In many cases, Kvinna till Kvinna’s own advocacy work intersects with that of our partners. We might team up and attend international meetings as a single delegation, for example.

The advocacy forums we target

Kvinna till Kvinna specialises in supporting partners in conflict-affected areas, who work on the intersection between women’s rights, peace and security. That is why we target forums that specifically deal with peace and security policy, conflict prevention and human rights. We believe the voices of women’s rights activists need to be heard in these forums.