FHN Annual Report 2021
The Feminist Humanitarian Network’s (FHN) first annual report documents and celebrates our key successes from 2021 and details the ways in which we have grown since our first meeting back in November 2017.
The report illustrates how the network supported each other in 2021, collaborating to share resources and learnings and working together to ensure the voices of women-led and feminist organisations on the frontlines of crisis response contribute to top-level decision-making. It shares how, since its inception, the FHN has continuously reflected on its learnings, and used these reflections to strengthen and build, and to sharpen the feminist practice of the network.
In 2021, FHN welcomed 25 new members from 11 countries across the world including organisations representing women with disabilities, young women, and LGBTQI+ communities
In May last year, we published innovative research documenting the experiences of women's rights organisations working in humanitarian contexts during the pandemic. The research was led by members and centred on organisations across eight countries: Bangladesh, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Nepal, Nigeria, Palestine, and South Africa. The findings are presented in nine reports, a national report for each country and a global report collating the findings.
The research evidences the barriers faced by grassroots women’s rights organisations in accessing funding and vital resources during the pandemic and reveals fundamental flaws in the current humanitarian system. It demonstrates the need to transform the sector to one that recognises and addresses patriarchal and colonial power dynamics, and moves forward based on the feminist principles of inclusion, intersectionality, collaboration and justice. Since its publication, members have been able to use the research as an important tool for their advocacy work at community, national, and global levels.
Despite the difficulties faced by FHN members during the pandemic and the ongoing, intersecting crises that feminist and women-led organisations respond to while continuing to push for the advancement of women’s rights, together, we have galvanised.
Our collective leadership (enabled, in part, by our strategic committees focussed on fundraising, advocacy, communications and membership, as well as our Steering Committee) has ensured that we have taken the next steps in our organisational strategy together. This collective approach has amplified our voice and ensured that the visions of feminist and women-led organisations on the frontlines of humanitarian action are central in all that we do.
FHN’s Annual Report 2021 Key Highlights:
We published new research: Women’s humanitarian voices - Covid-19 through a feminist lens. The research, led by FHN members and based on women’s rights organisations’ experiences in eight countries is an important advocacy tool for our members
We welcomed 25 new members across 11 countries, taking our total membership to 72 organisations and individuals across 30 countries
We are members of multiple Boards and Advisory Groups, including a number of newly appointed roles, making sure that women and feminist-led organisations are participating in and leading across the full spectrum of humanitarian decision-making.