Upcoming events
Feminist Knowledge in Humanitarian Action
What would humanitarian action look like if women’s rights organisations led knowledge production?
Women’s rights organisations (WROs) are producing knowledge, analysis and solutions every day. Yet humanitarian systems too often treat WROs as sources of information rather than as knowledge producers, analysts and leaders.
In partnership with the Humanitarian Practice Network (HPN), the Feminist Humanitarian Network (FHN) has supported two articles by FHN members in the Humanitarian Exchange Magazine issue 87: Local leadership in a changing humanitarian architecture, bringing the lived expertise and feminist analysis of WROs into a wider humanitarian conversation.
One article explores refugee-led women’s leadership in climate action in Kenya through a feminist approach on data collection, analysis and advocacy in the Kente Threads project. The second article examines women-led humanitarian leadership in Palestine, drawing on the experiences of organisations responding under occupation.
During this event, you will be in conversation with the authors about humanitarian knowledge production, and how we can move from extracting knowledge from communities to investing in community authorship and leadership, and what this means for humanitarian action.
What are we gathering for?
Recognising WROs as knowledge producers: Listening to WROs share their experience as analysts, authors and experts
Challenging whose knowledge counts: Exploring how power shapes what knowledge is valued and amplified
Connecting knowledge to power: Asking how feminist knowledge can shape humanitarian decisions, policy and practice
Investing in community-led knowledge: Imagining more participatory, feminist and accountable approaches to humanitarian knowledge
Date: 13 October 2026, 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM UTC
Location: Zoom
Duration: 60 minutes
Languages: French, Spanish, Arabic, English and Swahili
Speakers
Majeda Saqqa – Culture Free Thought Association
Ohaila Shomar – Sawa
Anila Noor – New Women Connectors
Madina Yunus – Pastoralist Girls Initiative
Join us to explore what humanitarian action looks like when communities are recognised not simply as sources of stories, but as producers of knowledge and shapers of humanitarian practice.
Partnering with WROs for Humanitarian Action
FHN is co-hosting this online event with the Gender in Emergencies (GiE) group focused on Partnering with WROs for humanitarian action. The session will create space for attendees to share challenges and lived experiences of partnership, while FHN WRO members will offer reflections, feedback, and feminist perspectives on what meaningful, equitable partnership looks like in practice.
Solidarity beyond borders: Reimagining feminist advocacy and global Aid.
For decades, CSW has been a key space for feminist advocacy. But year after year, it remains out of reach for many, especially feminists from the Global Majority. CSW69 happened with visa denials, soaring costs, and a hostile political climate in the US, on top of devastating funding cuts on gender justice work, and making one thing clear: we must rethink where and how feminist advocacy happens, and reimagine the future of global aid.
We must ask why one of the world’s largest women’s rights gatherings takes place in a space that excludes so many, and how do we build a truly global feminist movement that isn’t held hostage by Western-controlled spaces and aid.
What are we gathering for?
Decolonising feminist advocacy and shifting power: We refuse to let powerful institutions dictate where and how feminist organising happens, while excluding those most affected by injustice. We’re not here for symbolic inclusion. We’re here to demand decision-making spaces that centre the voices and leadership of feminists from the Global Majority.
Funding feminist resistance and work: We will not be dependent on governments and donors who undermine our work. We’re strategising for feminist-led, community-driven, and sustainable funding models.
Building collective power: Feminist movements are strongest when we stand together. We’re here to create radical solidarity, strengthen alliances, and push back against shrinking civic spaces.
Join this urgent conversation. Activists, movements, and organisations, as we come together, name the barriers, share our frustrations, and lay out concrete strategies for action.
Date: 27th March 2025
Venue: Zoom
Time: 11:00AM GMT - 12:30PM GMT
Who Should Attend?
Feminist activists, organisers, non-profits, researchers, and advocates.
Anyone frustrated by the inaccessibility and limitations of CSW69, funding cuts, and pushback on gender justice.
Organisations and allies seeking to support the decolonisation of feminist convenings and shifting and building collective power for gender justice.
Session format:
Introductions and welcome.
Presentation, Q&A, and moderated discussion: The US Humanitarian aid freeze, funding cuts & pushbacks on gender justice and CSW69, decolonising feminist advocacy.
Call to Action: Next steps for a more accessible & decolonised feminist advocacy & aid system. (Closing reflections, commitments, and concrete actions).
We cannot continue to negotiate for inclusion, we must resist, rethink and reclaim.
FHN at CSW68 - ‘Crisis, catalyst for change! How emergencies can accelerate gender justice’
Crises often deepen inequalities, but can catalyze transformation.
Join our in-person event at CSW NGO forum, and hear from frontline responders on their work to achieve gender justice through feminist humanitarian action.
Feminist inspiration and innovation to overcome exhaustion: A healing, solidarity circle
In this session, we invite activists, not-for-profits and movements to join together in solidarity and share their feelings of overwhelm and frustration. As a tonic to these feelings we will share our dreams of a feminist future and inspire each other with our wildest ideas on how to smash the patriarchal, colonial, racist and capitalist systems. We will use feminist restorative techniques and harness our collective energy to sustain us as continue to push forward.
FHN at CSW68 - 'Forgotten or ignored? Feminist humanitarians’ perspectives on neglected crises'
Globally, humanitarian need is at an all time high - yet most crises are classified as “forgotten”. Join FHN members - women’s rights organizations on the frontlines of emergency response in the Global South, to discuss how forgotten crises are defined, and will question whether “ignored” or “neglected” are more appropriate terms.
Join our CSW virtual event from anywhere in the world.
Women Deliver
The Feminist Humanitarian Network will host two concurrent events at this year’s Women Deliver Conference (WD2023).
Feminist Foreign Policy Summit side event: Towards inclusive feminist humanitarian policy in a world in crisis
What does a feminist humanitarian agenda look like? How can we shift power in the humanitarian system from global to local and from men to women and gender diverse communities?
ActionAid, the Feminist Humanitarian Network and the Shifting the Power Coalition invite you to join us online on Tuesday 5 April for a side event as part of the Global Feminist Foreign Policy Summit featuring some incredible feminist speakers from women’s rights organisations across Asia, Africa and the Pacific.
The event will explore the principles that should underpin feminist humanitarian policy, including the power dynamics frequently at play between international and local actors. It will explore how within a world where economic, climate and humanitarian crises, and conflict are converging, feminist policy can work across the development, humanitarian, and security divides.
Date: Tuesday 5 April at 10am Berlin time, 6pm Sydney, 8pm Fiji
Register here: https://bit.ly/3NCJgfh
Moderator: Sandra Macías del Villar, Program Director, Crisis at the Global Fund for Women and a member of the Steering Committee for The Feminist Humanitarian Network
Speakers:
Amparo Miciano, Executive Director, PKKK (National Rural Women's Coalition), Philippines
Michelle Higelin, Executive Director, ActionAid Australia, Australia
Mmonbeydo Joah, Executive Director, Organization for Women and Children (ORWOCH), Liberia
Sharon Bhagwan Rolls, Regional Manager, Shifting the Power Coalition, Fiji
Inspiring feminist humanitarian action through lessons from Covid-19
When a crisis breaks out, women’s rights organisations are often the first to respond, but this crucial work is still overlooked by the international community as ‘not humanitarian’. Women’s rights organisations are shut out of funding, decision-making and coalitions where they are needed most.
In this parallel event at the NGO Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) Forum, Global South-based women’s rights organisations will share evidence of their role during the pandemic and the barriers they encounter inside the humanitarian system. This interactive discussion will build on new findings to explore how the Covid-19 recovery can reshape humanitarian response, equipping women’s rights organisations with adequate resources and decision-making power to upscale their frontline roles.
This event is co-created by Coalition on Violence Against Women Kenya, Women’s Refugee Commission, Marsa Lebanon, Badabon Sangho, Lebanon Family Planning Association for Sustainable Development, Community Healthcare Initiative Liberia, Crown the Woman South Sudan, Humanitarian Relief Development Council, Kiaswa Initiative, Women for Human Rights/Gyanbodh Nepal, Kiaswa Initiative Kenya, Life at Best Development Initiative Nigeria, Network of Ethiopian Women’s Associations, Pastoralist Girls Initiative Kenya, Shashat Woman Cinema Palestine, Organisation for Women and Girls Liberia, Paramount Young Women’s Initiative Liberia, Network of Disabled Women Nigeria, Community Empowerment for Peace and Development Uganda, Polycom Development Project, Amplify Girls Kenya, Pokot Women Empowerment Organisation, Women for Change South Sudan, Humanitarian Policy Group at ODI UK, and the Feminist Humanitarian Network.
FHN report launch event: ‘Women’s Humanitarian Voices: Covid-19 through a feminist lens’
Join the Feminist Humanitarian Network for the launch of our research: ‘Women’s Humanitarian Voices: Covid-19 through a feminist lens.’