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 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.