CHALLENGING EXCLUSION
AND CLAIMING RIGHTS

Content warning: parts of this chapter detail cases of sexual abuse, assault and rape.

The pandemic impacted worse on the life and rights of excluded groups – including women, LGBTQI+ people and migrants and refugees – bringing a vital civil society response to provide essential help, and making struggles to end discrimination, violence and rights violations even more important. In difficult contexts, campaigns mobilised to call attention to urgent problems such as gender-based violence (GBV), the denial of sexual and reproductive rights and politicised homophobia and xenophobia. Breakthroughs came, including the legalisation of abortion in Argentina and New Zealand, the recognition of same-sex marriage in Costa Rica and the decriminalisation of same-sex relations in Bhutan and Gabon, repaying long-running advocacy and campaigning. Such gains often brought hostile reaction, in the form of harassment, threats and violence, pointing to the need to guard fragile conquests even while pushing further.

SELECT REGION

READ INTERVIEWS

POLAND

KLEMENTYNA SUCHANOW: "We invented new forms of protest because we had to"

INTERNATIONAL

LYRIC THOMPSON: "All efforts towards gender equality must be built upon intersectionality and power-shifting"

ARGENTINA

GALA DÍAZ LANGOU: "We need public policies that reduce and redistribute unpaid care work"

NAMIBIA

BERTHA TOBIAS: "Protests against gender-based violence were triggered by collective hope"

POLAND

MAŁGORZATA SZULEKA: "The crisis of democracy and human rights will deepen"

HUNGARY

KRISZTINA KOLOS ORBÁN: "Trans people are having our rights being taken away"

COSTA RICA

HERMAN DUARTE: "Once legal change achieved, public policy should continue to focus on structural exclusion"

INTERNATIONAL

VIVIANA KRSTICEVIC: "We are outraged at discrimination and are turning our claims into action"

LEBANON

LINA ABOU HABIB: "This crisis should be handled with a feminist vision"

USA

PAKOU HANG: "More women in public office translates into better government and a more robust democracy"

BANGLADESH

APARAJITA SANGITA: "To address rape we need a thorough reform of the legal system"

LEBANON

HAYAT MIRSHAD: "Change begins by handing over the mic to grassroots feminist organisations"

GREECE

MAYA THOMAS-DAVIS: "Europe instrumentalises human suffering to deter migration"

MALAYSIA

ADRIAN PEREIRA: "Migrants are amongst the first to be victimised and discriminated during the pandemic"

ARGENTINA

MARÍA RACHID: "Cultural change enabled legal change, and legal change deepened cultural change"

GREECE

LEFTERIS PAPAGIANNAKIS: "We need a change in narratives as well as in policies towards migration"

TURKEY

ELIF EGE: "If we withdraw from Istanbul Convention, it means we don't believe in gender equality"

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