Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML)

Mission:

Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) supports feminist local struggles for individual and collective autonomy within Muslim countries and communities by facilitating a transnational solidarity network. WLUML gathers, builds and mobilizes knowledge, and furthers channels of communication and exchange towards the realization of gender justice, equality and human rights.

Impact:

WLUML is particularly lauded for their Violence is Not Our Culture Campaign, an ongoing initiative to eliminate all forms of ‘culturally-justified’ violence against women.

Channel Grants:

2023:  Grant to WLUML (through the fiscal sponsorship of the Peace Development Fund (PDF)) for a Transformative Feminist Leadership Institute (TFLI). The Institute is an educational program for young women leaders from Muslim contexts who are interested in gender equality, women’s human rights, and feminist thought and action. In particular, TFLI aimed to “enhance the effectiveness of participants’ advocacy for gender equality and justice, to capacity-build through the sharing of knowledge and experiences, and to encourage youth leadership and effective networking.”  Given the gendered components of the recent political upheavals in Afghanistan and countries in the MENA region, the Institute’s pilot programs paid particular attention to the feminist concerns of these populations.

2015: Grant (through the fiscal sponsorship of the International Human Rights Initiative) to support a meeting of young women activists from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as part of a participatory strategic planning process for the region. The meeting built on WLUML’s priority to create spaces for intergenerational dialogue amongst feminists.  The meeting focused on developing the network’s strategic five year plan and building the organizational capacity of young feminist activists.  Objectives for the meeting included consolidating a pool of young feminist activists in the MENA region; training on developing a change agenda, strategic and action planning; creation of WLUML’s MENA Action Plan; formal establishment of a WLUML MENA Network; and the inclusion of techniques for sustainable activism.

2013: Grant (through the fiscal sponsorship of the International Human Rights Initiative) to support a regional Women’s Leadership Workshop led by WLUML in Egypt in December 2013 for women from the Middle East and North Africa. Video from the 2013 Feminist Leadership Training in Cairo, can be viewed here. The workshop was part of Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Development for Democritisation (WELDD) Programme which aimed to build transformational feminist leadership across a broad range of issues, contexts and power dynamics, locally, regionally and globally.