The Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) is a non-profitfeminist network based in Thailand.[3] Established in 1986, the network consists of 295 organizational and individual members from 31 countries and territories in the Asia-Pacific region as of 2023.[3][4] APWLD collaborates with local organizations, activists, and advocates to support women’s participation in policy-making and legal advocacy discussions.[3] The organization is headquartered in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with members across the Asia-Pacific region.[5]
APWLD's origins trace back to the Third World Conference on Women held in Nairobi, Kenya, in July 1985.[6] During this conference, talks among women lawyers, social scientists, and activists from the Asia-Pacific region highlighted the need for a focused organization to address the socio-legal challenges faced by women.[7] This led to forming a 10-member Regional Planning Committee, which convened in Delhi in July 1986 to prepare for a regional conference.[8]
In December 1986, the first Asia Pacific Regional Conference was held in Tagaytay, Philippines, bringing together 52 women delegates from 10 Asian and two Pacific nations.[9] This gathering led to the creation of APWLD, driven by a shared mission to use the law as a tool for social change, equality, and development.[9] To kick things off, a seven-member Steering Committee was elected to guide the organization's early work. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was chosen as the home for the Secretariat.[9]
In October 1987, Emelina Quintillan assumed the role of the first Regional Coordinator, marking the beginning of APWLD's structured operations.[10] The organization was officially registered as a non-stock, non-profit entity under the Malaysian Companies Act on January 9, 1988. The same year, APWLD published the first issue of its quarterly newsletter, 'Forum News,' to disseminate information and updates.[11]
In 1997, APWLD relocated its Secretariat to Chiang Mai, Thailand to better serve its expanding network and to be more accessible to its diverse membership across the region.[12]
Membership and structure
APWLD operates as a membership-based network that accepts applications from organizations and individuals across the Asia-Pacific region who align with its mission to promote women's human rights and Development Justice. Membership is open to anyone actively participating in APWLD’s activities, such as training programs, workshops, or research initiatives. The application process involves submitting a membership form detailing the applicant’s work, commitment to APWLD’s mission, and past organizational involvement. Applications are reviewed by APWLD’s governing bodies, and approved members gain access to the network’s resources, advocacy opportunities, and capacity-building initiatives. The membership includes women's organizations, women-led labor and environmental groups, trade unions, and networks representing rural, Indigenous, migrant, urban poor, and differently-abled women.[13] This broad membership base ensures a collective feminist movement across the region.[14]
The governance structure of APWLD includes the Regional Council, the Programme and Management Committee, and the Secretariat. The Regional Council sets the agenda and program directions, formulates policies, and approves organizational reports. The Programme and Management Committee oversees the implementation of programs and administration, while the Secretariat, headed by the Regional Coordinator, manages daily operations.[15]
Agenda and theoretical foundations
APWLD’s core agenda is defined as promoting gender equality, social justice, and women's empowerment across the Asia-Pacific region. It aims to influence laws and promote feminist movements from local to international levels, with a particular focus on increasing advocacy participation from women of underrepresented communities through legal and policy setting.[16]
APWLD advocates for what it terms as feminist Development Justice.[17] According to Nasha Mohamed et al., Development Justice is defined as a transformative model that challenges the structural inequalities present in traditional development models.[18] One of the core methodologies that APWLD deploys to promote women's empowerment is referred to as “Feminist Participatory Action Research” (FPAR), which involves women directly in research and advocacy processes.[19] The framework directly involves women considered to be socially disadvantaged in researching, documenting, and advocating for their rights, viewing them as active agents of change rather than passive subjects.
The FPAR process is described as involving identifying and validating issues related to gender justice, collaborative research design and data collection, collective analysis of findings to find causes at the grassroots level, advocacy and action based on research outcomes, and dissemination of results.[20] APWLD utilizes this methodology in order to ameliorate the situations of marginalized women and strengthen women’s movements.[20]
Organization programmes and initiatives
APWLD’s programmes are divided into several major categories based on their objectives,[21] including the following:
Feminist Law and Practice (FLP) - aims to improve women’s human rights both in law and practice
Breaking Out of Marginalization (BOOM) - focuses on social mobility of rural, indigenous, urban poor, and differently-abled women.
Climate Justice (CJ) - ensures local, national, regional, and international climate policies integrate feminist solutions for climate justice.
Women Organizing Workers (WOW) - promotes women workers’ rights to decent work, labor rights, and participatory democracy through organization of labor movements
Migration - aims to ensure that women migrants can fully enjoy their human rights and make informed and free choices about migration.
Grounding the Global (GG) - monitors and ensures that international and regional laws, norms, standards, and procedures reflect feminist agendas and the living conditions of women in Asia and the Pacific.
Asia Pacific Feminist Forum (APFF)
The Asia Pacific Feminist Forum was introduced in 2009 as a platform of discussion and strategy planning for feminists in the Asia-Pacific region. The forum runs concurrently with APWLD’s General Assembly. The purpose of gathering in Chiang Mai, Thailand, was to inform APWLD’s future activities and activism and gather multilateral strategies and recommendations to maximise its efforts.[6]
In December 2011, the first APFF was held on the APWLD’s 25th anniversary, with the theme ‘This is What Feminism Looks Like’. The forum reflected upon the organisation’s achievements with discussions on contemporary issues regarding women’s rights. During the three-day meeting, the forum was attended by 130 women, including those with disabilities, eventually forming the Asia Pacific Network for Women with Disabilities.[8]
In May 2014, the second APFF was held, and workshops and conferences commenced under the theme ‘Creating Waves, Fostering Movements’. Issues discussed by the 300 attendees included challenges to an interfaith marriage bill proposed in Myanmar and struggles to achieve Development Justice.[8]
In September 2017, under the title ReSisters, PerSisters, Sisters - Mobilising in the era of authoritarian, patriarchal, late capitalism, the third APFF was joined by 320 members across 43 countries. The third forum aimed to “strengthen APWLD’s movements, solidarity and resolve to dismantle economic, social and political systems that produce obscene levels of inequality, drive climate change and necessitate violations of women’s human rights”.[6]
The final and most recent forum convened in September 2024 under the theme ‘Feminist World Building: Creative Energies; Collective Journeys. ’ It centred on the legacies the movement had built while acknowledging the existence of internal disagreements within the movement.[22]
Asia Pacific People’s Forum on Sustainable Development (APPFSD)
From the 17th to 19 May 2015, the APWLD organised a forum gathering participants from Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in conjunction with the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia Pacific (UNESCAP), the UN Environmental Program (UNEP), and the Asia Pacific Civil Society Regional Engagement Mechanism (AP-RCEM).[23] The main aims of the convention were to encourage engagement of CSOs in sustainable development processes, spark discussions on UN environmental initiatives, and create opportunities and positions in the CSO realm for action towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.[24] The CSO Forums frame the need for sustainable development within the lens of human rights, intersecting obligations such as recognising female landowners, reducing the use of pesticides and other harmful technologies for farming communities, and ensuring indigenous peoples’ right to their land as well as adopting their practices.[25]
Legacy
According to the assessment of Naomi Joy Godden et al., the FPAR program designed by the APWLD is described as “highly effective” in helping mobilize women, especially those from low-income and Indigenous groups, allowing them to achieve climate justice.[26] The evaluation finds that through this program, women from the nine participating countries (India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam) have become informed on their human rights and environmental crises. APWLD was also found to have emphasized and aided in closing the knowledge gap between men and women in climate activist spaces, supporting women's mobilization through developing an understanding of their rights.[27] Nasha Mohamed et al. argue that the organization’s FPAR has helped local communities to mobilize against state oppression to demand policy changes and influenced regional, national, and international discussions through evidence-based strategic advocacy campaigns.[18] Women involved in FPAR also increased their skills to organize communities, lead peer training, and gained access to social advocacy through radio, photography, and theatre, among other forms.[26]
In other cases, the effectiveness of APWLD’s program was inhibited. During its two-year Climate Justice FPAR (CJ-FPAR) program from 2017 to 2019, reports demonstrate that participants have encountered several challenges. Work and domestic responsibilities often constrained participants’ engagement in climate justice activism.[28] Resistance from authority also hindered participation in activism, in which access to government information and discussion with government officials were denied in several cases.[28] Safety concerns for women, including harassment, suppression of speech, arrests, and threats of honor killing, were also noted during the program.[28] In addition, participants in Cambodia, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka reported restricted mobility due to weather, limitations in transportation, and access to some communities.[28]
Based on its most recently accessible annual report from 2022, the APWLD has worked on various justice issues. The report[29] organizes itself into four main categories of impact:
Capacity Building: Worked with 6,925 grassroots women to analyze and amplify their experiences.
Knowledge, Tools, and Resources: Produced 170 new feminist knowledge tools and resources, influencing human rights, development, and climate policy processes.
Advocacy to Change Laws and Policies: Supported over 42 grassroots activities to engage in high-level advocacy spaces, an effort reflected in several United Nations outcomes, including the Asia Pacific Forum for Sustainable Development (APFSD) report, Agreed Conclusions to the 66th Commission on the Status of Women Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) Committee’s List of Issue for Indonesia, and others.
Movement-Building: Sustained new alliances, networks, and cross-movement collaborations, leading 17 regional and international initiatives by mobilizing FPAR, creating at least 36 new women’s groups at local levels.
Current projects
APWLD’s current works have extended to include modern issues relating to digitalization and women’s rights within digital space,[30] including the following programs:
The Intercontinental Alliance of Women’s Networks on Law and Development, where activists aim to reshape global policy making.
A research project investigating the connection between digitalization and increased debt among women workers in Asia and the Pacific.
A media fellowship on digitalisation and feminist digital rights for female journalists.
Calls for climate and economic justice for flood-affected communities across Nepal.
Asia Pacific Regional Civil Society Engagement Mechanism (AP-RCEM)
Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN)
Asia Pacific Women with Disabilities United
Asia Pacific Women’s Alliance for Peace & Security (APWAPS)
Asia Pacific Treaty Initiative (APTI)
Asia Rural Women Coalition (ARWC)
Commission on the Status of Women- Women’s Rights Caucus (CSW)
Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ)
Global Peoples’ Surge (GPS)
Pacific Islands Women’s Caucus
Southeast Asia Women’s Caucus on ASEAN
The International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net)
The Women’s Global Call for Climate Justice
United for Foreign Domestic Workers' Rights (UFDWRs)
Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition (WHRD-IC)
Women Working Group on Financing for Development
Women’s Major Group for United Nations
Women and Gender Constituency (WGC) of the UNFCCC
In addition, the APWLD is externally associated with various other organizations through its FPAR program. For example, the All Adivasi Women’s Association of Assam (AAWAA) and the Palangkaraya Ecological and Human Rights Studies (PROGRESS) group utilized FPAR for their ambitions and projects.[33]
The APWLD has also associated with its sister organizations, Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF) and the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM), to form the Intercontinental Alliance of Women’s Networks on Law and Development.[34]
↑ 2023 Annual Report(PDF), Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, p.5
↑ Ramli, Rashila (2016). "Transnational Advocacy Networks: The Examples of APWLD and NCWO – Comment on the Indian Case Study from a Malayan Perspective". Transnational Advocacy Networks and Gender Justice. 27: 201–294.
Muñoz Gamage, Amanda (2023). "Enacting FPAR in Human Rights Organizations: Practices, Challenges, and Tensions", New Sociological Perspectives, 3 (2), 26-42.
Resurrección, Bernadette P. & Elmhirst, Rebecca (2021). “Negotiating Gender Expertise in Environment and Development: Voices from Feminist Political Ecology,” Routledge Studies in Gender and Environments, Routledge.
Retyaningtyas, Lathiefah Widuri (2018). "The Role of the Asia Pacific Forum Feminist Network on Women, Law, and Development (APWLD) in Representing Human Rights Woman", Jurnal Hubungan Internasional, 11 (1), 73-90.
Lewis, Su Lin (2024). "Decolonising the History of Internationalism: Transnational Activism across the South,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2, 345–369.
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