Workshop objectives

Increased awareness: to establish a baseline awareness of security by facilitating a process that enables women human rights defenders to:

• define security, and its parameters, for themselves;
• integrate the ‘private’ challenges they face, including concerns about family, health, sense of dignity and self-worth, economic security, psychological well-being, into their understanding of security; and
• with this perspective, assess and analyse the range of obstacles, risks and threats that affect their security and well-being, as well as their capacities and vulnerabilities.

Shifting attitudes: to support women human rights defenders embrace the protection of individual and organisational security as an equal, and integral, part of human rights work, specifically in:

• acknowledging the value in taking time to reflect on safety and well-being;
• opening up to possibilities – that it is not only desirable to stay safe and well, but it is possible; and
• recognising resilience – their own and their peers’, as well as the strength of their own movements.

Developing sustainable strategies: to enable women human rights defenders to develop protection strategies that are relevant to their lives by:

• recognising and valuing the strategies that they utilise daily to protect themselves, their organisations and their families;
• sharing strategies employed by members of the workshop group, and used by other women throughout the world; and
• exploring the ‘elements’ of strategy development and selection, such as the advantages and disadvantages of various strategies, the allies and support required to implement successful protection strategies and the need for flexibility.

Building organisational and movement capacity: to support women human rights defenders in assessing and prioritising the protection requirements of their organisations and their movements by:

• providing space for developing recommendations that are specific to increasing protection mechanisms at the organisational and movement level;
• identifying allies and networks and coalition and movement building; and
• reviewing the international protection framework for women human rights defenders and practical ways to access urgent and long-term security support.