For women's rights activists across the globe- 2020 was a pivotal moment. It was a year where the global community was preparing to mark the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the 20th of the women, peace, and security agenda, it was a moment to celebrate, reflect, on women's rights and gender equality.
However, for me, 2020 was not just celebrating the achievement that has been made in the last two decades on gender equality, it was the year for the 'radical reconfiguration' of how we view and discuss the concept of feminism, security, peace, and justice. It was about redefining traditional spaces of decision making and moving away from the institutionalisation of social change to recognise the power, leadership and solutions that lie within local communities.
The power of grassroots activism
From the grassroots mobilisation of Sudanese women demanding peace through informal mechanisms to local Yemeni women groups transforming societal norms and promoting community dialogue to the groups of volunteers of Ethiopian women in Lebanon that are providing life-saving essentials to migrant domestic workers during the COVID-19 national lockdown. Grassroots women's right activists have been mobilising and organising themselves for decades, coming up with alternative solutions.
If there was ever an urgent time where we needed an intersectional feminist approach from the grassroots level to provide alternative insights and solutions to the crisis and help us envision a new post- COVID-19 world, now was the precise moment.
The lessons that came with the global pandemic
For once on an international scale, something other than war has turned our entire societies upside down. Globally, we have all been forced to start re-thinking how to organise our way of life and the world itself. What we thought we knew was no longer suitable to the current world.
We have been governed and represented by elites that have failed to move beyond the unequal power dynamics, and structures of institutions that have remained confined and exclusive from those at the local level. It had to take a global health pandemic on this scale for us to realize how traditional approaches and practices to peace, security, feminism, and environmental issues are unsustainable and most importantly unable to keep up with the new realities of the world.
The outbreak of COVID-19 was a prime example of why we can no longer allow those situated in top-down level, unable to see beyond their privileges and the confinement of exclusive ideologies, traditional institutions and government to now determine our future. It is a political act rather than a health crisis,
If governments who have invested millions into building their military budget at the expense of the social provision for the well-being of its people, or countries that have spent years in protracted conflict, but are now struggling to protect or provide for it's own population during this crisis.
Which is why now is the time to start cultivating and envisioning an alternative feminist world that is led by the realities and experiences of women and girls from the local level.
While the adoption of UN conventions and frameworks on gender equality, peace and security and mainstream feminism movement has in the past few decades lead to significant changes. Still, it continues to be confined within exclusive spaces and structures that are inherently inaccessible to local communities that it seeks to advocate for.
It is women's leadership and activism in the grassroots level that holds the power of providing alternative Innovative and sustainable solutions to the political, economic, and environmental crises that have been created by those at the top level. There are so many examples of how women globally have demonstrated their ability to mobilise, organise and transform entire communities during times of crisis, through grassroots initiatives, outside from the traditional top-down institutions and mechanisms.
It is through local women's right activists, human right defenders, and youth that will be able to cultivate new ways of thinking, addressing societal issues, demanding changes and accountability and most importantly ask questions like- What world do we want to live in? What are the underlying causes of crisis that are often overlooked? How can we advocate and highlight the complexities and multiplicity of experiences and identities through advocacy and campaigning? How can we challenge and go beyond top-down institutions and mechanisms to a more locally owned and women-led approach to security, peace, and sustainable development.
Not just any type of feminist movement, but one that moves from the institutionalised mainstream feminist approach to a bottom-up one that actually listens to women at the local level as legitimate actors of social change and not just victims of their circumstances, because within the experiences and complex analysis of local women lies the power and knowledge to propose new possibilities of social change.
No longer can local women and girls wait to get invited to decision making tables and allow those far away in NY and Geneva offices to construct and develop policies that will determine their future. Women and girls at the local level are already reclaiming their experiences, power and leadership while at the same time, redefining what peace and security mean to them.
The responsibility lies within the international community to use this moment to think beyond the confinement of exclusive top-down approaches to security, peace and feminist to critically listen and learn from the feminist visions that are being created in the communities.
@SagalAbas