Pakistan’s women’s rights movement has also deteriorated to critical levels. The challenges for women’s rights organizations (WROs) include shrinking spaces for them to organize; a lack of capacity, resources, and autonomy to drive their own change agendas; and limited platforms for collaboration and collective action.
As a response to this, Women’s Voice and Leadership - Pakistan (WVL-P) strengthens the individual and collective capacity of WROs, women’s rights activists, and coalitions within the women’s movement in Pakistan. Using a strategic combination of funding and capacity strengthening, Oxfam is working to support WROs to be better managed and more self-sustaining.
This will ensure they can deliver programming that better meets the needs of the women and girls they serve. The project will also improve the ability of WROs and activists to work together more effectively toward gender-transformative policies. WVL-P provides four types of support:
With an ultimate outcome of increased enjoyment of human rights by women and girls and the advancement of gender equality in Pakistan, expected results include:
A key element of the project is the Oxfam Canada Capacity Assessment Tool for Gender-Just Organizational Strengthening (CAT4GJO). This tool supports WROs to self-assess, determine their needs and priorities, and create action plans. The CAT4GJO will support gender-just monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning (MEAL), practices throughout the project, and WROs have co-created project indicators and targets based on their baseline assessment results.
Under this GAC WVL program, Oxfam Canada is also implementing the WVL-Guatemala project with the Tz’ununija’ Indigenous Women’s Movement. The WVL-P project aligns with Canada’s commitments under its Feminist International Assistance Policy, and Oxfam Canada’s acknowledgement that local WROs are best placed to support transformative change that will advance women’s rights and gender equality within the Pakistan context.
This project is part of GAC’s Women’s Voice and Leadership (WVL) Program. The Program is a global initiative to support the capacity and activities of local and regional women’s organizations and movements seeking to empower women and girls, advance the protection of women and girls’ rights, and achieve gender equality.
WVL-P builds on a range of women’s rights programs, including, but not limited to, both global and national level programs focused on violence against women and girls(VAWG), gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. WVL-P’s approach to transformative leadership for women’s rights builds on the Engendering Change project (ended in 2014), which supported civil society organizations – half of which were WROs – in advancing women’s rights in 10 countries, including Pakistan. Oxfam’s current GAC-funded Creating Spaces program (6 countries, including Pakistan) works with WROs and other organizations to combat VAWG, with a particular focus on child and early forced marriage.
