Lessons On Risks And Resilience
Lessons on Risks AndResilienceWhat we learnt as a rapid response grantmakerand feminist regional fund2019
In this annual report, we have included observations andcomments shared by activists from the region – werespect confidentiality and their choice to keep theiridentities undisclosed.As part of our efforts to be anenvironmentally-conscious fund, we encourage you toread this report online.ANNUAL REPORT CREDITSCo-Leads: Mary Jane N Real & Virisila BuadromoEditor: Deepthy MenonEditorial Support: The Greenhouse, Fiji, Shruti SharadaDesigner and Illustrator: Vidushi YadavContributors: Ava Danlog, Elvira Colobong, Esther,Fareen Jalal, Jebli Shrestha, Joana Palomar, NoelenePowell Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights Asia & Pacific, 2020Women’s resilience in the face of adversity, is more than oftennot talked about. It doesn’t make the news. It is rarely talkedabout in depth during post-recovery cluster meetings. It isalmost certainly never talked about in terms of women beingour true superheroes in dealing with crises head on andensuring that families get back to normal as soon as possible.Instead, children are socialised into thinking ‘that is the role ofa mother’, and so it becomes an expectation rather than anexample of resilience and strength.We need to change this narrative, and acknowledge andrecognise the critical role of our women during crises.OFAKILEVUKA (’OFA) GUTTENBEIL - LIKILIKIUAF A&P BOARD MEMBER
1.WSowing seeds ofcourage and careIN THIS RDNIFEPOUORTYL?ILWTHA5.What our granteesand advisors said184.4Our 2019 milestones andthe lessons we learnt116.3.The rising voicesof gendereddissent in Asia andTHE Pacific2.8Reflecting onrisk in activism6Defining humanrights defendersin the times of apandemic23
Sowing seeds of courageAND CARELetter from the Chair - Kamala ChandrakiranaWriting at a time of an escalating global pandemic makes onecritically aware of the fragility of our lives and the world we havebuilt. This unprecedented crisis has revealed the good and the uglyaround the world, including on our own home ground in Asia andthe Pacific. There are countries that have learned the lessons ofpast epidemics and become global reference points in preventingthe deadly spread of COVID-19. Others have remained complacentfor too long – unwilling to set aside grand economic ambitions,penalising the poor and marginalised – and as a result, failed tocontain the outbreak.But we also witness small acts of compassion and solidaritydaily, where individuals and solidarity groups reach out to oneanother despite distances and distancing.No doubt, this pandemic will have far-reaching impacts, for betterand for worse. As defenders of human rights, we will most likelyheighten rather than lower our risk-taking in the post-pandemicworld. The stakes have become much bigger. Authoritarian rulersand chauvinist agendas may well flourish, benefiting from newpowers obtained during states of emergency.New imaginings of a different world could also embolden morepeople to challenge injustices. As demands increase for us to stepup and we are called take more risks, we must also make goodprogress in building our webs of safety and care, within and acrossour movements. This is where UAF A&P, with its sister funds andpartners around the world, comes in.From the outset four years ago, we envisioned UAF A&P playing itsrole in a changing world. Our preparedness for this comes from astanding commitment to sharpen the lens to observe andunderstand our surroundings.4
We opened our minds, ready to explore andencourage new ways of working.We heard loud and clear the call to make boldinitiatives, aware of the equal chance for failure orsuccess. We took steps to carry out the slowprocess of building bridges across long-standingdisconnects. Today, navigating the contours of thispandemic, we are even more convinced in ourdecision to adopt a holistic approach in the work ofbuilding resilience, going beyond the urgentmoment of threat and bringing focus on the needfor community-based systems of safety and careas an integral part of our activism.Then and now, our confidence comes from ourshared feminist visions and the energy we createtogether from and for our movements.In the meantime, the UAF A&P Team has made sureour organisation is built on a solid foundation formanaging risks while staying innovative. All ourinternal systems are secure and supportdefenders on the ground. We have increasedaccessibility of our rapid response grants andcontinue to reach out to defenders in marginalisedand hostile contexts. We have initiated the openingof new spaces and new collaborations to broadenour constituency of support fromwithin Asia and the Pacific, includingfor more sustainable resourcing. LastNovember, members of UAF A&P’sgovernance bodies – the regionalboard and the national boards in thePhilippines and Australia – cametogether for the first time andadopted a charter to guide us allunder a common framework ensuringthat we walk in sync towards ourshared goals.I am proud to say UAF A&P continuesto set the necessary building blocksfor a professional and accountableorganisation that is also a mindfuland caring one. This is what we willstand on as we face the new (andfamiliar) challenges of today and thepost-COVID-19 world.Jakarta, 1 April 20205
Reflecting on risk in activismNotes from our Co-Leads – Mary Jane N Realand Virisila Buadromoextensive support network of family and friends, colleagues, allies,and organisations in the social movements she belongs to.We feel it is important not to glamourise risk, which heralds theindividual hero, and diminishes the strategic support of socialmovements that sustain activists. As applications from activistsincreased, and underlined the urgent need for protection, weraised our budget for rapid response grantmaking.In 2019, we focused on grounding our programmes inwhat we were learning from our constituents. Humanrights violations against activists in Asia and the Pacificare continuously intensifying. As a feminist rapidresponse grantmaker in Asia and the Pacific, risk hasbecome an inescapable feature of activism. Therefore,understanding how we address risk, and how we do notadd to the danger activists face, becomes imperativefor us.How we respond to risk is a careful balance betweenrecognising and addressing it, without valorising it.Defenders themselves say risk trivialises the othervisible and invisible threats, such as defamation,slander, and other forms of psychological threats.These are also human rights violations. Equating thedefinition of a defender to the exposure to risk alsodelegitimises activists who have been at the forefrontof defending human rights, whether they are exposedto bodily harm or threats to their life, or not. As afeminist fund, we are cognizant of how many of ourgrantees and advisors have normalised risk to copewith the state of danger they live in. One high-riskdefender, who continually faces baseless lawsuits andarrests, told us how normal it had become to changeher daily routines, secure personal communicationseven with friends and family, and continually relocateto new places to stay. Her survival depends on an6
In 2019, a bulk of our grants went to support securityand well-being needs, such as strengthening physicalsecurity and psychological support. We alsosupported well-being needs expressed by women andnon-binary activists in these regions, such asemergency medical assistance and healthcare forthose without health insurance. Our portfolio ofgrants expanded beyond Rapid Response to helpdefenders build their own systems of protection andcare through our Resourcing Resilience Grants andWebs of Safety and Care Grants. These grants areintended to support them build a systemic responseto the unabated risk they face, and not simplydepend on adhoc emergency assistance.As a feminist fund, we see risk as an intentionalinteraction with uncertainty.We fundraise responsibly to secure our annualbudget within our three-year strategic plan. Ourchoice to remain small in terms of our budget andoperations to stay agile and flexible in the face offinancial risks, and political risks in the countries wework in, is deliberate. Rather than expand our ownorganisation’s operations, we funded a scopingstudy in the Pacific that helped us understand howwe can support a feminist resource mobilisationarchitecture promoting the resilience of feministmovements in the region by connecting them tonational, sub-regional and regional funds. We arealso revising our notions of accountability and riskexposure of our donors. In our financial audit, weredact identifiable data on our grantees, reducingrisk of exposure for them. For those donors whorequire us to identify risk, and specify steps formitigation, we engage with them and share how riskis central to our mandate. This is also why we haveadopted an Emergent Learning Framework for ourmonitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEAL) systeminstead of traditional log-frames. It allows us theflexibility to implement our programmes, whileadjusting our strategies periodically.organisation. Our programmes are innovativeand our operations nimble, and we arelearning to manage risks present in thehostile political contexts we work in.We realise that supporting women andnon-binary activists to become resilient willrequire multi-pronged, multi-year strategiesthat are collective and sustainable forcommunities.Our pilot testing of the Webs of Safety andCare initiative is already showing us thatsocial relationships of trust and empathyunderpin resilience. We hope thatexperimenting with emergent practices,particularly in our current responses to theCOVID-19 pandemic, will help us inform andcontribute towards building resiliency ofactivists worldwide.Regular data collection and timely analysis helpmake probable consequences visible and supportour decisions to mitigate risk. It guides us along apath that diverges from the numbers and keyperformance indicators-driven monitoring andevaluation methods. Grounded in learning questionsand hypotheses, the framework encourages us tothink outside the box when responding to theconstant yet varying nature of risks.We realise that managing risks requires buildingresilience – not only externally, but also within our7
The rising voices of gendered dissent in Asia and PacificSetting the context
The past decade has shown severe reverses todemocratic processes in Asia and the Pacific, par ticularlywith the resurgence in authoritarian powers. In countrieslike China, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, asauthoritarian regimes continued to be the political reality,women and non-binary activists reported no cessation inthe multiple forms of discrimination they face. In 2019, asHong Kong symbolised civilian protests againstauthoritarianism, women on the frontlines reportedbeing targeted with sexual violence and other forms ofharassment.In several countries, such as India, Myanmar, Philippines,and Sri Lanka, majoritarian political parties with hardlineagendas have supported the resurgence of far-rightpopulism; nativist/nationalist politics; and new religiousright alliances.In India, women from minority communities led theShaheen Bagh resistance against the CitizenshipAmendment Act (CAA) that was passed and was widelycriticised for being discriminatory against women,transgender persons, social groups that are considered‘lower caste’, and persons with disabilities, apart fromminority communities. The sit-in was primarily led andsustained by Muslim women, including senior women, wholargely came from no prior direct activismbackgrounds, heralding a major shift in theactivism demographic in India. It was also acoming together of several women’s andtrans-rights movements to make themselvesheard nationally and internationally.Last year also saw various trends in online newsdissemination and muzzling of media, such assurge in fake news, manipulation of medianarratives, and coercion of media houses intoaccepting populist notions and governmentactions, across several countries of South Asiaand Southeast Asia. Attacks and threatsagainst Philippine media were reported sincethe Duterte administration gained power in 2016.Several journalists and social media userswere also red-tagged or red-baited by police,military officers, or their intelligence assetsand allies.Draconian anti-terrorism security laws, andregulations that restrict freedom of expression,association, and assembly, are being used toarrest, detain or kill defenders in countries, suchas India and the Philippines.99
The imposition of a host of obligations that regulate financialtransactions as part of anti-terrorism measures, have also drasticallyaffected the ability of activists under attack to access funds. In manycountries including Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nepal and Vietnam,contentious cyber security laws and legislations, have been used tocontrol the public, threaten journalists, and curtail freedom of thepress.A United Nations Human Rights Office’s 50-country study identifiedthe misuse of the online space through hate speech, cyberbullying andsmear campaigns as “a trend on the rise, with women and lesbian, gay,bisexual, transgender and intersex persons particularly targeted,including by their own communities”.The report also said cases of intimidation and retaliation againstvictims, civil society and activists who cooperate with the UN are alsorising. The Women Deliver conference reported a major setback forgender equality without a counterbalance, due to declining spacesfor women’s groups, and silencing of outspoken women’s voicesthrough trolling or even murder. Human rights defenders are morevulnerable than ever, as state and non-state actors blatantly violatetheir individual or community’s human rights.Other trends we are tracking:Southeast Asian countries prominently figure among the most dangerous places to bean environmental defender.Targeting family members to muzzle or intimidate activists have been documentedacross several countries.Suspending telecommunication connections to stop information spread, and rallying ofsupport for the disaffected has been reported from Kashmir (India), Jakarta, Papua andWest Papua (Indonesia), and Rakhine state (Myanmar), among others.Defenders continue to go missing or in exile to escape having to face state orquasi-state action.Sorcery-related violence continued to endanger the lives of women and girls in severalisland nations of the Pacific.Curbing free media reportage continues to be rampant across Pacific nations, such asFiji, Tonga and Papua New Guinea (PNG).In PNG, research shows domestic violence affects more than two-thirds of women.An AWID 2019 report on Toward a Feminist FundingEcosystem, describes how 99 percent of gender-relatedinternational aid fails to reach women’s rights andfeminist organisations directly. There is a need to shiftpower to ensure feminist movements receive money tosustain them and niche feminist funds to work with otherfunders in the women’s funds ecosystem to empowerfeminist grassroots activism.10
Our 2019 milestones and the lessons we learnt
How do we map the path of our journey yearon year?This question has come up during discussions with theBoard, Co-leads, and the team. We chose to be guided byemergent learning – perhaps the first attempt by anorganisation to use this practice to create a flexible andadaptable MEAL framework to suit the needs of a rapidresponse grantmaker.We are on a journey to find new learnings withrelevance for our community of funds, and the largerecosystem of social movements.This report details the progress we made, and presentsselected vignettes from our learnings, which weretracked using learning questions we collectively framedin January. Our organisational learnings are structuredto answer two key questions, which help us work towardsour theory of change.What will it take to strengthen theresilience of women and non-binaryhuman rights defenders?We are also reflecting on our internal processesand practices by asking: what would it take for ourorganisation to practise a feminist culture ofsharing and caring? This annual report presentsthe progress we have made and the learnings fromour various programmes.All the learnings documented from ourprogrammes respond to learning questionsco-created by the teams to help them trackprogress and challenges over the first three years.The premise in bold across various programmeupdates is the learning question each teamidentified as their guiding questions.12
Rapid response grantmakingOver the last two years, UAF A&P gave 87 grants to activists andnetworks across 18 countries of Asia and the Pacific for theirprotection and support in adverse or hostile environments, and toboost resilience. We gave 53 grants in 2019, totalling more thanUS 219,000, of which 45 grants were for security and the well-being ofdefenders and their organisations.Our efforts to expand equitable access for women and non-binarydefenders to our rapid response grants was met with some steadyprogress. In 2019, we added grantees to our roster from seven newcountries, including Afghanistan, East Timor, Fiji, Maldives, Myanmar,Nepal, and Thailand. In total, 27 grants were given to women ornon-binary activists from marginalised groups.most need, we conducted three consultations – in Fiji, Taiwanand among Vietnamese activists. Although there was no directincrease in applications seen from among marginalised groupsimmediately after consultations, 48 applications emerged fromcountries where we had conducted consultations in the lasttwo years. We also facilitated an advisors’ consultation inPhnom Penh, Cambodia during October, bringing together 13advisors from different countries of Asia and the Pacific todiscuss how to increase access to rapid response grants intheir regions.Our advisor network expanded to more than 100 across Asia and thePacific to support our grantmaking efforts.Some practices which helped were directly contacting potentialgrantees on recommendations from advisors and peer donors; andbuilding outreach to peer donors, advisors, and potential granteestargeting specific marginalised groups.To better understand regional contexts and realities, and to hearfirst-hand from defenders and organisations on the crisis support they13
2019 GRANTS SUMMARY2019 REGIONAL GRANTS9%US 200,00020%US 133,33337%US 219 4732019 TotalGrantsUS 137 620US 66,6672018 TotalGrants34%2018-19 RRG ConsultationsEAST hilippinesSUB REGIONSSri LankaSoutheast AsiaSouth AsiaEast AsiaPacific IslandsPapua New GuineaFiji IslandSOUTHASIASOUTHEAST ASIAIn 2019, we moved our application processes to asecure database launched on InternationalWomen Human Rights Defenders’ Day (29November). This was our effort to better securedata and information provided by our granteesand advisors. The database reinforces ourcommitment to secure grantmaking andcommunication processes, keeping granteesecurity and confidentiality at the centre of allour activites. We strive to be a regional feministfund that considers ourselves simply ascustodians, not owners of the information wecollect from our constituents. We placegrantee security and confidentiality at theforefront of all our activities.SECURITY ANDWELL BEINGGRANTRESOURCINGRESILIENCEGRANT14
What are we learning from ourresourcing resilience grantS?Our resourcing resilience grants are intended tofund communities of activists poised to buildtheir own support systems such as setting up ahealth fund or opening salons for incomegeneration of trans activists to pre-empt theirown well-being and other needs prior to a crisis.In 2019, we offered eight Resourcing ResilienceGrants.There were fewer applications than for Safetyand Well-being Grants, and we realised securinggrants depended on the ability of activists ornetworks to assess and identify needs beyondtheir immediate crisis.Since defenders acr
courage and care 1. Reflecting on risk in activism 2. The rising voices of gendered dissent in Asia and THE Pacific 3. Our 2019 milestones and . disconnects. Today, navigating the contours of this pandemic, we are even more convinced in our decision to adopt a holistic approach in
FRM:SG2.SP2 Establish Resilience Budgets FRM:SG2.SP3 Resolve Funding Gaps FRM:SG3 Fund Resilience Activities FRM:SG3.SP1 Fund Resilience Activities FRM:SG4 Account for Resilience Activities ; FRM:SG4.SP1 Track and Document Costs FRM:SG4.SP2 Perform Cost and Performance Analysis FRM:SG5 Optimize Resilience Expenditures and Investments
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