Our work

What we do

The current humanitarian system fails to respond to the specific and disproportionate needs of women, girls and gender-diverse people in crises and does not adequately recognise or follow their leadership, or resource the critical efforts of their organizations.

We are committed to ensuring that the voices of women’s rights and feminist organisations on the frontlines of humanitarian action are heard and define community, national and international decision-making and advocacy spaces, and support them to drive change within the humanitarian system.

We facilitate space for feminist leaders to share the challenges they experience and the feminist solutions they have developed to overcome them. Using feminist approaches we are building our collective power and using it to achieve systemic change .

Our role

As the Feminist Humanitarian Network, our role is to facilitate space to exchange experiences, to learn from and support each other.

It is to transform the humanitarian system so that we have a place at the decision making tables where the voices of women working on the frontlines are often missing or ignored.

It is to dismantle patriarchal practices in humanitarian action, and to critique and challenge the tools that are used by the sector that reinforce patriarchal principles through sharing experiences and learning, and collective advocacy.

It is to claim spaces that we, as women, and as women’s rights organisations in the Global South, have never been before.

It is to act as a hive mind – a resource as well as a support mechanism, where members (both organisations and individuals) can seek support from each other, and can act individually and collectively.

It is to continue to push for women’s leadership at the global level on humanitarian issues – to ensure women are represented in the humanitarian system.

As the Feminist Humanitarian Network, we are grounded in the experiences of our members working on the frontlines of crises. We work to transform humanitarian interventions at national and at all levels.

Our mandate is to build solidarity and shift power. We are made up of diverse members working together with one voice. Together, we are powerful. Amongst us there is not an individual standing tall – we are a collective, strengthening each other through collective power and action.

We support each other professionally and emotionally. We check in with each other. We have built a unique and safe space, enabled by our feminist principles, and consequently, we have trust – in our space and in each other.