Collaboration Case Notes — When the Taliban group seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the Urgent Action Fund Asia & Pacific team stepped up to respond to a humanitarian crisis that was quickly unfolding. We reinforced our grant teams to process the deluge of grant applications streaming from Afghanistan and get resources to…

Love, Care, and Rebellion — Nalini Singh, is a Fijian feminist and a social development specialist with over 20 years’ experience in design, implementation, management, monitoring and evaluation of women’s rights and development programmes in Asia and the Pacific. Nalini has lived across the two regions, before returning to her country, Fiji to lead the…

Love, Care, and Rebellion — Ambika Satkunanathan, a human rights lawyer and advocate from Sri Lanka, and has previously served as a Commissioner of the island’s Human Rights Commission. Her seminal work on prisons across Sri Lanka continues to be a much-referenced document in human rights research. Ambika was among the founding members that seeded…

In late 2021, UAF A&P reached out to us [Kruthika, Ruby and Oni] to help create a nourishing feminist space for an upcoming workshop. The workshop would have participants across Asia and the Pacific, most of whom were unfamiliar to each other, and some of whom we had never met. …

Our IWD2022 Story This illustration you see above was commissioned for International Women’s Day 2022 to renew our commitment to support women and non-binary human rights activists and defenders. We were amazed and humbled by the social media love we received for it, in the form of likes, reshares and retweets. …

For us, 2021 was a year of multiple crises that taught us the value of feminist solidarity and co-responsibility. We are committed to continuing our support to all women and non-binary human rights defenders across Asia and Pacific in all their moments of crisis and journey to resourcing resilience. By…

by Mary Jane N. Real and Virisila Buadromo In a real garden, we confess, we’re not much of gardeners. But we were part of the collective that seeded Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights Asia and the Pacific (UAF A&P). We toiled like the burgeoning urban plantitas or literally…

Thank you for your care and generosity In memorium: Tatiana Cordero Velásquez By Mary Jane Real and Virisila Buadromo “It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” — John Steinbeck On 13 April 2021, the Urgent Action Funds lost a key pillar of their sisterhood. Tatiana…

We look back at a tough past year through the lens of organisational landmarks and learning. In early 2019, we wrote this; “2018 was a year that saw virulent backlash against human rights defenders across Asia and the Pacific, and coincidentally, it was also the first year of operations for…