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…

Mary Jane N. Real, Co-Lead, Urgent Action Fund Asia & Pacific The COVID-19 pandemic has sent us careening into the unknown. We face it with much anxiety and dread because what is not known or not certain drives us beyond the limits of our comfort zones. …

As the COVID-19 pandemic has taken hold, testimonies from the UAF A&P grantee network have revealed that women, especially women workers involved in the informal sector, and women human rights defenders (WHRDs) have been dealing with a wide intersection of burdens every day. Many of these challenges were brought on…

Dear friends, The lockdown, due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, has affected not just our physical well-being, but also our emotional security. To cope with this crisis, UAF A&P has put together a COVID-19 plan. It is based on the Emergent Learning framework, which we have adopted as integral to…

Its a new year and a new decade! We stride into 2020 as a two-year old niche grant-making regional fund working across Asia and the Pacific with women and non-binary human rights activists. Over the last two years, we have provided grants amounting to US$350,000 to activists and networks across…

Field notes from Sri Lanka May 2019 marks a decade since the end of the Sri Lanka civil war, that as per UN official records, led to the deaths of over 40,000 Tamils in the final offensive of 2009 alone. As a niche fund working to support frontline women and…

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 us at UAF A&P. The need for strengthening the resilience of movements to bounce back from risks becomes imperative now more than…