Capacity building was integral to all of WLDI's work in keeping with its role of serving the needs and interests of women's rights workers around the world. Our research and advocacy initiatives on human rights, legal literacy and strategies to combat violence against women were all geared to developing the capacity of women to be effective in the defense and promotion of women's rights. Training programs aimed to develop a corps of women's rights activists/defenders/activists with the ability to effectively use or challenge the law--national and international--to assure that women's rights would be real and effective in their lives. Our capacity building programs also aimed to enlarge the power and influence of the global movement for women’s human rights. Three WLD capacity building programs evolved over the years.
Advanced Human Rights Training for Women. This program focused on learning the substance and practice of women’s human rights advocacy, over a two year period. It had three applications. In one, WLDI collaborated with the Open Society Institute's Network Women’s Program to train women in Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States. Over 122 women from 22 countries participated. The second took place in East and Central Africa, with 32 participants from 6 African countries. The third program took place in the Eastern region of Nigeria with xx participants representing seven Nigerian states. Workshops were also held in Indonesia.
The Activist Facilitator's Project. Responding to increasing calls for assistance, WLDI initiated a second type of training program. It was a systematic and intensive training over two years to develop facilitators of women’s human rights advocacy. Nineteen women from 15 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean participated.
Russian Lawyer's Domestic Violence Project. Still another program worked with Russian lawyers specifically on violence against women issues in crisis centers across Russia.
Each of these capacity building projects drew from and contributed to the human rights training course and materials described in the last section. They all had similar goals and content, but contextual variables. Each will be explored in the next pages.
ADVANCED HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCACY TRAINING
Central and Eastern Europe and Newly Independent States
East and Central Africa
Nigeria
ACTIVIST FACILITATOR'S TRAINING RUSSIAN LAWYERS TRAINING
Anastasia Posadskaya at workshop in Ukraine
Oby Nwanko, Nigeria program
Workshop on economic rights in Mongolia
Central and East Africa human rights workshop
Marg Schuler teaching UN human rights instruments and mechanisms!