Women Enabled International (WEI) works at the intersection of women's rights and disability rights to advance the rights of women and girls with disabilities around the world. Working in collaboration with women with disabilities rights organizations and women's rights organizations Globally, WEI fosters cooperation across movements to increase international attention to and strengthen human rights standards on issues such as violence against women, sexual and reproductive health and rights, access to justice, education, legal capacity, and humanitarian emergencies. Our logo is the woman symbol ♀ with the letters 'WE' inside the circle.
Women Enabled International at CSW63
Women Enabled International participated in the 63rd Annual Commission on the Status of Women, March 11 to 22, 2019, in New York City.
WEI provided practical tips to participating organizations on how to ensure events are accessible and inclusive, and has developed a guide to accessibility at and near UN Headquarters for conference-goers in New York City.
Learn about our side panel events and more.
Women and Young Persons with Disabilities: Guidelines for Providing Rights-Based and Gender-Responsive Services to Address Gender-Based Violence and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
WEI and the United Nations Population Fund announce this new publication, funded by the Government of Spain and officially launched on November 28, 2018. These guidelines aim to provide practical and concrete guidelines for making GBV and SRHR services more inclusive of and accessible to women and young persons with disabilities and for targeting interventions to meet their disability-specific needs.
WEI accountABILITY toolkit
WEI presents this free toolkit to empower organizations that advocate for the rights of women with disabilities and assist them in using available U.N. human rights mechanisms. Available in English and Spanish.
Learn more/download free toolkit
WEI Fact Sheets
An overview of frequent violations of the Right to Education, Access to Justice, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and of the right to be free from Gender-Based Violence for women and girls with disabilities, and examples of what governments must do to realize these rights. Formats include accessible English, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese,
and Easy Read PDFs.
WEI's Interactive Map of Global Advocates
A groundbreaking interactive map of organizations that advocate for the rights of women and girls with disabilities. Released on International Women's Day in 2016, it has grown to include 664 organizations.
Find organizations in most countries worldwide working for the rights of disabled women and girls and aligned women’s rights organizations, disability rights organizations, academic institutions and more!
Updated March 2019
April 15, 2019 WEI Submission on Older Women with Disabilities to the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This submission focuses on human rights issues faced by older women with disabilities, including gender-based violence, institutionalization, gaps in social protection, and barriers to accessing health care. This submission provides data on these issues, an analysis of existing standards, and recommendations to States on how to ensure the rights of older women with disabilities.
Feb. 15, 2019 WEI Submission to the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions: Report on the use of lethal force by law enforcement officials on persons with psychosocial, intellectual or developmental disabilities.
This submission, which seeks to inform the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions's next report, highlights how gender and disability-related discrimination and stereotypes can lead to extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary killings of women with disabilities—particularly intellectual, psychosocial, or developmental disabilities—by law enforcement or in state-run institutions.
Read more at Our Work: Violence Against Women
February 14, 2019 WEI and Disability Rights International Submission to the CEDAW Committee for its half-day of general discussion on trafficking in the context of migration. Drawing on field research by DRI and other available research, this submission enumerates the risks facing women and girls with disabilities to all forms of trafficking. It highlights barriers that increase risk, enumerates States’ duties to address them, summarizes relevant international legal standards, and offers suggestions for inclusion in CEDAW’s forthcoming General Recommendation.
Jan 28, 2019 WEI Supports Submission of Shadow Letters to the CEDAW Committee WEI worked with partners focused on Colombia, Serbia, and the United Kingdom to submit important information to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) on rights violations committed against women and girls with disabilities in these three countries. These submissions will inform the CEDAW Committee’s upcoming periodic reviews of women’s rights in Colombia, Serbia, and the UK, occurring in February 2019.
Jan 17, 2019 Making CSW Events Accessible to and Inclusive of Persons with DisabilitiesThis document provides practical tips to organizations that will be holding events during the upcoming UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), being held from March 11-22, 2019, on how to ensure that those events are accessible to and inclusive of persons with disabilities. WEI staff also presented on this topic and distributed this document at the January NGO CSW Meeting.
Jan 15, 2019 Submission on Women, Girls, and Non-binary Persons with Disabilities in the United States of America for the Human Rights Committee's List of Issues Prior to Reporting (LOIPR) This preliminary submission provides a brief overview of some of the civil and political rights violations facing women, girls, and nonbinary persons with disabilities in the U.S. and provides suggestions for questions that the Human Rights Committee could include in its LOIPR.
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