In the face of massive pushback by anti-rights agents who are well funded and united in opposing the freedom of women and gender-diverse persons, it has never been more necessary to work in harmony and consolidate efforts amongst activists, CSOs, funding and development partners, researchers, leading experts, support institutions, strategic government and political allies, judicial officers, and academia.
A few weeks ago, Liberation Alliance Africa joined a gathering of human rights activists to dream of new ways of engaging and resisting the efforts of anti-rights agents and protecting the work that has been done over the decades to promote liberty and freedom of all.
The goal was to harmonise research, refine strategy, and galvanise action against the anti-rights agenda in Africa. The convening recognized duplication of effort and encouraged us to view it as a positive. Otherwise, when the duplication leads to siloed efforts, missed signals, and the constant reinvention of the wheel, the anti-rights, and anti-gender actors will keep having a field day.
The convening was dubbed the Community of Practice; an attempt to bridge these costly research and strategy gaps by translating our common concerns into common action.
How do we create and sustain an effective community of practice? How do we harmonise our actions? Here are some of the practical hacks we got from the convening.
- Documentation and Harmonisation of Scattered Research: It is important to research and know the impact of the work being done by the anti-rights groups and influencers. It is also important to know who funds these groups, who leads the discussions, who recruits followers, who works in the shadows, what spaces they hold, and the strategies being used to further the anti-rights cause. It is, however, not enough that we research in our individual organisations and sit on our findings. It is even more important that we harmonise our findings and create a community that learns and studies the presence of these groups as a whole and takes unified actions from the harmonised research.
- Storytelling and Knowledge production: We must invest in producing our stories, narratives and framing our interests for ourselves. What are the things that matter to us? What are our interests? How do we document and draw attention and empathy to our cause without the influence of the Global South in naming and choosing what should matter to us? Anti-Rights groups and agents are investing large amounts of money in communicating their messages and setting their agenda. An area that we must invest in is in documenting our struggles and our wins. But how do we do this so that our message is heard clearly and passed properly? We are called to take advantage of the mediums and the tools that we have. Despite the problems associated with big tech, it is still important to use our tech platforms to promote our agenda and be bold in having a voice in the digital space. Every social media account, every blogpost (personal or otherwise) every website, podcast, and even local media must be deployed to tell our stories.
- Moving Across Silos: There is harm when we only work within single issues. A woman issue is not different from a queer issue or from an abortion issue. All these issues are related, and we must approach the fights for them holistically and with intersectionality. We must work together and connect the dots intentionally and collectively.
- Joining Politics: Investing in politics by promoting those who understand our cause in the political spaces and positions of leadership is key and increasingly important if we are to be adequately represented in the legislative and decision-making spaces.
- Engaging Anti-Rights Agents: While it can be hard to hold the same space with anti-rights agents, it is important to be in the spaces where we can monitor how they operate, but most importantly, to stand up for our interests in the face of the misinformation that they peddle.
In these ways, we can sustain a community of practice where our works are translated into effective and sustainable collective action.
