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Safety for Voices (SfV) is a Global South–based initiative implemented by a consortium led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), in partnership with Urgent Action Fund Africa (UAF-Africa), Urgent Action Fund Asia and Pacific (UAF A&P), and IM-Defensoras (IMD). Supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs , the initiative aims to ensure greater safety for women human rights defenders in the Global South. Led by a consortium of women-centred and women-led organisations, and informed by the Feminist Holistic Protection (FHP) framework, SfV recognises the structural and systemic inequalities that shape the realities of WHRDs’ lives and work. The programme places WHRDs’ safety and wellbeing at its core, operating not only across the regions represented by the consortium members but also globally, through cross-regional collaboration and strong feminist networks.

Grounded in a feminist holistic security approach, SfV works towards three interrelated goals:

  • Prevention: Reducing risks and unsafe situations faced by Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) through the provision of holistic safety resources.

  • Protection: Supporting WHRDs at immediate risk, including during crises and in conflict contexts, through timely and adequate assistance.

  • Legitimisation: Strengthening the recognition and legitimacy of WHRDs’ work through the enactment and implementation of gender-sensitive laws, policies, and institutional support structures.

To achieve these objectives, SfV implements a range of interventions across physical, digital, legal, and policy spaces, integrating an intersectional feminist lens throughout its design, methodologies, and assessment processes. This ensures that both external and internal factors contributing to WHRDs’ safety challenges are systematically identified, documented, and addressed.

 

Our Partners

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is an international network of civil society organisations founded in 1990 to empower individuals, organisations and social movements to use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to build strategic communities to contribute to equitable human development, social justice, participatory political processes and environmental sustainability.Today, APC is a respected global network with 73 organisational members, bringing together diverse expertise and perspectives. Its strength lies in the experience and credibility of its members, and in a culture grounded in feminist values, a strong commitment to human rights, and principles of collaboration, care, and respect. Through this collective, APC has consistently advanced work on internet access, rights, governance, and the transformative use of digital technologies in ways that centre the needs of marginalised communities. 

APC’s vision is for all people, particularly those who are marginalised, to have the capacity to use and shape the internet and digital technologies to create a just and sustainable world. Its mission is to strengthen collective organising and build transformative movements that ensure digital technologies contribute to social, gender, and environmental justice. As the lead partner of the Safety for Voices initiative, APC plays a key role in resourcing and supporting feminist organising, defending digital rights, and shaping global digital governance spaces so that they are inclusive, accountable, and rooted in principles of justice and equity.

The Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IM-Defensoras) is a convergence that brings together feminist organizations and networks of women defenders from diverse Mesoamerican social movements. Established in 2010, it was created to address the violence faced by women and persons with diverse gender or sexual identities in their territories as a result of their human rights defence and challenges to prevailing norms. Its purpose is to contribute to protecting and strengthening defenders’ struggles, organizations, and the social movements in which they are engaged. 

Today, IM-Defensoras brings together nearly 3,000 women defenders and 300 organizations across Mesoamerica. Members work to defend land, territory, and the environment; search for disappeared loved ones; demand truth and justice; advance equality; accompany migrants; uphold the right to free expression and information; and defend public health, water, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, labour rights, LGBTTTIQ+ rights, and women’s rights. IM-Defensoras supports these struggles through the application of Feminist Holistic Protection (FHP) strategies, with the aim of ensuring that women defenders can sustain their activism under conditions of security, well-being, leadership, and autonomy.

The Urgent Action Fund Asia and Pacific (UAF A&P) is a feminist fund and the first regionally based, autonomously registered Urgent Action Fund in Asia and the Pacific. Covering 51 countries and territories, it was established in 2018 to respond to urgent needs faced by women and non-binary defenders. Since then, UAF A&P has provided more than 2,000 rapid response grants worth USD 9.4 million across 33 countries. Guided by feminist values, the fund strengthens the resilience of movements by offering urgent grants and strategic support that ensure defenders’ safety, wellbeing, and ability to continue their struggles. Its work is grounded in collaboration, trust-building, amplifying feminist voices, recognising lived experiences, and intentionally redistributing privilege, enabling it to respond with agility and contextual sensitivity to evolving risks and opportunities.

UAF A&P’s mission centres on resourcing resilience in unpredictable and politically volatile environments. By listening deeply to defenders and movements, the fund provides resources at moments of heightened risk while also investing in long-term protection and wellbeing. This includes creating safe and inclusive spaces, amplifying critical information, and practicing feminist models of leadership that prioritise care and adaptability. Through this approach, UAF A&P supports defenders who confront authoritarianism, protect land, water, and environmental rights, advance gender and sexual rights, uphold Indigenous and labour rights, defend freedom of expression, and demand justice and equality. By resourcing these struggles with urgency and empathy, the fund contributes to sustaining feminist movements that are shaping the future of the region.

The Urgent Action Fund Africa (UAF Africa) is a feminist, pan-African rapid response fund committed to transforming power relations by resourcing African feminists, women’s human rights defenders, and their movements as an act of solidarity. Bold, responsive, and consistent, the fund works to ensure that African feminist organising is visible, resourced, and protected. UAF Africa advocates for funding partners to recognise and actively invest in pan-African feminist activism and urgent situations requiring rapid response. With its grounding in feminist philanthropic principles, the fund is attuned to the contexts in which defenders live and work, and is agile in addressing their priorities and urgent needs. Its support contributes to holistic security, wellbeing, and move.

As a pan-African feminist fund, UAF Africa provides rapid response grants to activists, organisations, and movements working to protect, promote, and uphold women’s human rights across the continent. With staff based in Africa’s four sub-regions, it offers both financial and strategic support to defenders and groups confronting systemic oppression, challenging the status quo, and catalysing social change. By resourcing movements that defend land, labour, and environmental rights, resist authoritarianism, uphold freedom of expression, advance sexual and gender rights, and demand equality and justice, UAF Africa amplifies the voices of women’s human rights defenders. In doing so, the fund contributes to sustaining the resilience, safety, and transformative leadership of African feminist movements.