Equality Now was founded in 1992 to work for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women around the world. Working with national human rights groups and individual activists, Equality Now documents human rights violations against women and adds an international action component— to support their efforts to advance women’s rights and to defend individual women who are suffering abuse. Equality Now’s action techniques have proven effective. By distributing information through its Women’s Action Network to concerned groups and individuals around the world, with recommended actions for publicizing and protesting human rights violations, Equality Now is building an international force, capable of rapid response to crisis situations and committed to voicing a worldwide call for justice and equality for women. Equality Now addresses issues which have historically been considered outside the scope of the mainstream human rights movement, such as domestic violence, reproductive rights, trafficking of women, female genital mutilation, and equal access to economic opportunity and political participation.
The Women’s Action Network is the core of Equality Now’s work. As of year-end 1999, the Network consists of more than four thousand groups and individuals in more than one hundred countries around the world who take action in response to appeals on behalf of individual women, participate in campaigns on broader women’s issues, and channel information and strategy on their own concerns back through the Network. All Women’s Actions are issued in English, Spanish, French and Arabic to promote equal access to information and to facilitate grassroots participation. Equality Now has undertaken the following sixteen Women’s Actions to date:
