In times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, collective care, healing, and well-being support became even more evident. The ability of AWHRDs to adapt and support each other through unforeseen challenges was a testament to the resilience of the movement on the continent. However, it was not without its consequences as defenders struggled even more with their well-being, highlighting the need for collective care, healing, well-being and wellness in feminist activism work to anchor and support defenders to navigate crises in the face of adversity by ensuring the momentum of their movements remain intact and sustainable but also allowing room for pause, rejuvenation and healing of the individual and broader community as they continue to fight for justice and change.
Thus, Urgent Action Fund – Africa (UAF-Africa), informed by grants requests, trends analysis, and continuously staying in tune with what defenders and movements are saying and experiencing, envisioned the creation of a platform that is solely dedicated to the popularising, learning and mobilising of the fostering and integrating cultures of care within organising and feminist activism work to stand firm in solidarity with the critical work being done to advance womn’s, transgender and gender non-conforming rights and justice and support the rejuvenation and sustainability of these movements.
The Feminist Republik Platform (formally known as the AWHRDs Platform) is a political initiative launched by UAF-Africa in December 2019 dedicated to advancing these notions as an integral part of our activism as African womn. The Feminist Republik Platform, geared towards learning and practice to inspire, mobilise, popularise, and build this collective care and healing movement culture with feminists and AWHRDs more generally, strives to co-create spaces and resources for exploration, exchange, rejuvenation, collective care, and healing.
This work matters because:
- AWHRDs and feminist activists in Africa have a right while struggling for the rights of all, to be secure, to enjoy good health and to receive collective care and healing as part of an organising culture and within the contexts of state obligations.
- AWHRDs and feminist activists have been and will most likely continue to be targeted and attacked for who they are and for what they do. While many programmes in multiple organisations recognise the risks and threats of physical and online security, and whilst there is an awareness that psychosocial health is essential in this process, the particularities of understanding and addressing the needs for wellness, well-being, care, and healing are still developing and evolving.
- AWHRDs and feminist activists have, in the past, been generally unable and unwilling to prioritise their health and well-being needs for care and healing due to various reasons. This means that exhaustion, burnout, breakdowns, trauma, psychosocial crises, and the effects on them – dis-ease – have been common and even become expected and accepted as what happens when womn engage in activism. This cannot continue.
- For almost a decade, the language of self-care and, later, collective care have been articulated in feminist and womn’s human rights circles, organising and spaces. Taking ourselves as feminist movements into a new culture of collective care and healing, holistic wellness, and well-being has been slower than we needed.
Taking our health, wellness, well-being, and healing seriously requires not just events, projects, and activities. It requires a culture shift. This includes a movement-wide commitment to these issues as part of agenda setting and strategy and supporting each other to embed and embody this commitment and consciousness as individuals and in our formations as part of a new organising culture we are building collectively.
