Women’s Program

Where our women’s rights work is concerned, TrustAfrica departs from the understanding that power imbalances between men and women entrench women’s subordination and erodes their ability to make critical decisions affecting their lives, bodies and economic resources. Hidden under the rubric of morality, the subordination and abuse of women continues to be condoned. The positioning of women’s rights against collective societal rights, compounded by the apprehension of upsetting the status-quo, has influenced the recycling of cosmetic approaches with limited focus on addressing the core causes of violence against women.

Our women’s rights work is cross cutting, and over the past five years we have funded close to one million dollars in grants for projects aimed at enhancing the rights of, and ending violence against women and girls. TrustAfrica has recorded a number of successes with this work:

Our work in West and East Africa where our support for under-resourced women’s groups and networks has helped build their leadership and advocacy capacity (through training and mentoring)—a key achievement here is that we have equipped women’s groups to leverage human rights protocols, in order to advance women in governance at the African Union.
In Nigeria, we are working at the grassroots level to enhance women’s agency, to include the rights of widows in inheritance; and supporting documentation and victim led advocacy for accountability for conflict related sexual violence in the north east. We are also supporting women’s access to better maternal health care in Port Harcourt.
In Uganda we are working with survivors of conflict related sexual violence to demand for redress and accountability.