Hello from Bogotá!
I’m Laura Barreto, Senior Attorney at Women’s Link, and I’m delighted to welcome you to the July edition of our newsletter.
This month, I had the privilege of joining the Digital Democracy Hub Retreat, hosted by the Digital Freedom Fund in Utrecht, Netherlands. Over several days, I shared space with litigators, activists, technologists, and advocates from across Africa, Europe, and Latin America, all working to address one common reality: technology is reshaping how rights are exercised and, increasingly, how they are restricted.
The conversations were as diverse as the participants, spanning strategic litigation, advocacy, and community-centered legal strategies, as well as challenges such as online censorship, surveillance, and technology-facilitated gender-based violence. But what stayed with me most was the reminder that none of us face these challenges alone. Across continents, organizations are confronting remarkably similar threats to democracy, equality, and human rights, and coming together to learn from one another felt both hopeful and necessary.
Digital Democracy Hub retreat in Utrecht, Netherlands
At Women’s Link, these conversations are increasingly relevant: as we challenge barriers to sexual and reproductive rights and confront discrimination, digital spaces are shaping access to information, healthcare, and justice, making online censorship and technology-driven discrimination part of the broader struggle for gender and reproductive justice. I left Utrecht with new ideas, new allies, and renewed energy, reminded that strategic litigation is strongest when paired with collaboration and movements that extend beyond courtrooms.
Now, let’s dive in. There’s much to celebrate this month!
Legal advances!
This July, we filed our brief for the Climate Advisory Opinion before the African Commission, centering the voices of Ogiek women, an Indigenous community living in Kenya’s Mau Forest. It builds on the work we began with them in March, when we met to understand how climate change has compounded the harm they already face and to shape, together, what they wanted the Commission to hear. The brief shows that climate impacts fall disproportionately on women, and brings an ecofeminist perspective to the Advisory by centering the Ogiek women’s role as the land’s natural caretakers. Our hope is that it moves the Commission to recognize that role directly, and to treat it as central to what climate justice requires.
Our clients’ visions of justice
For Women’s Link, justice has no single definition. It’s shaped by the lived experiences of those facing oppression; it can be pursued through multiple mechanisms, and it’s constantly evolving. In this section, we share what justice means through our clients’ voices.
“The Ogiek Women are caretakers of Nature. The forest is food and medicine for our bodies. We want to protect the forest the same way it protects us. Ogiek is the forest, and the forest is Ogiek.”
On July 23, in Bogotá, we officially opened the celebrations of our 25th Anniversary with Donde la memoria canta, an evening of art, memory, and feminist encounter. The night opened with “Salirle al Paso”, a play by La Comadre, a collective of Afro-descendant women survivors in Colombia, who turn living memory, ancestral song, and Pacific music into an act of resistance and healing. Watching them perform was a powerful reminder that memory itself can be a form of resistance, and that reclaiming it collectively is an act of justice.
Beginning this anniversary with a night like this meant a great deal to us. Twenty-five years wouldn’t have been possible alone. It’s the alliances, the networks, and the power of the collective, like the one we shared that night, that carry every advance forward. As it was said that evening: Power doesn’t live in the law, but in us. We’re looking forward to carrying that spirit through the rest of this milestone year. Stay tuned for more surprises!
To mark our 25th anniversary this year, we unveiled a new logo and a refreshed visual identity to reflect who we’ve become.
Women’s Link began 25 years ago as a Gender Justice Observatory, a research project meant to give advocates around the world access to the best legal arguments to advance women’s rights. That project grew into our work spanning 17 countries across East Africa, Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean, and along the way, into something we’re deeply proud of: a Global South-led, intersectional feminist legal organization.
When we thought about the design for our new look, we knew we wanted it to embody the fierceness and tenderness that define our work. You’ll see flowers and natural elements throughout the new identity, a deliberate choice that reflects our ecofeminist values and anticolonial commitments. It also shows our understanding of justice itself: something we plant, tend, and watch grow through strategic litigation and collective care. Our look has changed, but our commitment to the legal strategies and cases that create lasting change and to a plural, intersectional vision of justice remains strong.
Our blogposts
Read our recap from the Abortion and Reproductive Justice Conference in Nairobi, where our East Africa team joined activists and advocates from across the continent to confront the growing gap between legal rights and real access to reproductive care.
In the media
Maureen Okoth, Senior Attorney for East Africa, was on Channel Africa this month. She discussed Women’s Link’s historic lawsuit against the Ugandan government regarding the distribution of defective contraceptives through the country’s public healthcare system. Find out more!
Women’s Link Worldwide: outreach@womenslinkworldwide.org