Women in Global South Alliance for tenure and climate (WiGSA)

Who We Are

WiGSA is a cross-continental solidarity network of women’s organizations, associations and groups that represents thousands of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, pastoralists, and local community women from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Over the past four years, WiGSA has been collectively created, and its members embody the voices and interconnected struggles of women and their communities seeking justice for their tenure rights across continents.

WiGSA empowers its members to influence and advocate at the national and global levels: WiGSA members unite in a shared vision to work together and catalyze changes to existing structural inequalities, historical injustices regarding the recognition of women’s tenure and human rights, and advocate for direct access to global funding.

By amplifying collective voices from the Global South, WiGSA seeks to dismantle structural gender-based discrimination and exclusion and elevates Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local community women’s leadership. Our network challenges the status quo by insisting that women’s strategies for protecting biodiversity be funded directly, recognizing that women on the frontlines possess critical—yet often invisible—solutions to the global dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Ultimately, WiGSA envisions an equitable future where women are recognized as rightsholders central to global policy on environmental sustainability.

To learn about WiGSA membership, click here.

Our Principles

As a collective space, WiGSA is guided by the central principles of unity, inclusion, respect, equality and equity, solidarity, representation, transparency, and intercultural communication. These principles enable Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women across continents and from a diversity of ethnicities, identities, and countries of origin to work together and advocate for women’s tenure and human rights. WiGSA believes that when a woman opens a door for women’s rights, it is not just for her own benefit but for the well-being of her entire community.

WiGSA’s innovative, horizontal co-governance system enables broad participation in decision-making and ensures balanced and complementary representation of voices and responsibilities. The co-governance system enhances connection, solidarity, collective thinking, and accountability— and rejects hierarchical relationships and concentration of power.

The following principles outline the values that guide WiGSA in its internal relationships, decision-making, planning, and development of joint advocacy. These principles also support WiGSA’s positioning when crafting declarations and defining representation of the network in international and national spaces, and in dialogues with governments, allies, and donors.

For more information on WiGSA, contact Omaira Bolaños.