Center For Women's Global Leadership - About The Center

About The Center

The CWGL is both an academic center at a major public research university as well as a non-governmental organization with ECOSOC Special Consultative Status at the UN working on policy and advocacy. CWGL works to develop and facilitate women’s leadership worldwide not only for women’s human rights, but also for international social justice.

While CWGL works from a human rights perspective, the Center emphasizes:

• Violence against women
• Sexual and reproductive health
• Socio-economic well-being

Integrating gender and women's human rights into the work of local, national, regional and international institutions, CWGL’s programs inform and mobilize advocates for women's human rights around specific events and build linkages among them to enhance their capacity to influence policy making. Much of the Center's programmatic work stems from footholds made at the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights and the 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women.

Working in collaboration with women leaders and NGOs around the world—whether at UN meetings such as the Commission on the Status of Women, international mobilization campaigns, such as the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, or through global education endeavors—CWGL has helped secure international policy commitments that clearly state "women's rights are human rights."

With these policy benchmarks in place, the Center has turned its energy toward implementation of this concept and holding policy making bodies accountable to their promises to the world's women. Core activities in this program area include UN Monitoring and Advocacy and the coordination of International Mobilization Campaigns.

With its new Executive Director in place, the Center is continuing with programmatic work on ending violence against women, protecting women human rights defenders, and encouraging UN reform with a new body to monitor the realization of women's human rights. Moreover, the Center is expanding into considerations of the application of macroeconomic policies and the relationship between women and development within a human rights framework.