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History

History

For over 25 Years, We Champion Grassroots Women Around the World 

In 1995, the Huairou Commission began in a tent for grassroots  women leaders working relentlessly at the 4th World Women’s Conference in Beijing to advance their inclusion in global development processes joined together around a common goal.  

At the outset of the Beijing Conference, GROOTS International – a global network of grassroots women organizations – and the USA based National Congress of Neighborhood Women came together to ensure that the issues facing grassroots women were finally addressed in the global women’s rights agenda.  At the time, there was little space for civil society, especially the poor urban and rural women’s groups, to participate at the High Level Conference, and the grassroots women leaders organizing was especially underfunded. Without the representation of grassroots women, the daily issues confronting poor communities, such as access to food, livelihoods, water and sanitation, were not being prioritized.

The gap of lacking poor women’s voices in the feminist movement was recognized by the UNIFEM, who emerged supportive of grassroots women’s inclusion, and have awarded GROOTS International with funding to ensure participation of grassroots women’s organizations in the Beijing Platform for Action.  

GROOTS International and the National Congress of Neighborhood Women hosted multiple regional meetings of grassroots women to consolidate their agenda going into the 4th World Conference on Women. They launched a 50/50 campaign, where each professional woman going to Beijing was encouraged to sponsor a grassroots woman leader to go come along. Meanwhile, the Mothers Centers of Germany mobilized hundreds of women to create a patchwork quilt as a symbol of all the grassroots women coming together. 

In the village of Huairou, an hour outside of Beijing, GROOTS International together with the National Congress of Neighborhood Women organized a Grassroots Tent for grassroots women’s organizations to gather, learn, and share ideas, strategies and experiences to take home to their communities. Every day women’s groups from different countries and regions hosted caucuses, which became a tool to collectively organize and to uncover that cross-cutting issues, such as land and housing, were transnational links of solidarity among the grassroots women’s groups. The tent gathering brought grassroots women together to amplify their voices and messages grounded in lived experience and on-the-ground expertise across the women’s movement and the UN.  

 “It was in this coming together that the global women’s movement really grew up. Finally, women went from fighting with each other and fearing each other’s’ narratives and agendas to coming together to working collectively as one.”  

– Jan Peterson, co-founder and Honorary Chair of the Governing Council 

Credits: Part 1 of the film We Are The Leaders directed by Lyn Pyle.

Impressed by the organizing of grassroots women and their partners, Wally N’Dow, then Executive Director of the UN Commission on Human Settlements, “commissioned” fifty women leaders to monitor the Habitat II conference, naming the group the Huairou Commission. For the first time, an organized group of women had a central role to play in the human settlements arena and capitalized on the opportunity to demonstrate the political power of locally connected grassroots women’s groups coming together at the global level.

Over the years, the Huairou Commission has evolved from an advisory body to Habitat II into a global movement for grassroots women’s empowerment in development. With the secretariat located in the Neighborhood Women’s House hosted by the National Congress of Neighborhood Women in Brooklyn, New York City,  the Huairou Commission reaches grassroots women organizations in 45 countries.    

Huairou’s Unique Perspective 

We seek for a paradigm shift in how development policies are created and implemented, supporting grassroots groups not as victims or projects, but as agents of change and active development partners. The Huairou Commission has grown into a global grassroots women’s network championing this fundamental shift.  

We believe that grassroots women’s voices must be heard and the women must speak for themselves in development circles. The movement embraces a bottom up organizing approach informed by grassroots women’s knowledge and experiences of development realities in their communities, illustrated by community risk assessments executed by women themselves. Grassroots women are supported in their leadership through systems of mentorship, and on-going peer-learning across the network.  

Jan Peterson, Sandy Schilen and Lana Finikin on the history of the Huairou Commission and building global grassroots women’s movement





Part 1: Building Grassroots Tent: global organizing leading to the 4th World Conference on Women





Part 2: Claiming Space: defining grassroots women’s movement





Part 3: Looking 5 Years Ahead

Claiming Space in the Development Policy  

The Huairou Commission organizes using the social movement strategy of building local to regional to global networks and alliances to advance the movement’s goals. This organizing logic enabled Huairou members to claim space as a partnership entity in the feminist movement and in the development circles.  

Since the inception, we have united grassroots women’s organizations and their allies to uncover the shared experience of common development issues in grassroots communities that led to building thematic networks for advocacy and peer learning. We facilitated grassroots women networking around issues of land and housing through Women’s Land Link Africa, care-giving and HIV/AIDS through Home Based Care Alliance, resilience through Community Practitioners Platform for Resilience, or safety through Safer Cities, that enable for the grassroots women to engage in cross-cultural, borders transcending dialogues exchanging knowledge and best practices in community development. 

Huairou Commission’s network building approach has evolved from uniting across thematic campaigns to consolidating local, national, regional and global networks that employ bottom-up organizing tools and put grassroots women at the center of decision-making and partnership dialogues. 

Tools like Peer Exchanges and the Local to Local Dialogues alongside the Community Practitioners Platform for Resilience facilitate local level network organizing to unite voices. National Assemblies on Localizing Agenda 2030 facilitate national level grassroots policy and partnership campaigns. Huairou members form Regional Committees and host regular Regional meetings to take stock of regional membership networks, and to plan for regional policy and partnership priorities. Globally, the member elected Governing Council hosts an annual membership meeting to take stock of the movement and revise strategic priorities for partnerships, policy and on-the-ground activities. Our Community Practitioners Platform for Resilience members meet at Global Brain Trusts regularly to evaluate the Community Resilience Funds campaign. 

Organized at the local, national, regional and global dimensions, we facilitaterecognition of grassroots women as important development partners, claiming more power in the development arena. Since 2005, the Huairou Commission has held ECOSOC status with the United Nations, which grants grassroots women on-going presence in the UN policy spaces.   

Partnerships & Impact 

Throughout its history the Huairou Commission has fostered grassroots women’s empowerment and leadership in order to put their voices and knowledge at the center of development processes. In this regard, we have built a large scale movement of grassroots women leaders and their allies. Working with partners and allies, we have championed redefining meaningful partnerships with communities in development, and we worked to make grassroots women’s voices heard and institutionalized in development decision-making.   

In 1996, we brought over a 100 grassroots women leaders and allies to the Habitat II conference and lobbied for 136 references to women and gender in the Habitat II Agenda; 20 years later grassroots women were invited to serve as experts in drafting the New Urban Agenda (Habitat III).

Our relationship with the UN Habitat remained strong with our leaders now members of the UN Habitat Advisory Group on Gender Issues (AGGI).  We have also claimed advisory roles for grassroots women and their allies with the UN Women, UN DRR, World Bank, UNDP, UN DESA, FAO, and the International Land Coalition. 

A 2019 membership survey highlighted that belonging to the Huairou Commission had positive effects on increasing our members’ political influence and participation locally and nationally. This is illustrated in significant increases in their participation in advisory bodies, Memorandums of Agreement with government institutions, and access to decision making spaces. 

 The Huairou Commission evolved from a coalition of founding networks to a bottom-up grassroots women led organization. In 2018, the Commission hosted its first Global Grassroots Women’s Congress, where Huairou membership elected the Governing Council from among its advanced members with grassroots women comprising ⅔ of the Council. 

Our role in women’s movement has also matured and Huairou Commission has been selected by the UN Women to become a Global Leader of the Generation Equality Action Coalition – a multi-stakeholder coalition bringing governments, philanthropy representatives, inter-governmental organizations and select few civil society organizations to accelerate gender equality. Grassroots women leaders will join forces with governments of Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Spain and Sweden, OECD, Melinda and Bill Gates foundation, and the UN Capital Development Fund to champion Economic Justice and Rights. 

With this kind of progress over the last 25 years we are looking forward to expanding our reach in representing grassroots women to be at the center of sustainable development.  

Founder and Honorary Chair

Jan Peterson, Honorary President of the Huairou Commission, was awarded the UN-HABITAT Scroll of Honor in 2009 for four decades of activism championing the rights of grassroots women and their movements for better human settlements. She is a founder of three organizations – the National Congress of Neighbourhood Women, GROOTS International, and the Huairou Commission. Under her leadership, the Huairou Commission’s membership has expanded to include organizations in more than 50 countries across the globe.

Through her strong advocacy, Jan has ensured that the global women’s movement incorporates grassroots women’s groups and community development priorities for sustainable human settlements. In addition to raising more than USD 4 million for work with grassroots women, Jan has supported pioneering initiatives that include the Local-to-Local Dialogue methodology and the Grassroots Women’s Academy held at each World Urban Forum.

In her coalition-building work, Ms. Peterson draws on decades of experience in education, policy making, and community organizing. At the global level, Jan Peterson has led sustained advocacy to ensure that grassroots women are recognized as experts in development, who have innovative solutions to problems affecting their lives. As a result of these pioneering efforts, global agencies such as UN-Habitat, UN Women and UN ISDR have included women from poor communities in advisory and planning groups.

In the Carter White House, she worked as the Associate Director of the Office of Public Liaison, as well as in the Office of Policy and Planning in Action (Peace Corps/VISTA). She has taught at the New School Graduate Program in International Affairs and was a member of the Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, chaired by Madeline Albright. She continues to work as a leading organizer on housing and neighborhood development issues her own community in Brooklyn, New York

Timeline
  • 1985 Nairobi, Kenya

    Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood (GROOTS) is formed at the 3rd World conference on Women bringing vibrant grassroots organizations to ensure that grassroots women’s experiences and priorities are amplified globally. Feminist women from across the globe collaborate with one another to move the women’s agenda beyond the emphasis on equality to development and peace. 

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  • 1989-1994 Jamaica, Ghana, Costa Rica, India

    GROOTS convenes global meetings for developing its strategic vision. Funded by UNIFEM, these consultations are key to strengthening grassroots women’s participation in the up-coming, pivotal Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995. GROOTS secures a large, non-governmental convening space, the Grassroots Tent, at the NGO Forum in Huairou suburb, near Beijing. With this, GROOTS is positioned to influence and set the grassroots agenda for the 1995 conference

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  • 1995 September, Huairou village, near Beijing, China

    At the Grassroots Tent, multi-country leadership teams present their practices and strategize to ensure issues of housing, sanitation, safe, and successful communities are included in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The Secretary General of the UN Centre for Human Settlements, Dr. Wally N’Dow, recognizing the power of the coalition of grassroots leaders and their organisations, initiates the Huairou Commission to advise in the design of the 1996 Habitat II and to mainstream grassroots women’s development priorities. 

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  • 1996 June, Istanbul, Turkey

    At Habitat II, the UN Conference on Human Settlements,  HC hosts 50 civil society workshops, a daily women’s caucus, a women’s tent and secures 136 references on women and gender in the Habitat II Agenda.  For the first time women become a central theme of the human settlements agenda. Local HC partner KEDV arranges a daycare center to run throughout the conference to support women leaders to balance care and leadership commitments

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  • 1998 Istanbul, Turkey

    Hosted by KEDV, HC meets to prepare a 3-year strategic plan, “A New Way of Partnering”,  which reflects HC’s move from networking and lobbying to refining its own strategies for implementing local campaigns of land and property, disaster, governance and HIV/AIDS, using a bottom up approach.  This marks the formalization of HC as a long term organization. 

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  • 2000 Summer, Hanover and Saltzgitter, Germany.

    As part of Expo 2000, the Grassroots Women’s Academy (GA) is organized over 4 intensive weeks by the German Mothers Centre. The GA are grounded in peer learning and are convened by HC at global policy events and serve as a space for grassroots women leaders to prepare, organize, share tools and practices. The Grassroots Academy Methodology was awarded the Dubai International Best Practices Award for Sustainable Development by the UN-Habitat in 2006

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  • 2003 Kenya, Russia, Argentina, Tanzania, Czech Republic, Uganda

    The Local to Local Dialogues tool is piloted to assist in realizing global policies in local cities and communities.  By means of the L2L tool grassroots women move from projects to developing partnerships and advocating with local government. The initiative was funded by and collaborated with UN Habitat as a part of the governance campaign

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  • 2005 Abuja, Nigeria

    The Home Based Care Alliance (HBCA) is launched at the International Conference on AIDS and STIs.  Grassroots women caregivers build on their collective experience and leadership to gain official recognition as a key constituency of the HIV/AIDS committees.  As a result, the National Aids Councils of various countries start funding issues related to women lands rights under their AIDS campaigns.

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  • 2008 Entebbe, Uganda

    The First Land Link Africa Grassroots Women’s Land Academy (WLLA) is hosted by the Uganda Community-Based Association for Children’s Welfare (UCOBAC). Envisioned in 2003 WLLA originates from work with the Global Land Tools Network (GLTN) to address the growing need to link organizations and share information on inheritance, financing, loans and housing rights regionally throughout Africa

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  • 2010 New York, NY, USA

    As an active member of GEAR, a working group of influential feminist and social justice groups, HC works to ensure UNIFEM transitions to UN-Women. HC is instrumental in ensuring grassroots women’s inclusion as a constituency group in the newly formed UN agency and in expanding the conversation beyond women’s rights and ending violence against women, to include bottom-up community  development.

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  • 2008 – 2011

    HC leads formation of the Community Practitioners Platform for Resilience (CPPR), a global mechanism for organized communities living and working in disaster-prone urban and rural areas to play an active role in driving disaster and climate resilience agendas at local, national and global level. Today, CPPR brings together communities in 24 countries and is a formally recognized stakeholder by the UN DRR Sendai Stakeholders Mechanism.

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  • 2011 Nairobi, Kenya.

    At  the 23rd UN-Habitat Governing Council, Norway government and HC members from Zambia, Tanzania, and Ghana successfully lobby their governments for the adoption of Resolution 23/1 on Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women in Sustainable Urban Development, which includes creation of the Advisory Group on Gender Issues (AGGI). AGGI is the first advisory group on gender of its kind within the UN system and provides a space to stress the vital role of women and community based leaders as policy influencers and partners for implementation.

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  • 2015 March, Sendai, Japan

    HC community practitioners actively participate in the Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction. HC ’s members efforts in sustained participation and engagements in the 2-year design and negotiation of Hyogo Framework of Action 2 succeed by the adoption of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, that recognizes the crucial role of women and communities in disaster risk reduction and resilience-building.

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  • 2015-2016 Globally and Quito, Ecuador

    HC plays an active role in the Habitat III process, while its members are invited to serve as experts in 8 out of the 10 Habitat III Policy Units that shape the content of Habitat III New Urban Agenda. HC runs the Women’s Assembly and lobbies with SDI and WIEGO to position grassroots leaders as champions of Habitat III.  HC is part of founding the global coalition of civil society organizations called the General Assembly of Partners.

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  • 2018 February, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    At the 9th World Urban Forum, HC successfully advocates for formalizing the Grassroots Assembly within the conference structure. The inaugural Global Grassroots Women’s Congress convenes bringing together HC members to reaffirm their commitments to and strategies for movement-building and collective action for resilient development and grassroots women’s leadership.

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  • 2020 Global

    Utilizing their well established global, regional and local networks grassroots women organize to respond to the global pandemic. Acknowledging that grassroots women are central to the response and successful recovery, HC’s Governing Council establishes a COVID19 Community Resilience Fund. Huairou Commission is appointed to lead Generation Equality Forum (the Beijing +25) Action Coalition as a civil society partner for Economic Justice and Rights and Gender Based Violence pillars.

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