Sultana Kamal is a Bangladeshi lawyer, feminist, and human rights activist. She served as the executive director of Ain o Salish Kendra, a civil rights organisation and as an adviser in the Caretaker government of Bangladesh from 2006-2008. She is now the chairperson of the We Can End Violence Against Women Alliance and the chairperson for Transparency International Bangladesh.

Civil society and women human rights defenders are on the front lines of supporting women’s access to justice. Leveraging their expertise, together with the lived experiences of women seeking justice, is key to transforming justice systems to be gender-responsive and people-centred, and to leave no one behind.

A fatwa was issed against me; they condemned me for normalizing obscenity and indecency among women by persuading them to come out of their homes. … I said, ‘You should also give a fatwa against Hazrat Khadija (the first wife of Prophet Muhammad) because she was also a trader.’ “God has not made us as weak as we have made ourselves.”

[ANNOUCEMENT] Deadline Extended!! — UN Women is re-establishing a Civil Society Advisory Group (CSAG), which was previously set up in 2012. As Beijing+25 approaches and Bangladesh nationally stands at a cross-road in terms of growing inequality and intensifying human rights and gender challenges, while aspiring to graduate from Least Development Country and become a developed country by 2041, UN Women has decided to relaunch a CSAG in order to systematically seek advice from CSO representatives on its work.

Every year thousands of activists from civil society organizations around the world come to New York to take part in the Commission on the Status of Women, the global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women...