Women's Environment and Development Organization (WED) is a non-profit organization currently based in New York, near the United Nations headquarters. As a global women’s advocacy organization, WEDO envisions a just world that promotes and protects human rights, gender equality and the integrity of the environment. The organization works to achieve its mission through strong and consistent advocacy, awareness raising, networking, and capacity building.
Mission
To contribute toward its vision for the world, WEDO’s mission is to ensure that women’s rights; social, economic and environmental justice; and sustainable development principles-as well as the linkages between them-are at the heart of global and national policies, programs and practices.
Approach
WEDO views strong and diverse partnerships as integral to meeting its goals. It allies with women’s organizations; environmental, development and human rights organizations; governments; and intergovernmental organizations, including the United Nations, to achieve its mission. WEDO’s core competency has been high-level advocacy in international arenas, while building bridges among a range of stakeholders.
Goals
WEDO works on a range of cross-cutting issues—from climate change and natural resource management, to global governance and finance and UN reform—toward three interlinked goals:
Research and raising awareness, fostering and facilitating networks and campaigns, and building capacity and training—with women and women’s organizations, gender advocates, government and UN actors, and many others—comprise strategies to meet WEDO’s goals. While WEDO works at the international level primarily, it supports regional and national stakeholders, networks and governments to turn policy commitments on gender equality into action—striving to improve the lives of women and men around the world.
Activities
WEDO works on a variety of different programs, projects, and advocacy campaigns under the broad themes of:
Women’s Leadership - WEDO works to ensure women are empowered as decision-makers and leaders, especially in environmental and sustainable development arenas.
Across sectors and movements, WEDO has witnessed firsthand the power of women’s organizing and leadership for change – particularly in protecting and promoting a healthy, peaceful planet. Empowering women as leaders – from the personal and local to the highest decision-making levels – to advance gender equality and protect and promote a sustainable planet is a critical part of WEDO’s work.
Moreover, WEDO joins in partnership with women’s organizations, networks, grassroots groups and activists, UN bodies and IGOs, government Ministries, parliamentarians, congresswomen and men, Heads of State and global thought leaders including academics and Nobel Laureates to promote women’s leadership.
Sustainable Development - WEDO works to ensure sustainable development policies, plans and practices are gender responsive. It works to strengthen alliances between the women’s, environmental and development movements, across sectors, and across North and South.
Central to its overall vision, sustainable development has long been a cornerstone of WEDO’s mandate. Having been founded specifically to influence the 1992 Earth Summit (UNCED), WEDO has remained focused on strategic advocacy at critical global sustainable development fora, including at the Rio Conventions, the Commission on Sustainable Development, and Rio+20 and its follow-up, as well as national-level processes in several partner countries.
One of the most urgent issues on the global agenda, climate change remains a top priority for WEDO’s advocacy, capacity building, information sharing and other efforts to link gender equality and sustainable development;
Global Governance - WEDO works to ensure global governance is transparent, accountable and effective. Focused on the interlinkages and interdependence of its priority issues, WEDO works to uphold existing legal frameworks and support governments, civil society partners and UN agencies alike in turning words into action.
