The bulletin emphasises that these structural crises compound pre-existing discrimination based on gender, class, disability, migration status, and geography, deepening vulnerabilities while undermining access to health services, bodily autonomy, and rights protections. Contributors highlight how authoritarian governance, digital surveillance, ecological degradation, and economic precarity collectively threaten feminist movements and weaken community resilience at a time when coordinated regional action is urgently needed.
Despite these challenges, the bulletin showcases emerging strategies that centre community leadership, intersectional feminist analysis, and solidarity-based organising. It highlights innovative practices—including youth-led advocacy, community-driven climate resilience, rights-based approaches to digital technologies, and cross-border feminist collaborations—that are strengthening the pushback against regressive policies.
The ARROW for Change – Resisting Anti-Rights: Building Inclusive Movements, Enabling Feminist Agenda Setting Beyond 2030 in Asia and the Pacific enables activists to:
1. Provide Evidence and Framing for Advocacy
The bulletin pulls together regional trends—climate crises, SRHR rollbacks, shrinking civic space, digital surveillance, and inequality—and presents them through an intersectional feminist lens. Activists can use this evidence, terminology, and framing to strengthen policy briefs, campaigns, and public messaging with regionally grounded analysis.
2. Connect Local Struggles to Regional and Global Agendas
By linking community-level realities to broader systems (authoritarianism, economic models, environmental degradation), the document helps activists show that their issues are not isolated but part of wider structural patterns. This strengthens demands for systemic change and helps align with international frameworks and UN processes.
3. Offer Models of Community-Led and Feminist Strategies
The bulletin highlights real examples—from youth advocacy to climate resilience initiatives and cross-border feminist networks. These case studies serve as replicable models, helping activists learn what works, adapt strategies, and build stronger community-based responses.
4. Strengthen Movement Solidarity and Shared Narrative
Because ARROW brings together voices from different countries and sectors, the bulletin becomes a common platform. It supports activists in developing shared language, shared goals, and a shared understanding of threats—essential for coalition-building and collective action.
5. Equip Activists to Influence Policymakers
The publication translates complex issues into policy-relevant insights. Activists can draw from its key messages to push for:
- stronger SRHR commitments,
- disability-inclusive and gender-transformative policies,
- climate and economic justice frameworks,
- protection of civic space and rights.
6. Helps Activists Position Their Work Strategically
The document highlights where rights regressions are happening and where opportunities for action are emerging. Activists can use this to prioritise advocacy targets, refine strategies, and identify key pressure points at national or regional levels.
Key Highlights of the ARROW for Change – Resisting Anti-Rights: Building Inclusive Movements, Enabling Feminist Agenda Setting Beyond 2030 in Asia and the Pacific
1. Intersecting crises are intensifying inequalities — Climate change, economic precarity, conflict, authoritarianism, and shrinking civic space are converging, disproportionately harming women, girls, and gender-diverse people across the region.
2. SRHR is under renewed threat — Regressive laws, underfunded health systems, digital surveillance, and politicisation of sexuality continue to roll back sexual and reproductive health and rights, especially for marginalised communities.
3.Structural discrimination deepens vulnerability — Gender, class, disability, migration status, and geographic marginalisation compound risk and limit access to justice, services, and political participation.
4. Feminist and community-led resilience is rising — Grassroots movements, youth advocates, climate justice groups, and cross-border feminist networks are developing innovative, rights-based strategies to challenge inequities and build collective power.
5. Transformative change requires systemic action — The bulletin calls for stronger regional mechanisms, inclusive policymaking, sustained investment in feminist organising, and intersectional approaches that centre those most affected by ongoing crises.
Recommendations – Resisting Anti-Rights
- Intersecting Crises Demand Integrated Responses
Women, girls, and gender-diverse people in the Asia–Pacific region face compounding risks from climate change, economic instability, conflict, and shrinking civic space. These crises interact to deepen inequalities and erode rights protections. Policymakers must adopt multi-sectoral, intersectional approaches that address these overlapping vulnerabilities rather than siloed, issue-specific interventions.
- Safeguarding SRHR Is Urgent and Non-Negotiable
Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) are increasingly threatened by regressive legislation, politicisation of bodily autonomy, and weakened health systems. Governments and regional bodies should prioritise universal access to SRHR, ensure adequate financing, and implement rights-affirming policies that protect the most marginalised.
- Structural Discrimination Must Be Systematically Dismantled
Inequities based on gender, disability, migration status, class, and geography continue to produce gaps in service access, legal protections, and justice pathways. Policies must embed anti-discrimination standards, require accountability from institutions, and ensure representation of marginalised groups in decision-making processes.
- Invest in Feminist and Community-Led Resilience
Grassroots organisations, feminist networks, youth advocates, and climate justice groups are leading effective local responses. Governments, donors, and regional institutions should sustainably fund feminist movements, strengthen community-led adaptation strategies, and support cross-border collaboration to amplify impact.
- Strengthen Regional Mechanisms and Policy Coherence
Given the transboundary nature of current crises, coordination across countries is essential. Regional bodies must reinforce policy coherence, create inclusive platforms for civil society engagement, and align efforts on SRHR, climate justice, digital governance, and human rights. This includes adopting integrated frameworks that prioritise equity and community participation.
Conclusion
The issue calls for sustained investment in feminist organising, meaningful participation of marginalised groups in policymaking, and rights-affirming regional mechanisms capable of addressing the cross-cutting nature of current crises. Ultimately, the 2025 bulletin underscores that transformative change will require dismantling structural inequalities while expanding collective power to envision and build a just, equitable, and resilient future.
About ARROW for Change (AFC)
ARROW for Change (AFC) is a peer-reviewed thematic bulletin that aims to contribute a Southern/Asia-Pacific, rights-based, and women-centred analyses and perspectives to global discourses on emerging and persistent issues related to health, sexuality, and rights. It is primarily for Asia and the Pacific and global decision-makers in women’s rights, health, population, and sexual and reproductive health and rights organisations. The bulletin is developed with input from key individuals and organisations in Asia and the Pacific region and the ARROW SRHR Knowledge Sharing Centre (ASK-us!).
