Hungarian Women’s Lobby was established in 3rd October, 2003 in Budapest. Currently HWL has 19 member organisations from all over Hungary. In 12 October, 2003 HWL became the Hungarian national coordinator organisation of the European Women’s Lobby.

WHO WE ARE

The Hungarian Women’s Lobby, established in 2003, is an umbrella organisation dedicated to advocating for the women’s human rights agenda as laid down by international norms. The Hungarian Women’s Lobby recruits, unites and represents the interests of Hungarian women’s organisations with a gender equality and human rights-based agenda, particularly those that advocate for the rights and equal opportunities of women. The Hungarian Women’s Lobby (HWL) is the Hungarian member organisation of the European Women’s Lobby (EWL), the largest gender equality-oriented umbrella organisation in the EU with more than 2500 member organisations. As such, the Hungarian Women’s Lobby represents the national women’s organisations’ agendas internationally, while at the same time it takes up, represents and campaigns for gender equality issues that are relevant Europe-wide and concern Hungary as well.

OUR MAIN OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

The Hungarian Women’s Lobby intends to strengthen the capacity of its member organisations to promote women’s human rights, to mainstream women’s human rights into other non-governmental organisations’ and institutions’ work, to monitor national legal and policy changes, and to raise professional and public awareness on gender equality at national and international level. The specific fields of activities and objectives of the organisation are the following:

  • Internal capacity development and coalition building: strengthening of and networking among member organisations of the Hungarian Women’s Lobby through capacity development, elaboration of strategic planning, and mainstreaming knowledge on women’s human rights into the work of member organisations while eliciting knowledge from member organisations based on their work experience.
  • External capacity development and coalition building: building pro-active, sustainable, strategic partnerships at regional levels with the involvement of key (mainstream) actors outside the HWL membership, by organizing regional training and capacity building seminars for key organisations and networks.
  • Policy monitoring: monitoring of and reporting on the implementation of international human rights obligations at a national level, development of policy analysis and recommendations, especially – but not limited to – by using UN CEDAW reporting mechanisms.
  • Professional awareness-raising: raising awareness of different professionals by translating and disseminating EWL policy documents on gender issues, and disseminating national policy analyses and recommendations as well.
  • Public awareness-raising: raising public awareness about the meaning and importance of gender equality by using and adapting the communication tools and methods of the EWL, by building partnership with media organisations and journalist professionals and organising media training courses, by lectures for university students and by social media campaigns on gender equality.

SOME OF OUR PROJECTS TO DATE

  • HWL compiled a Shadow report on the implementation of the UN CEDAW Convention in 2007.
  • HWL developed training materials and held training courses for government officials on gender mainstreaming in 2009.
  • HWL was the national partner in the 2010 “Global Media Monitoring Project”, monitoring the news media from a gender equality perspective.
  • HWL implemented the national component of the following EWL campaigns: “Who Cares?” campaign on care policies (2006), the “50/50 Campaign on Parity Democracy” (2008-2009), the campaign on the Maternity Leave Directive (2009-2010), and the campaign “Together for a Europe Free of Prostitution” (2010-2011). HWL also participated in the awareness-raising events of the 16 Days of Activism against Violence against Women.
  • HWL has been a member of the national “KERET” Coalition against Sexual Violence against Women since 2009.
  • HWL delegated experts to the task forces/working groups of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) and the EWL Observatory on Violence against Women.
  • In 2011, HWL together with EWL organized an international conference entitled “Roma Women in Focus”, where a policy paper was launched on Roma women in East-Central Europe.

Our donors

  • Open Society Foundations
  • Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe

Contact information:

  • Hungarian Women’s Lobby (Magyar Női Érdekérvényesítő Szövetség)
  • Address: Budapest H-1074, Dohány utca 71., Hungary
  • Website: www.noierdek.hu
  • Skype: noierdek
  • E-mail: noierdek@noierdek.hu

The Statutes of the Hungarian Women’s Lobby can be downloaded from the attachment.