In 2025, the Women in Global South Alliance (WiGSA) strengthened its global positioning as a unique, cross-continental solidarity women’s network advocating for IP, ADP, and LC women’s tenure rights and direct access to finance. WiGSA received a record number of membership requests and expanded to 28 member organizations working across more than 60 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Members of the
Women in Global South
Alliance (WiGSA) speak
on a panel at London
Climate Action Week.
Photo: RRI, 2025
Together, WiGSA members laid their philosophical foundation in 2025, guided by the principles of unity, inclusion, respect, equity, equal voice and representation, solidarity, transparency and accountability, and intercultural communication. These guiding principles define how members work together to systematically reduce gender-based inequalities and reflect a unique collective process built upon trust and the unification of women’s diverse experiences into shared priorities.
In 2025, RRI and WiGSA produced critical new analyses to strengthen women’s advocacy, including the report Is Global Funding Reaching Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and Local Community Women? This study addressed key donor questions on women’s priorities and barriers to direct funding. Donors described the report as a “useful and timely resource” to inform future funding mechanisms, and it was featured in publications by the Forest Tenure Funders Group, FAO, Land Climate Review, and the FTFG 2025 report.
“Findings highlight persistent challenges to advancing women’s leadership and ensuring their meaningful inclusion in decision-making. These structural constraints force many women’s organizations to depend on volunteer labor, reinforcing patterns of unpaid work and weakening institutional sustainability. The inequities are especially stark for Afro-descendant women’s organizations, which operate with budgets less than half those of Indigenous peers, reflecting a donor ecosystem still blind to structural racism. Longer-term funding and intersectional approaches that prioritize women’s organizations’ needs are essential to addressing these ongoing inequalities.”
The analysis also contributed to the Forest Tenure Funders Group recognizing and committing to addressing the gender gap in women’s funding in its new $1.8 billion tenure pledge announced at COP30, and became a cornerstone of RRI’s The Pledge We Want campaign.
WiGSA also elevated women’s leadership at global convenings, including CSW69, London Climate Action Week, UN Climate Week in New York, COP30, UNEA-7 in Kenya, and the Women Land Rights Initiative’s policy workshops on democratizing global finance for women’s land rights within the three Rio Conventions. These engagements strengthened women’s visibility in climate, conservation, and funding debates.
Photo of a new-build house with electricity in Chepang community, Nepal.
Photo: National Indigenous Women’s Federation (NIWF), 2025
Through CLARIFI, four WiGSA organizations received direct funding, and seven more were supported indirectly through regional programs in the Tropical Andes and Congo Basin. CLARIFI has since developed a pipeline of WiGSA projects for future funding cycles to expand direct access to finance for community women’s organizations.
In 2020, Chepang Indigenous families were forcibly evicted from the Kusum Khola riverbanks in Chitwan, Nepal, and 60 households later resettled along Parabi Khola without secure land or basic services. In 2024, the National Indigenous Women’s Federation (NIWF), with financial support from the RRI in 2024–2025, worked with the community to advocate for their rights through data collection, training, community organizing, and dialogue with the government. A peaceful demonstration in Kathmandu with 220 participants also drew national attention. As a result, the government installed drinking water and electricity, surveyed land for 60 households, and began constructing permanent houses. The Bagmati Provincial Government has also begun planning a model settlement with professors and students at the Engineering College, while a Chepang Women’s Struggle Committee consisting of 15 women now strengthens community leadership and advocacy.
Meeting with the province ministry to share findings of the study on permanent housing for the Chepang community, Nepal.
Photo: National Indigenous Women’s Federation (NIWF), 2025
