Take a deeper look at our stories from around the world.
Watch our videos to learn how AJWS is supporting people around the world who are fighting to improve the lives of millions.
We support women, girls and LGBTQI+ people, as they organize to end discrimination, stop violence and live with dignity, safety and health.
A tribute to a truly extraordinary leader, AJWS’s former President and its first Global Ambassador.
Get to know Robert Bank! Robert joined AJWS in 2009 as our Executive Vice President. As of July 1, 2016, Robert became the President and CEO of AJWS.
A look at the work we do to end poverty and promote human rights in the developing world.
We aid communities and movements organizing to protect the land, water and natural resources that people depend on for their survival.
Each year, 15 million girls worldwide are married before the age of 18—sometimes against their will. AJWS supports efforts to end child marriage by bringing girls and young women together to define their own futures.
We aid communities and movements that speak out against injustice, hold governments accountable to respect the rights of all people, and work to recover from civil wars and other conflicts.
In celebration of AJWS’s 30th anniversary, we profiled 30 global leaders who have partnered with AJWS to build a better world.
Welcome to Activists Up Close, our new video series inviting you inside the lives of human rights activists that AJWS supports around the world. Mercy, Misael and Pisey are all working every day to build a better future for their communities. Below, you’ll hear their inspiring stories told proudly in their own words. The work …
Living as an LGTBQI+ person in Kenya has always meant living under threat — often from your own community and certainly from the laws of the country, which makes same-sex relationships illegal. But AJWS grantees, led by truly inspiring activists, are creating change city by city. Esther “Essy” Adhiambo is one powerful activist at the …
As a teenager, Khushi Prajapati worried for her future. Her family had lost everything. Forced to move to a Delhi slum, she worked long hours as a maid, but the family could barely make ends meet. If she didn’t figure out a plan for her future, Khushi faced the likely prospect of an unwanted, early …
RAJASTHAN, INDIA — At 23, Manju Kumari is already a sarpanch, the elected head of her rural village. And she’s one of a rising number of women in India filling these political positions, ever since the government reserved a proportion of village leadership seats for women. But in the face of longstanding gender inequality and …
In El Salvador last year, a group of local farmers proved that water is more valuable than gold. The situation was dire: An upswing in gold mining had poisoned the water supply and caused dramatic increases in cancer and kidney disease. Twelve grassroots groups organized thousands of local people to pressure the government to intervene. …
In a garden in Casamance, Senegal, sprouts poke hopefully out of the soil.
In 1981, during the Guatemalan armed conflict, 21-year-old political activist Emma Molina Theissen was arrested, brutally raped and tortured for nine days by the military.
In 2010, as rumors of a same-sex wedding swirled in the conservative coastal city of Mombasa, Kenya, angry Muslim and Christian religious leaders mobilized locals to “flush out the gays.”
The past two years have brought a litany of assaults on global human rights—many from within our own government. Among the most egregious: The Trump administration tried to slash funding for international aid and has cut off all funding to international organizations that support reproductive choice. To mitigate the administration’s threats, AJWS has participated in …
One afternoon when Sonali Khatun was only 14, she returned home from school in her small village of Sahanagar, India, to find rows of chairs set up in her family’s mud house.