As 2024 comes to an end, many feminists are reflecting on the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence campaign, while some are probably thinking about taking time off after being in Bangkok, Thailand a week ago for the 15th AWID International Forum. Some of us met in similar capacities during the sweltering monsoon of Chiang Mai, Thailand for the 4th Asia Pacific Feminist Forum. Convenings like these are marked by intellectual abundance coming from feminists, activists and freedom fighters who share their work, experiences, struggles, joys and collective visions for a feminist future. The exchange requires time for one to absorb and reflect, and integrate the knowledge into ongoing feminist praxis.
I attended this year’s APFF as the Communications and Impact Officer from the Knowledge, Impact and Policy cluster at IDS. As someone in communications, my presence at APFF representing IDS was an attempt to learn from and contribute to discussions on decolonial storytelling, social impact, policy, and evidence-to-impact strategies–key themes that are central to many of IDS’s ongoing projects.
The theme of the forum, Feminist World-building: Creative Energies, Collective Journeys, set the tone for three days of reflection, celebration, and strategising with an extraordinary group of feminists, women human rights defenders (WHRDs), and activists. As someone from Pakistan, it feels almost surreal that I travelled 19 hours from London Heathrow to Chiang Mai International to meet feminists from Asia and the Pacific (when there is a gathering like this and there is a way for one to be there, it’s hard to ignore it). The spirit of the forum was that of yakjehti, an Urdu word which translates to solidarity, but its spirit lies beyond that, it means unison, oneness, unity. I learned that when feminists of the global majority gather in one space, there is noise– noise of freedom, opinions, questions about the future, anxieties around current circumstances and sheer fearlessness in the face of what little the world offers to its freedom fighters– and the constant will to disrupt systems of oppression, exclusion and power.
While I have limited experience with feminist conferences of this scale, my broader background in participation, gender, and architecture enabled me to deconstruct the forum’s design through the lens of decolonial methodologies (Smith 1999): Protest, Play, and Pedagogy. I believe these three approaches always overlap, and that in the future of intersectional, feminist, and queer liberation, we must carry them forward to organise similar political spaces.
Here is a brief breakdown of how and where these approaches surfaced in response to the conference’s three guiding questions: where are we? where do we want to be? and how will we get there?
Play: From the first night, when we met for dinner at the Empress Hotel’s convention hall, to waking up at 7 a.m. for the official ‘beginning’ of the three-day event, and finally to the last day, when the forum concluded with dance, meditation, and ritual, play was an integral part of the experience. The forum was designed with openness, offering workshops that incorporated game design to explore themes like urban design and digital knowledge—one through mapping and another through an elaborately designed fictional world-building game performed by an acting group called KathaSiyah.
Play is an essential part of the future. It is through play that we speculate, let loose, and lower our inhibitions. It allows us to step into roles we might not normally feel comfortable in, and it bridges divides across geographies, ages, and religions (Spivak 2009; Feder and Gudiksen 2022). Play also creates space for chance encounters—connections that might not have been possible even in a conference like this. By participating in a game, the usual hierarchies within a room take a back seat, even if briefly. We come to know each other through our struggles and aspirations, rather than where we happen to fall in the pyramid of positions.
For example, I was fortunate to meet Zainah Anwar, co-founder of Musawah, a feminist organisation in Malaysia that works to bridge the gap between Islamic family laws and the principles of equality and justice for women. She shared stories about Asma Jahangir, a feminist icon and a giant in the global human rights movement from Pakistan. This encounter made me realize how rigid borders have deprived current and future activists, including myself, of opportunities to engage in cross-border mobility for convening, exchanging knowledge, and building solidarity within the framework of transnational feminisms (Mohanty 2013).
Protest: The forum itself was a site of protest—a collective act of resistance, a celebration of our work, a reflection on the past and a move towards the future, all while providing a platform to amplify our voices. Attendees wore keffiyehs and solidarity badges supporting trans rights, fisherfolk women, Indigenous groups, and disability justice. Protest art held a central role in these spaces of resistance. The APFF’s visual identity this year took centre stage, with illustrations adorning the halls—not just APFF’s own designs but also those that served as backdrops for other feminist groups showcasing their work through media stories, art, zines, and artisanal clothing.
This affirmed that our liberation is deeply tied to art, and the separation of arts from humanities will not serve us (Olufemi 2020). During a zine-making workshop titled Art as Resistance with Musawah, we engaged in conversations about queerness, safety, and our feminist journeys—both personal and collective protests. This was especially empowering as I connected with feminists from East Asia, particularly Malaysia and Indonesia, to discuss the parallels and contrasts in our countries’ approaches to religion. We explored how Islamic law, when wielded as a governing tool, distorts our access to religion as queer feminists.
Pedagogy: Although the forum hosted nearly 500 participants, it was thoughtfully designed to create smaller, more intimate learning spaces that encouraged connection and knowledge-sharing among feminists without the usual ‘pressure’ to network. Each day began with a plenary session featuring 4–5 speakers who briefly shared insights about their practice, their country, and their feminist aspirations. These sessions were followed by a break, after which participants dispersed into various workshops and lectures, many of which we had the chance to sign up for in advance.
I chose to attend the feminist storytelling workshop by Khabar Lahariya, an independent media outlet led by women reporters from rural India. During the session, they shared a powerful practice rooted in a bottom-up storytelling approach (Haraway 1988): equipping rural women with cameras to document and share their own stories, reclaiming ownership of their narratives. They also discussed the logistical realities of running a studio that provides space for women from diverse castes and classes to report on their local communities. Despite their ground breaking work, they face challenges, including limited funding and a lack of interest from stakeholders, which restrict the platform’s growth and reach.
Final Thoughts: It’s a privilege to be part of a movement that not only challenges systems of oppression but also reimagines a better world for all. APFF 2024 affirmed that while the journey is collective, it is also very personal, and every contribution—big or small—matters. I’m taking with me the warmth, love, and connections I made at the forum. I hope for these feminist connections to deepen, soften, and expand as they are an important part of our collective feminist praxis, rooted in solidarity.
Many of the conversations I had with comrades at APFF were around the dilemma of being at a large-scale and well-funded event while grassroots feminist organisations suffer lack of funds to continue their work in our respective countries. This calls for action-oriented discourse on making the funding flow sustainable for organisations that are at the forefront of feminist struggles.
Protest, play and pedagogy have proven to be useful guiding principles to develop agendas for our feminist forums but we can employ them further as methods that counter the institutionalisation of feminist knowledge production. Instead of conferences, we can imagine de-institutional schools that could be pedagogy focused and teach us about each other’s works and strengthen transnational feminism as a movement.
Moving forward, I am left to wonder whether this feminist conference format truly benefits our cause. Does it allow us the room and space to sit with the conversations we have or to fully engage with and remember everyone we meet? If we are to decolonise perhaps a reimagination of our gatherings is necessary – one that surpasses borders and visa requirements and the privilege to ‘apply’ for a spot at the table.
