The case of the Huairou Commission: local organizing and global networking campaigns

In less than seven years, the Huairou Commission has gone from an informal, loose coalition representing an international spectrum into a global network, reaching upwards of 11,000bn grassroots women's groups. Up until 1995, women, especially from the grassroots, were locked out of discussions at the global level. They had to rely on intermediaries within formal government delegations and or within the women's movement to make their voices heard. As good as those relationships might have been, the existence of the Huairou Commission has resulted in deeper collaborations and provided a platform that grassroots women's groups can call their own. As intersecting shifts changed within the UN and in its relation to NGOs, the Huairou Commission emerged as a unique opportunity, offering a forum in which ideas are exchanged, projects jointly undertaken, and policies crafted.

The networking started in 1995 at the United Nation's (UN) Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China. Calling themselves the Women and Shelter Strategizing Groups, women meeting in the grassroots women's tent in Huairou - 30 miles away from the main conference where the Chinese government had moved them - issued a statement that urged recognition and respect for the central role women play in families and communities. Immediately after Beijing, the groups came together around a Women, Homes and Community Super Coalition (SC) in order to prepare for the UN Habitat II Conference in 1996 in Istanbul, Turkey. There, as in subsequent campaigns, network members drove the campaigns and established the principle that the Huairou Commission would be accountable to the local groups. In this and other ways, Huairou can be seen as a process institution with an emphasis on process. The leaders see themselves as a 'movement' rather than an organisation.

(From introduction)