The 12th Annual AWID Forum is taking place April 18-22 in Istanbul

More than 2,000 women from 140 countries traveled to İstanbul on  19  April  for the start of the Association of Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) 2012 forum.  The theme of this year’s Forum is Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women’s Rights and Justice.

The four-day international summit has attracted activists, journalists and scholars from across the globe to share their diverse experiences and together explore how to best move forward in channeling and reshaping economic power to advance women’s rights and justice.

Not only does economic power impact women all over the world in every dimension of their lives, said AWID Board President Lina Abou-Habib, but it also cuts across all women’s rights issues. The conference’s hefty agenda, with break-out sessions ranging from gender-based violence and reproductive rights to political participation and education, proves just that.

The summit kicked off as both a celebration of women activists’ work and a call to action to galvanize the international feminist movement.

“In the last 12 years we have taken a defensive approach in our political efforts. We’ve had to defend what we gained but we have not pushed forward. Now we need to rebuild the women’s movement and take the offensive,” AWID Executive Director Lydia Alpízar Durán pressed.

The Forum, which happens every four years, is a space where women from across the globe come together to share experiences, share strategies and review progress on their efforts to promote and defend women’s rights. AWID organisers indicated that this 2012 Forum saw an unprecedented 12,425 people register to participate .