
Understanding the 'Right to Say NO'

What is the ‘Right to Say NO’?
The world’s elites amass wealth through a destructive economic system that has led to an unfolding ecological and climate crisis. The extractives sector – which includes opens in a new windowmining, oil and gas extraction, dirty energy, industrial agriculture, and mega infrastructure projects – lies at the very heart of this violent economic system. A system that allows corporates and the global elites to profit through the exploitation of opens in a new windowpeasant and working-class labour and the plunder of natural resources that sustain the planet and its people.
In all this, women carry the heaviest burden because of their gender assigned roles to supply reproductive goods and take care of ‘the family’. It is women who must walk further in search of clean drinking water and safer energy and put food on the table under increasingly difficult circumstances. Land grabs and forced dislocations linked to extractivist projects and the climate crisis are fuelling already high levels of violence against women across the continent.
Across the continent, women and their communities resist these imposed ideas of “development” and organise powerfully to claim their Right to Say NO. From exposing the costs and impacts of destructive "development" projects and challenging governments and corporations to blockading roads and railway lines and building solidarities between communities across the continent – women are in the vanguard of struggles for justice.
Below, we feature a set of tools and resources on the #Right2SayNO:
Voices and perspectives from women activists on the frontlines of struggles for the Right to Say NO in Burkina Faso, Madagascar, and Senegal.
Ampasindava communities in Madagascar say NO to land grab
Women activists say NO to Bomboré Gold, Burkina Faso
Women Fishers of Bargny, Senegal say NO to destructive ‘development’
Tools to support movement building and opens in a new windowactivism on the Right to Say NO, available in English, French and Portuguese.
Model terms of reference national research
Right to Say NO Community Training
Right to Say NO WoMin Collective Article
Access more Right to Say NO tools and materials HERE.

Physical Address :
Office 902, floor 9
Heerengrecht building,
87 De Korte Street,
Johannesburg
2001
Téléphone :
+27 11 339 1024
Courriel :
info@womin.org.zacreate new email