Brussels, August 8, 2019 (Women's World Summit Foundation) The 17 Days Campaign, led by the Women's World Summit Foundation (WWSF), aims to empower rural women and their communities to rise and claim their right to development and peace.

Every year since 2015, the Women's World Summit Foundation (WWSF) publishes the 17 Days campaign for the empowerment of rural women leaders and their communities.

World Rural Women's Day (15 Oct.) was created in 1995 in synergy with World Food Day (16 Oct.) and the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (17 Oct.). With this in mind, WWSF decided to extend this Campaign through 16 and 17 October, for those two days represent and defend the most important basic human rights of the global women's agenda.

Rural women are active agents of economic and social change and environmental protection and play crucial roles ensuring food and nutrition security, eradicating rural poverty and improving the well-being of their families. Yet, they continue to face serious challenges as a result of gender-based stereotypes and discrimination that deny them equitable access to opportunities, resources, assets and services.

The WWSF has put together an action kit that serves as an empowerment tool with strategies and recommendations for action. The kit targets, especially, rural women leaders and their communities to create new groups and networks (and strengthen existing ones) to serve as powerful lobbyists for claiming basic human rights and demanding accountability from the state and local governments.

By mobilizing local actors who work for the improvement of the quality of life in rural areas, WWSF hopes that the campaign will increase linkages with other groups, the formation of new platforms for action and strong advocacy for robust implementation.

The 17 Days Empowerment Kit 2019 for rural women leaders & their communities is available online here.

The Women's World Summit Foundation, created in 1991 in Geneva, Switzerland, as a not-for-profit, humanitarian, international organization for the realization of women and children's rights, mobilizes via its annual campaigns, round tables, world days and prize awards civil society action to catalyse increased action for change to reach the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030.