Program

Advocacy and campaigns

Through a global and coordinated advocacy strategy, we believe that we can multiply the scope of our impact beyond program funding and technical support to influence national and international policies.

Advocating for social justice

At CARE International, we advocate to advance the rights and priorities of women, girls, and marginalized communities in all their diversity.

We work with partners – at grassroots, national, regional, and global levels – to influence change in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and CARE’s Vision 2030. CARE’s advocacy enables greater impact and increased accountability for commitments to fight poverty and inequality.

A group of five women raise their fists and hold signs advocating for dignified working conditions in Guatemala.

These women advocates worked to convince Guatemala to ratify the International Labour Organization's Convention 189, which establishes basic rights for domestic workers around the world.

Gender at the center

Gender equality is at the center of all we do, so our advocacy focuses on tackling deeply entrenched inequalities which impact marginalized communities, particularly women and girls. Enabling women and girls to be heard is core to our vision.

Protracted humanitarian crises, the climate emergency, and COVID-19 have only exacerbated gender inequality and thus made our focus on women and girls even more critical.

CARE works across humanitarian, development, and peace-building contexts to advance social justice and promote human rights for people of all genders.

Our breakthrough priorities

CARE advocates for change across six Impact Areas – our areas of focus to drive change towards Vision 2030, these are Climate JusticeGender EqualityCrisis ResponseRight to HealthRight to Food, Water, and Nutrition; and Women’s Economic Justice.

Over the next couple of years, we will be working with our many partners to achieve much-needed breakthroughs in two key areas:

  • Advancing voice, leadership and support for women and girls in all their diversity, particularly in crisis
  • Building forward for a gender-just, inclusive COVID-19 response and recovery

Through advocacy we aim to:

  • Give voice to calls for social, gender, and climate justice
  • Make systems and policies more responsive to the priorities and rights of women and girls
  • Enable greater accountability amongst those responsible for upholding rights
  • Put women, girls and marginalized communities front and center

Read our Global Advocacy Roadmap

Women’s Action for Better Advocacy (WABA)

Active collaboration is at the heart of CARE International's Advocacy. Through constant communication, cooperation and guidance from activists women across the globe, we are better equipped to help advance women’s and girls’ rights across sectors.

The Women’s Action for Better Advocacy (WABA)  is an independent body that holds an important seat in our global cooperation efforts. It brings together feminist leaders and activists from around the world, including leaders on advocacy, policy-making and programme delivery in crises and complex emergencies, as well as leading women and youth activists in the field of women’s rights.

By fostering connections between members and CARE, WABA furthers the work of members’ respective organizations, networks, and movements, and informs the advocacy work of CARE.

Learn more about WABA

Further resources 

Orange and yellow Graphics showing institutional buildings, flags, documents, dialogue boxes

The Global Advocacy Handbook is a toolkit of approaches, techniques, and additional resources to help CARE staff think about how to integrate advocacy into their work.

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Addressing the unprecedented and overwhelming humanitarian crisis requires response and recovery efforts to listen to and address the needs of those affected the most, especially women and girls.