Global Forum on the Leadership of Women with Disabilities (GFLWD)

The Global Forum is a powerful collective of established and emerging women leaders with disabilities. It is the result of decades of work by self-advocates marginalized in the disability and gender equality movements. And it is dedicated to ensuring that women with disabilities are represented in their diverse entirety. The Global Forum is an enabling platform for women with disabilities globally. It is focused on promoting perspectives from the Global South and developing countries and the leadership of Black and Indigenous women with disabilities. With support from UNITAR, UN Women, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and the University of Tokyo KOMEX, this inspiring collective is building and mobilizing a network of UN agencies, organizations of persons with disabilities, parliamentary groups, and leaders in the private sector and academia to realize the full and meaningful participation of women with disabilities as agents of change at the local, national, regional, and global levels. The Global Forum is a vehicle for the systematic inclusion of disability and gender in the global policy landscape. It is not only a platform for and of women leaders with disabilities. It also generates knowledge on the situation of women and girls with disabilities. It informs policy to realize their rights. It also supports policy development, monitoring, and evaluation sensitive to the needs and perspectives of women and girls with disabilities – in daily life and decision-making.