The co-operation with women and women's groups worldwide has been an important field of activity for Terre des Femmes since the beginning. Co-operative participation in specific projects is an essential part of our activities. The spectrum of the work for human rights is very broad, and so are the possibilities of networking. One organization on its own cannot gather as much information as a network, and it cannot reach as many people as an association of several organizations campaigning for the same issue. Networking enables us to exchange up-to-date information, to plan and realise activities with our partners and to increase our powers of self-assertion by combining specific competencies. We can exchange experiences and broaden our view. Networking is a challenge, also. We need to prioritize which possibilities of networking will be used because of personnel shortages. Fortunately, many committed women devote themselves to the respective topics.

The following are a selection of networks in which TERRE DES FEMMES is active, or has even been among the founder members.

BUKO: Bundeskongress entwicklungspolitischer Aktionsgruppen
(Federal Congress of Action Groups in Development)

BUKO was founded in 1977 with the aim to link groups of the solidarity movement for people in poor countries. TERRE DES FEMMES became a member in 1985, and especially in the early days of our work, BUKO has been one of our most important umbrella organizations. As other umbrella organizations emerged, TERRE DES FEMMES shifted its activities towards more topic-centred networking. Today, we are a sponsoring member of BUKO and support its work, for example through the collection of  signatures.

ECPAT: Arbeitsgemeinschaft gegen kommerzielle sexuelle Ausbeutung von Kindern
(End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking Children for Sexual Purposes)

ECPAT Germany is part of an international campaign and came into  existencein 1991 as part of a national network of 26 organizations and groups. On the occasion of the inaugural meeting, Ute Kreckel of TERRE DES FEMMES was chosen to be one of three spokespersons. Since she assumed the co-ordination between 1994 and 1999, and performed this office out of TERRE DES FEMME'sheadquarters in Tübingen. TERRE DES FEMMES specialized in the field of "Improvement of International Criminal Prosecution". Since 1999, we  have been a passive member because of the lack of financial resources that would allow us to carry on in this field.

KOK: Koordinierungskreis gegen Frauenhandel und Gewalt an Frauen im Migrationsprozess
(Coordination Circle Against Violence and Trafficking in Women and Violence Against Migrating Women)

In 1998, TERRE DES FEMMES joined the KOK, which was founded in 1987 in response to the need of nationally coordinated cooperation among women's organizations and information centres. Thanks to KOK we could get in touch with information centres and gain important insights into the work with victims, insights which are necessary for public relations and lobbying. Even if TERRE DES FEMMES is working on trafficking in women on an honorary basis only, membership in KOK still is important for our work.

FMR: Forum Menschenrechte
(Human Rights Forum)

The Human Rights Forum was founded by TERRE DES FEMMES and 18 other organizations in 1993 in Vienna on the occasion of the World Conference on Human Rights. The aim of the Forum is to critically accompany the government's human rights policy and to contribute to awareness-rising about the importance of human rights. Since 1996, Regina Kalthegener has been representing TERRE DES FEMMES in the Forum. Between 1998 and 2000 she led the FMR's secretariat. Especially within these two years, we were able to influence the FMR's actvities and successfully integrated the aspect of gender. We thereby came into close contact with the government and successfully  pressured them to create a committee on human rights in Parliament.
The FMR  hasdifferent working groups on specific issues. TERRE DES FEMMES chose the group "Women's and Human Rights" for its focus.

NRO-Frauenforum
(Forum of Women in NGOs)

The Forum is an important network within North-South co-operation organizations for enforcing women's aims and ideas and for influencing newly designed concepts of development. It is also campaigning for equal opportunities of women and men in German NGOs. TERRE DES FEMMES was one of the founding members in 1988.
We closely co-operate with other human rights organisations and associations.


TERRE DES FEMMES is a member of the following organizations:

Worldwide, more and more women join together in order to achieve solidly concrete improvement of their living conditions. On the political level, these women's initiatives try to change the consciousness of women on the public scene and in politics.

In the words of UNIFEM, women
- constitute 1/2 of the population
- achieve 2/3 of the work,
- earn 1/10 of the world's income and
- own less then 1/100 of the world's property.