Noor - Who We Are

Advisory Committee

Rima Athar

is a facilitator, educator and organizer with over fifteen years experience working to advance the rights of women, girls, and 2SLGBTIQ+ people globally. With roots in Pakistan, she has worked with community-led teams from almost every continent to strengthen advocacy on sexual and bodily autonomy, gender-based violence, digital rights and privacy, land rights and environmental justice, corporate accountability, and open philanthropy. This includes with the transnational solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), the Association for Progressive Communications, and as Coordinator of the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR). Rima currently works at the local level to bolster resident leadership in social equity initiatives at the City of Toronto, and supports international philanthropic initiatives aimed at strengthening the 2SLGBTIQ+ and feminist funding ecosystems. She also loves creating spaces for healing and well-being for those at the frontlines of social change.

Bruna David

is a historian and scientist of religion. She works as a writer and translator, especially on the themes related to gender, LGBTIQA+ people and religion. She has also done research on religious intolerance in the Brazilian context. Since she was young, Bruna has been involved in the fight for a fairer world. When in college, she funded a group to protect and provide care for the animals who were being mistreated at the college campus. Since then, she has worked with Catholics for a Free Choice (CDD-Brazil), an NGO fighting for sexual and reproductive justice. In 2019, she founded a group called Colective Faith.minists (Coletivo Fé.ministas), a collective which fights for a secular State, and against fundamentalism, and to help women and non-binary people who struggle in their own communities of faith. Her work aims to show the world that faith, religion, gender and LGBTQIA+ experiences are connected with each other in the life of people. Bruna also is a consultant for general matters on the secretariat of Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justice (RESURJ).

Fernando D’Elio

a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, has been actively working on human rights for LGBTQ people and sexual and reproductive rights since the 1990s. He has worked as researcher, journalist, advisor and consultant to many Argentinean-based and international organizations and institutions working on issues of importance to women, HIV-AIDS, sexual minorities rights, such as Nexo, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission-IGLHRC, International HIV-AIDS Alliance, REDLACTRANS, and the Ministry of Health of Argentina. In 2011, with other South American activists, he founded Akahata – Working Team on Sexualities and Genders, of which he is the Director.

Fenya Fischler

is a an experienced organiser and researcher who has worked within the fields of human rights, feminism, drug policy and migration for over a decade. She recently joined the new Narratives Network Initiative as Community Manager. She previously worked for the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), where she focused on creating spaces for feminist and broader social justice activists to build connections across movements and regions. She also co-led work to create stronger linkages between drug policy, harm reduction and feminist movements in order to build common agendas and resist criminalisation. Since, she has worked at European Digital Rights where she supported membership and coordinated the first Colour of Surveillance Conference bringing together activists and researchers on racism and surveillance across Europe. She is also a co-founder and organiser with multiple grassroots collectives in both Belgium and the UK, including most recently a queer Jewish collective in Belgium. In her spare time, she enjoys singing, learning about herbalism, and hanging out with her cats.

Fahima Hashim

founded and served as the director for Salmmah Women’s Resource Centre in Khartoum, before it was forced closed by the Sudan government. A feminist activist for over 25 years, dedicated to promoting radical change for women and their place in society, she has a focus on feminist movement building, action research and training. Currently, Fahima works for the Nobel Women’s Initiative to organize events highlighting the crucial role played by WHRDs in the Middle East and North Africa region. Based in Sudan, she is a Board member of Nazra for Feminist Studies,and an advisory Board member for the Doria Feminist Fund, the first feminist fund for women in the MENA region. In addition, she is mentoring young feminist groups as part of the Sister to Sister program organized by NWI.

Suri Kempe

is a queer, feminist activist. Over the last 15 years, her activism has been located and anchored in Muslim contexts – particularly on reforming Muslim family laws, gender equality, community building capacity development, and monitoring, learning and evaluation. Suri’s other love has also been working with queer Muslim communities, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. She has worked with the United Nations and with the parliament in Malaysia, and is currently linked to several civil society organisations, including Family Frontiers (engaged in a court battle against the government for women’s equal citizenship rights), the Asia-Pacific Research and Resource Center (ARROW) (currently serving as a Board member), and QueerLapis (co-founder of a platform that provides content by queer folks for queer folks, and is the only queer content provider in Malaysia). She also recently set up a feminist consulting company called Kemban Kolektif.

Houzan Mahmoud

is a feminist writer, activist, public lecturer and co-founder of Culture Project, a transnational project formed to raise awareness about feminism in Kurdistan and diaspora. She has an MA in Gender Studies from SOAS, London University, and is the winner of the 2016 Emma Humphrey’s Memorial Award. Houzan was born in Iraqi Kurdistan and writes and lectures internationally about women and gender-based violence. Her articles have been published in The Independent, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Huffington Post and others. Houzan has led many campaigns internationally, including campaigns against the imposition of Islamic ‘sharia’ law in Kurdistan and the Iraqi constitution. She has also led other campaigns against so-called ‘honor’ killings, and against violations of freedom of expression in Kurdistan.

Mirta Moragas

is a Paraguayan lawyer, feminist activist and human rights advocate. She has an LLM in International Legal Studies from the American University Washington College of Law with specialization in human rights and gender. She is a founder member of Vecinas Feministas por la Justicia Sexual y Reproductiva en América Latina (Feminist Neighbors for Sexual and Reproductive Justice in Latin-America) and has been for several years the Regional Coordinator of the Campaign for an Inter-American Convention on Human Rights and Reproductive Rights, a network of feminists and LGTBI organizations that promotes a binding instrument on sexual rights and reproductive rights in the Inter-American System of Human Rights. At the national level, she coordinates the advocacy team of a network of Paraguayan organizations against all forms of discrimination. Also, she belongs to Las Ramonas, a feminist group in Paraguay that coordinates the Consultorio Jurídico Feminista, a group of lawyers and social science professionals that provide free services to women. She also works as a litigator and researcher in issues regarding gender, sexuality and human rights. Mirta is a member of RESURJ, and works as Synergía’s Director of Policy and Advocacy.

Marta Music

is a queer decolonial feminist activist-researcher from ex-Yugoslavia. They work as a transnational movement organizer, a feminist economist and a weaver of systemic alternatives. Inspired by the Zapatista political horizon of the pluriverse (a world in which many alternative worlds fit), they co founded the Global Tapestry of Alternatives and dedicate their activist and academic work to building feminist alternative systems based on care and the sustainability of life. They work as the Coordinator of the Building Feminist Economies team at the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), and are currently based in Barcelona where they are finalizing their doctoral research in at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. They are also part of t.i.c.t.a.c. an autonomous transfeminist antiracist centre for analysis and critical interventions that supports anti-racist queer organizing in Spain and beyond. During their free time, they enjoy boxing, photography, hiking, drumming, spending time with their two cats and cooking for loved ones.

Kimalee Phillip

is an experienced social justice and organizational learning consultant, facilitator, writer, educator and researcher whose work is deeply grounded in, and informed by Black and Caribbean feminist thought and practice. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Human Rights and Law and her Master’s degree in Legal Studies at Carleton University. Kimalee specializes in the fields of legal studies, workers’ rights, gender-based and sexualized violence, anti-colonial, anti-racist pedagogies and organizational development. She has conducted qualitative and participatory research and has created and facilitated various workshops, curriculum and learning spaces across Ghana, Jamaica, Canada, and Grenada. She works as a Human Rights Representative with Canada’s largest public sector union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), and previously did movement-support work as a Coordinator with AWID.

Daniela Marin Platero (she/her)

is a queer Salvadoran feminist, with Nonualcan roots. She has been part of popular mobilization processes around the human right to water, the defense of the body-territory, feminist resistance, and popular education. She has accompanied and facilitated spaces at the national, regional, and international levels. Daniela currently works as a doula and as an organizational learning consultant and facilitator. She is also an aunty and is passionate about working with plants, arts and creating things with her hands.

Claire Provost

is a senior investigative journalist and feminist, passionate about the role that the media can play in social change. She was openDemocracy’s head of global investigations and founder of the Tracking the Backlash project to investigate organised anti-rights opposition around the world. There, she also established a fellowship programme for young women and LGBTIQ reporters. Previously, she worked at The Guardian and was a fellow at the Centre for Investigative Journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London. She also guest lectures in investigative journalism at Birkbeck, University of London, and works as a consultant to feminist and other progressive organisations, including the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism. Her investigations and other writing – on human rights issues and various threats to them, including from ‘anti-gender actors’ and unaccountable corporate power – have also appeared in outlets including CNN, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy and The New York Review of Books. Claire is now co-leading the development of a new Institute for Social Change and Journalism, and her first book, ‘Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy’ is coming out in 2023. She is based in Italy.

Ailynn Torres Santana

is an academic and feminist activist. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies (IRGAC) of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. From Cuba, and living recently in Ecuador, her research focuses on feminist movements, neoconservatism in Latin America, the anti-feminist agenda, and citizenship and inequality in Latin America. She is editor of the books ‘Derechos en riesgo en América Latina: 11 estudios sobre grupos neoconservadores’ and ‘Los Cuidados: del centro de la vida al centro de la política’. She has a column on OnCuba News and has collaborated with press platforms such as Jacobin-Lat, NACLA, and Sidecar-New Left Review. She is a member of the editorial boards of Cuban Studies (Harvard University) and Sin Permiso (Barcelona).

Cynthia Rothschild

is an independent activist and consultant with a focus on United Nations advocacy and policy, sexual rights, LGBT issues, HIV & AIDS, and women human rights defenders. She is currently the Director of the UN Program at Occidental College. A human rights, sexual rights and feminist activist for over 20 years, she has worked with global networks and NGOs within and outside the US, including the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, and a number of women’s and reproductive rights groups and AIDS service organizations. Cynthia is a trainer and facilitator, and also has supported NGOs in organizational development projects. Cynthia made significant contributions to the UN’s two groundbreaking reports on discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and is the author of ‘Written Out: How Sexuality is Used to Attack Women’s Organizing.’ Most recently, she edited ‘Gendering Documentation: A Manual For and About Women Human Rights Defenders,’ and wrote ‘Needing Bold Responses: The Current Landscape in Religious Extremism, Fundamentalisms, Gender and Human Rights.’ She was on the Boards of Amnesty International USA and Astraea, and is now Chair of the Board of Synergia, a member of the INCRESE board, and a member of the CREA Advisory Board. She is also a member of the Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition.

Staff members

Naureen Shameem - Executive Director

Naureen Shameem is a feminist activist and human rights lawyer with roots in Pakistan, with a focus on investigating and challenging the global far right, and transnational organizing. She is the executive director of Noor and its founder alongside an amazing group of co-conspirators. Naureen is also a director of the transnational grassroots solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws. She previously led the Advancing Universal Rights and Justice initiative at AWID, and coordinated the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs), a collaborative project countering fundamentalisms and fascisms. Naureen has acted as an advocate for gender, migrant and social justice with a number of groups; and has served in an advisory capacity with the Nebula Fund and Amnesty International. She was a Women and Justice Fellow at Cornell Law School, and studied women’s human rights, international law, critical legal theory, and religion at Harvard Law School.

Amna Nasir - Communications Lead

Rooted in Pakistan and based in Sydney, Amna is a feminist media scholar currently pursuing a PhD in Media and Gender Studies. Her research focuses on socio-political feminist movements in South Asia, exploring the intersections of media, activism, and identity. With a background in journalism and extensive experience in social media strategy, Amna has worked with leading feminist organizations to amplify underrepresented voices. Her writing and commentary have appeared in publications such as Al Jazeera, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Women’s Media Center, and Feminism in India. Amna serves on the board of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) and was among the first cohort of feminist media fellows at FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund. When she’s not immersed in research or crafting impactful digital strategies, Amna enjoys yoga, swimming, traveling on a shoestring, and keeping up with her delightfully mischievous toddler.

Sabika Abbas - Lead Organizer

Sabika is a poet, feminist organiser, SEL educator and story-teller. Her work revolves around gender and minority rights. She performs in public spaces, edits anthologies, translates and is constantly working on at least five dreamy or nonsensical side projects. If not for her work, she would be a full time stand-up comic or leading a cult of ‘doing nothing’. She sees herself as an office bearer of the nap ministry.

Ana Abelenda - Lead Organizer

Ana Abelenda is a latinx feminist from Brazil and Uruguay. She has worked for more than a decade in and around feminist economics at AWID, the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, pushing for systemic change and exploring alternative ways of organizing economies with people, planet, care and domestic workers rights at the center. Ana is also passionate about feminist and decolonial anthropology, understanding right wing fascisms in all their colors and anti-rights discourses at the local, regional and global levels. She enjoys black coffee, walking in forests, reading, playing with her kids and cat and deep conversations while floating in bodies of water.

Strategic Knowledge Building Team (KB)

Noor’s Strategic Knowledge-Building (KB) Unit aims to engage with fascism(s) and fundamentalism(s) through a global South feminist lens. Our mission is to move beyond the one-size-fits-all paradigm and address the rising anti-rights movements, trends, and rhetoric. We operate on both macro and micro levels, analyzing discourse, tactics, imaginaries, funding streams, and institutions associated with these movements. Our focus extends to understanding their impact on democracy, marginalized groups, civil society, and societies as a whole.

Noor Fellows

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Network Members

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