Resilience Fellowship

The Fellowship is part of the GI-TOC's flagship Resilience Fund, which provides grants and support to civil society individuals and organizations working to counter the impacts of criminal governance and violence across the world. Established with a grant from the government of Norway, the Resilience Fund is also supported by the governments of Germany, the Netherlands and New Zealand and works in partnership with international organizations and NGOs worldwide.

The Fellowship offers support through the following mechanisms:

-Grants: This Fellowship aims to directly address the lack of financial support for initiatives targeting gender-inclusive projects that address environmental crime by providing grants of £12 000 to women leaders actively working to reduce environmental crime by empowering local women.

-Capacity building: The grantees will have access to tailored capacity-building sessions. The Resilience Fund will provide each grantee with a mentor to support them in navigating the challenges unique to their context and projects and to help them with opportunities to raise the profile of their work.

-Networking and collaboration: In October 2024, the Resilience Fund will invite grantees to Vienna, Austria, to participate in global policy-making forums and attend the 12th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. The Fund will facilitate dialogues and meetings with grantees to identify ways to work together to prioritize gender issues and develop innovative strategies to protect their environments. They will also be invited to join the Resilience Fund Community Platform, which will give them access to funding opportunities, global dialogues and multilateral engagement after the grant ends.

This Fellowship is specifically designed for women working on environmental projects that have a clear link to environmental organized crime or the illicit trade in natural resources.

Environmental crime is estimated to be the third most lucrative criminal economy in the world, generating more than US$250 billion annually. Although it is often considered to be ‘victimless’, it has a significant impact on communities living near or in ecologically important areas, with women disproportionately affected due to persisting structural inequalities. Despite this, the gender dimensions of environmental crime remain under-researched, as evidenced by the lack of gender-disaggregated data. Women are also often under-represented in environmental policy-making and law enforcement, resulting in policies that fail to address issues unique to women or to make use of their specific knowledge and expertise.

By championing the voices of women working to protect the environment, we can ensure a more inclusive approach that promotes gender equality. Ways of building women’s resilience to environmental crime include facilitating women’s networks at the local level to address gender-based violence and discrimination, establishing institutional mechanisms to protect women environmental defenders, and developing community resilience to withstand, adapt to and recover from adversity and threats.