Women Deliver CEO: We need a Feminist Playbook for this crisis

Maliha Khan, CEO of Women Deliver, a global advocacy organisation driving collective action for gender equality.

A few months ago, I found myself in yet another meeting where we were discussing the threats – real and growing – to our fundamental rights. The tone was familiar: defensive, fatigued, overwhelmed. Discussions were centred around what we could be doing to bring back old systems and institutions. And yet, all I could think was: this is not what we should be doing.

Yes, our movements are being systematically defunded. Civic space is shrinking. Multilateral systems are losing legitimacy, and sexual and reproductive health and rights services, activists and human rights defenders are facing growing threats, slander and defamation.

Anti-rights forces are growing stronger, embedding themselves in policy spaces, courtrooms, and online platforms.

But one of the hardest truths we have to face is that our own sector has mirrored the power imbalances we seek to dismantle.

Our sector has actively benefited from a global model that intentionally weakened the ability of “developing” countries to provide basic services to their people, making the world’s most vulnerable people reliant on donors and international NGOs headquartered thousands of miles away. And this has only made us weaker and more vulnerable.

We need to reflect on and acknowledge our own culpability in creating this system. Without this, we are liable to create yet another vulnerable system.

If we get this right, I believe that this could be the spark that ignites imagining and building a system built by and for girls and women. We could create the most dramatic change to the international development sector since it was established over 80 years ago following World War Two.

That is why Women Deliver is co-creating the Feminist Playbook: a co-owned tool to create a system that actually works for the world’s girls and women. The Playbook is not the end point; it is an evolving strategy, collectively imagined, tested in practice, and accountable to those on the ground, not just to respond to crisis, but to re-imagine, build, and act with purpose.

We – movements, institutions and citizens – must recognise this moment as an opportunity to rebuild stronger and better. We must extract lessons from failure, confront our complicity, and build power differently, rooted in solidarity, accountability, and hope.

Why a Playbook and why now?

The idea of a playbook isn’t new. The far right has theirs. We see it in Project 2025 in the United States, an example of how coordinated backlash becomes policy.

But feminists have always written manifestos of our own.

From the Combahee River Collective to the Maputo Protocol, our movements have long been guided by shared declarations of who we are, what we believe, and what we demand.

The Feminist Playbook builds on this legacy. It will be shaped by voices across movements, issues, and geographies. It will be grounded in lived realities and designed to strengthen the agency of those long excluded from setting agendas.

In April 2026, we will launch it at the Women Deliver Conference in Narrm (Melbourne), a city already rich with ancestral First Nations and Indigenous knowledge, justice work, and feminist resistance.

The conference theme is “Change Calls Us Here” and it will be an anchoring space for the movement, a safe place to pause, to reflect, and to regather our strength and resilience.

From fragmentation to collective power

We know what our movement needs: An honest acknowledgment of our mis-steps and leadership that cuts across divides. We need to build consensus and collective power through iteration and reflection. That’s what the Playbook is about.

It will set out a bold vision for systems and structures that serve people, not institutions, and the process of co-creating it will connect actors across geographies to imagine, debate, and refine the world we want.

It’s not just for Women Deliver. It’s an open call for civil society, donors, grassroots organisers, governments, youth networks, researchers, and anyone who believes in feminist futures, to join in shaping the path forward.

So, what comes next?

Between now and April 2026, we are creating space - in-person, virtually, and across every global forum we can access - for dialogue, co-creation and bold thinking. The

Playbook will reflect months of consultation, analysis, and lived experience. It will culminate at the April WD2026 conference with final debates and concrete commitments from states, donors, civil society, and others

But WD2026 isn’t the end. The Playbook and WD2026 are steps in a longer process. The work of building a new feminist architecture, one that holds, will continue long after the plenaries close in Narrm.

As a feminist leader, I believe in process. In listening. In naming what’s not working, even when it’s uncomfortable. And in choosing solidarity over spectacle.

If you’ve felt the urgency too - the dissonance, the exhaustion, but also the possibility - I invite you to join us by seeking more information on our website.