Dear Global Community,
We’re thrilled to announce that Lina AbiRafeh joined Every Woman today as our new Chief Executive Officer.
Lina brings a powerful combination of feminist leadership, global experience, and strategic vision to the role. For the last three decades, she’s worked to end violence against women and girls and advance women’s rights, leading coordination across governments, donors, and UN agencies on prevention and response strategies in humanitarian settings. She’s also held senior leadership roles with the United Nations and international NGOs, including a decade in executive leadership at the Arab Institute for Women at the Lebanese American University. Lina has worked in policy, academic, and philanthropic settings, directed multi-agency operations, and designed strategies that institutionalised protections for women and girls. Lina is a dedicated women’s rights activist determined to build a better world for women and girls.
“The board couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome Lina,” says Dr Eleanor Nwadinobi, Every Woman Cofounder and Board of Directors Cochair. “She knows what it takes to build powerful movements for change. We’ve entered a new phase of growth and ambition that will enable us to achieve greater results, and Lina brings the strategic leadership and determination needed to turn our expanded strategy into meaningful impact. She is the right leader, at the right time, to take Every Woman forward.”
We’re so pleased to introduce you to Lina AbiRafeh.
A Message from our New CEO
Dear Every Woman Global Community,
I’m thrilled to be joining Every Woman at this critical juncture in the organisation’s history and in women’s rights. Every woman and girl has the right to live free from violence. This is at the heart of Every Woman’s mission, and it’s why I’m honoured to join this coalition and team as Chief Executive Officer.
Today, the global regression on women’s rights is organised and strategic. It has weakened and reversed legal protections against violence, cut funding to survivor services, increased the threats facing frontline activists, and intensified violence against women and girls at home, in public life, in conflict, and online.
That is exactly why our work matters now. Earlier this year, Every Woman expanded its advocacy from a single focus on a global binding instrument to multiple pathways to ending violence against women and girls. The move was strategic. As a coalition of more than 4,000 women’s rights organisations and activists in 165 countries, it saw an opportunity to work more broadly with NGOs, governments, and other stakeholders to further progress. I’m excited to move this vision forward.
Every Woman’s strength is its coalition. Our members’ expertise extends across multiple forms of violence against women and girls—in policy, advocacy, research, direct services, and more—enabling us to operate as a bridge between what women and girls live through and what governments decide.
I have spent thirty years working at the same intersection, in more than twenty countries—as an aid worker, an academic, and an activist. Afghanistan. Nepal. The Democratic Republic of the Congo. Papua New Guinea. Haiti. In every country, I asked the women, Do you feel safe? What will it take to make you feel safe? Their answers were clear: Women and girls need safety built into every system. It cannot be an add-on or an afterthought. Safety and accountability must be a guaranteed right.
Ensuring this right is the work Every Woman does. I’m excited to dive in, meet, and work with all of you. Together, we can achieve a safer, more just and equal world for all. Let’s get started.
Lina AbiRafeh, PhD
Every Woman
Chief Executive Officer
