Who are we

ARROW is a regional non-profit women’s NGO based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and has consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Since it was established in 1993, it has been working to advance women’s health, affirmative sexuality and rights, and empower women through information and knowledge, engagement, advocacy and mobilisation.

ARROW was built upon a needs assessment arising out of a regional women’s health project1 that involved the compilation of information materials on women’s health and rights. The assessment of women NGO’s and health activists and advocates showed that there was a great demand for practical information from other countries to assist women’s groups in planning and implementing their activities, especially in relation to gender sensitisation, reproductive health and rights and violence against women. Realising the wealth of information that was in existence but not easily available to women’s and health rights advocates in the region, ARROW’s founders established the organisation with the vision to create a resource centre that would “enable women to better define and control their lives.”2

ARROW’s original objectives as envisioned in 1993 were to provide information and materials to strengthen initiatives to reorient health policies and programmes so that they are more sensitive and responsive to women’s needs and perspectives; to strengthen the capacity of women’s NGO’s in the region towards influencing population and family planning programmes; and to generate new information and analysis of women’s health through collaborative research.3

These objectives have evolved over the years, while our activities have expanded in breadth and increased in their depth of complexity. Our current work spans information and communications, knowledge exchange and transfer, evidence generation for advocacy, consistent monitoring of progress towards relevant international commitments made vis-a-vis women’s health, capacity building, partnership building for advocacy, engagement at international and regional fora, and enhancing the organisational strength of both ARROW and partners.

Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women (ARROW)