Tulika Srivastava

Founder

Founder of Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives Trust (AALI)

Tulika Srivastava is the founder of Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives Trust (AALI) (1998)[1], an Indian non-profit working on human rights and women & children from Lucknow.

Tulika Srivastava is an Indian feminist human rights lawyer and one of the founding members of the Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives Trust (AALI), a women's rights organisation established in Lucknow in 1998 and described as the first feminist advocacy organisation in Uttar Pradesh. She sits on AALI's board of trustees.

She has also led two international women's rights institutions, serving as executive director of Women's Fund Asia and later of the International Women's Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW-AP).

Career

Srivastava began her career as a litigator at the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court and went on to work with rural women through the Mahila Samakhya programme. She was among the founders of AALI, which was set up in 1998 and works on violence against women and on women's right to autonomy in decisions about marriage and sexuality, using research, capacity building and pro bono socio-legal support. AALI reports a field presence in districts of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttarakhand.

She led Women's Fund Asia as executive director for more than a decade and subsequently became executive director of IWRAW Asia Pacific, which works on the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. She has worked across the Global South, including in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, on treaty negotiations and advocacy relating to CEDAW, the International Criminal Court and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Srivastava has served as co-chair of Prospera, the international network of women's funds, is vice chair of the board of Women Deliver, and is a board member of the Feminist Alliance for Rights.[2][3][4][5][6]

Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives Trust (AALI)

AALI is a feminist organisation constituted and led by women, established in 1998 with an ideological framework rooted in the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Headquartered in Lucknow with branch offices in Varanasi, Azamgarh and Ranchi, it works across 94 districts of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttarakhand. AALI undertakes research, capacity building and survivor-centric pro-bono socio-legal support through caseworkers and empanelled lawyers, focusing on violence against women and children, women's sexual autonomy and the rights of marginalised communities including transgender people.

Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives Trust (AALI) reports the following, on its own site:

In FY 2024-25 AALI intervened in 1,685 instances of violence against women and girls and strengthened 37 casework centres with trained caseworkers in 37 districts.