In the international seminar "Women in motion for the right to education" organized by the Gender and Education Office (GEO) of the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), feminist activist and scholar Dr. Gita Sen gave a speech on advocacy spaces for the women's movement based on her experience at DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era). The new changes in the political and economic global context as well as the new spaces for advocay within the changing UN structure, namely the Human Rights Council, were among the points mentioned.
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USA has miserably failed in solving the problem of terrorism by using torture; and ruining lives of hundreds of innocent people in Gantanamo Bay. India, and for that matter any other country, can also not succeed in solving this problem simply through torture. It is a political problem and has to be solved politically. Political policies, not the jackboots, can solve such problems.
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Food safety is becoming an important lever to further restructure the rules of international agricultural trade. This is especially so as governments have already agreed to lower tariffs under the World Trade Organisation and are now turning to so-called "non-tariff barriers". South Korea is one country that has recently been hit hard by the US strategy of using food safety policies to assert US corporate control where it can. In March 2007, a secret bilateral deal on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) was signed on the sidelines of the final round of US–Korea FTA negotiations.
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In 2008, Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world in which to be a trade unionist. The government has not been a neutral or benevolent actor in Colombia’s human rights nightmare. A short paper by Public Citizen outlines key talking points surrounding the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and labour rights abuses. The Colombia FTA investment rules replicate the extreme investor privileges and investor-state private enforcement found in NAFTA and CAFTA.
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"Here is harassment of civil society organisations, especially those involved in the struggle for human rights. But we particularly protest the accusation against nine women activists, relating to the case of a nine-year-old girl who became pregnant after she was raped by her stepfather".
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It's rare for the junior partners of NAFTA—Mexico and Canada—to have a chance to sit down and discuss regional integration without the dominating influence of the United States. Even when they do, of course, the U.S. is the elephant in the room. The University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico hosted a conference recently on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) from the Canadian and Mexican perspective. Although most of the presentations were from academics, businessmen or government officials, the panel on civil society participation reflected on the long political history of the nearly 15-year-old NAFTA and its offspring, the SPP.
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Brazil: Increasing repression and criminalization against Landless People Movement (MST)
Zimbabwe alert: secretary General of MDC has been arrested
Selected news
Human Rights
- Wed Jul 02 2008
Release of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo ordered
Following its decision imposing a stay on the proceedings of the case The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Trial Chamber I ordered today the release of the accused.
Source:
Internacional Criminal Court
Health
- Fri Jul 04 2008
G8 Summit: Leaders Need to Deliver on Promises
The international trade union movement, through its Global Unions AIDS Progamme, has joined with civil society groups in Africa and around the world as part of the World AIDS Campaign to ensure that universal access remains on the G8 agenda.
Source:
ITUC
Sustainable Development
- Wed Jul 02 2008
Climate: Poor taking more burden on climate actions, warns Stiglitz
While global warming will disproportionately affect the poor in the world, the response to global warming has also in some ways placed the burden of adjustment disproportionately on the poor, warned the renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz.
Source:
SUNS
This site presents a compilation of examples of how communities in different parts of the world are moving from failed privatised water management to successful publicly managed water and wastewater services.
