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Civil and political rights
Compendium of International Legal Instruments and Other Intergovernmental Commitments Concerning Core Civil Society Righ
For the first time ever, CIVICUS has brought together all the commitments made by national governments to protect the rights of citizens and organizations to exist and take an active part in shaping policies and practices of governments and institutions of their country. The Compendium of International Legal Instruments and Other Intergovernmental Commitments Concerning Core Civil Society Rights is a dynamic tool to help protect the rights of civil society.
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NEWS
Selected news
Brazil: incorporation of the Right to Food to national Constitution
Tue Feb 09 2010 - Source: FIAN International
On February 3, 2010, the Brazilian Congress approved the Constitutional Amendment Project (PEC in Portuguese) 047/2003, to incorporate the Right to Food as a fundamental right in the national Constitution.
Haiti's women: mobilising to meet the challenges
Mon Feb 08 2010 - Source: Mama Cash
In Port-au-Prince, the UN has set up 16 centers aimed exclusively at distributing food to women. Men had been pushing women out of food lines and stealing relief supplies from women leaving the distribution areas.
Haiti: displaced women face double jeopardy
Thu Feb 04 2010 - Source: IPS
Women's rights and development activists working in Haiti say that greater attention must be paid to the immediate needs of women and girls, as well as their role in the long-term reconstruction of the devastated country.
CAMPAIGNS
Ratify Child Soldiers Treaty
Stop closure of LGBT group in Izmir, Turkey

Poverty
Africa, geology and the march of the development technocrats
Jason Hickel asks whether 'environmental determinism' – the theory that Africa's development has been hindered as a result of 'the environmental conditions that Africans inhabit' – accurately explains Africa's poverty. While he commends its attempt to stop blaming underdevelopment 'on the presumed genetic inferiority of black people', he finds the theory and motives behind environmental determinism to be seriously lacking. Hickel asserts that environmental determinism is both ahistorical and apolitical: 'Poverty is not a problem of nature, it is a problem of power.'
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World Trade Organization - WTO
The impact of trade liberalization on the realization of human rights: Civil Society open letter to Pascal Lamy
In an open letter to WTO Director General, Pascal Lamy, civil society organizations stated their concern about the persistent and obvious contradictions between the rhetoric of complementarity between human rights and trade liberalization (as it has been implemented so far), given the real outcomes of liberalization for people and communities around the world, especially in the developing countries.
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Biotechnology and biosafety
Hope for an anti-biopiracy treaty in 2010
Prospects seem encouraging for a new international agreement to prevent biopiracy and to ensure fair and equitable benefit sharing from the use of biological resources and associated traditional knowledge. October 2010 is the target for this agreement to be adopted by governments that are Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), when the governments gather in Nagoya, Japan for the biennial Conference of the Parties.
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