As part of the 16 Days Campaign Against Gender Based Violence (November 25 – December 10, 2014) AWID is honoring Feminists and Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) Who Are No Longer With Us and whose contributions to the advancement of human rights are very much missed.

Find out more here.

The annual United Nations climate treaty conference kicks off in Lima, Peru, against the backdrop of several key events in the climate change arena.

These include the most recent release of the Intergovernmntal Panel on Climate Change's Summary for Policy- Makers relating to the Synthesis Report of its Fifth Assessment Report, the US-China joint announcement of their post-2020 actions on climate change, and the US$9.7 billion pledged to the Green Climate Fund.

The UN Guiding Principles, while not perfect, provide the clearest expression yet of the international community’s expectations of the human rights responsibilities of corporations, including private sector banks. The most notable response by the banking sector to date has been the formation of the Thun Group in 2011 to discuss the implementation of the Principles, and their first discussion paper, launched in 2013.

More than one year from the launch of this paper, and more than three years from the launch of the Guiding Principles themselves, a new study released by BankTrack, “Banking with principles? Benchmarking banks against the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”, attempts to assess how banks are doing at implementing the Principles into their own operations, policies and reporting.

Prof. Leonor Briones.

The budget watchdog Social Watch Philippines on Friday criticized the Senate for retaining the new definition of savings in the 2015 budget that it approved, and the possibility of funding for an expense item being declared as savings at any time of the year.

"Such a redefinition can perpetuate the pork barrel system and mechanisms similar to the Disbursement Acceleration Program, both of which have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court," the group said in a statement.

The loss of tax revenues due to international tax evasion and avoidance significantly reduce the funds available to finance policies aimed at fulfilling the human rights of women and girls and gender justice.

Due to the structural nature of gender inequality and its intersection with other categories such as age, race-ethnicity, sexual orientation and income, women in most of societies continue to be overrepresented in the lowest quintiles of the income distribution, continue to be the most responsible  for unpaid and care work, continue to be concentrated in the most precarious and poorly paid jobs, are still a minority in the spaces of representation and leadership in political, labor or territories, still face gender-based violence, human trafficking, and continue to have their sexual and reproductive rights and autonomy limited.