Twenty years after the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights and its Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action were adopted, more than 140 civil society representatives from around the world gathered at Vienna to commemorate the occasion. The 2013 conference, convened under the theme “Strengthening the Human Rights Movement Globally: Vienna +20,” was held in Vienna on June 26-27, and agreed on an Outcome Document that was presented by civil society at a High Level Conference on Vienna +20 hosted in the same city by the Austrian government.

Prof. Leonor Briones

In the Philippines, Social Watch Philippines monitors the MDG programs as implemented by the government. Its main advocacy is more government spending for health, education, agriculture, the environment, and for social protection for all. It has organized the Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI) which proposes alternative budgets for these MDG-related expenditures.

Huduma is an initiative of INFONET previously incubated at SODNET (Social Watch in Kenya), the United Nations Millennium Campaign and the African Institute for Health and Development (AIHD) that seeks to improve public service delivery through the strategic use of Technology.

The strategy is coined within a logic of improving the capability of the state and that of an informed citizen to collectively improve service. While the state remains the largest provider or guarantor of services, the citizenry have a right and responsibility to engage in the improvement of such services. Huduma places in the hands of citizens, simple technology and media based tools and platforms to amplify their voices, while at the same time, improves the capacity for better responsiveness.

The decade-long economic expansion in Africa has not translated into improved conditions of living for ordinary Africans. Indeed, many Africans remained trapped in the circle of joblessness, material deprivation, poverty, insecurity, loss of livelihood and mining related environmental disasters. African governments challenged to reinforce ongoing fiscal reforms and mining contract renegotiations with other measures to improve the equity between state and investor in the booming extractive sector and also to finance the AMV in full.

With the richest one percent of the population now owning 40 percent of global assets, and the bottom half sharing just one percent, inequality is fast being recognised as a stubborn underlying obstacle to development.

In recent decades, despite steady economic growth, inequality has risen in most countries and in nearly every region of the world. It takes various forms, from income gaps to unequal political access. And it originates in a variety of factors, such as gender, ethnicity, disability, legal status, caste, skin colour, language and economic status.