Ziad Abdel Samad, Executive Director of the ANND. (UN photo)

Arab civil society organizations warned that the European Union (EU) “more for more” approach and the economic model it promotes is inconsistent with the national paths towards democracy and social and economic policies that the region proposes.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) that Canada and the EU are negotiating behind closed doors would result in as many as 70,000 job losses in Ontario and would undermine independent government decision-making, according to a new report produced by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ (CCPA) office in that province.

Genoveva Tisheva. (Photo: EWLA)

The austerity package recently approved by the Greek government will “damage progress towards gender equality in the European Union” and “poses fundamental questions about sovereignty and self-determination in Europe, about people’s choices and what they imply,” wrote Genoveva Tisheva, managing director of the Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation (BGRF, focal point of Social Watch in that country), in an article published in the web site of the European Women Lawyers’ Association (EWLA).

Nabeel Rajab. (Photo: Avaaz)

The regime of Bahrain accepted completely 145 recommendations and 13 partially out of the 176 submitted by other States to the UN Human Rights Council last May, as a result of the sustained efforts made by local and international civil society organizations at the session of the organ that is taking place in Geneva. But the Bahraini Human Rights Observatory warned that implementing the suggestions will require “international monitoring”.

FAO director-general José Graziano da Silva. (Photo: FAO/Ozan Kose)

Relevant environmental and peasant groups declared themselves “shocked and offended” because the heads of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) called on governments to embrace corporations as the “main engine” for global food production growth. In a collective statement, the civil society organizations said the FAO is abandoning its mission by “promoting the destruction of peasant and family farming” and the “land grabbing”.