Jeannette Corbiere Lavel and
Sharon Donna McIvor.
(Photo: FAFIA)

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women decided to conduct an inquiry into the murders and disappearances of Aboriginal women and girls across Canada. The decision was announced this week by Jeannette Corbiere Lavell, President of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), and Sharon McIvor, of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA, focal point of Social Watch in that North American country).

Watch and listen to Roberto Bissio's
press conference at UN headquarters
in this webcast.

Countries like Brazil, and also China and India, in “which stimulus packages were basically directed to support the poor in different ways,” have actually recovered faster from the crisis than industrialized countries, which bailed out banks and rich people, said at UN headquarters in New York Roberto Bissio, Coordinator of Social Watch, when he launched the most recent edition of the annual report of this international network of civil society organizations.

Repression in Yemen: gross
human rights violations in an
unsustainable country.
(Photo: HRITC)

Rights are the basis of sustainable development, said Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch, when asked to summarize the conclusions of the new report of this international network of civil society organizations, launched at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday, on the eve of the Human Rights Day. Over sixty national reports by independent citizen groups form the core of the Social Watch Report 2012, which this year focuses on the rights of future generations.

(Photo: Gabby DC/Flickr/CC)

Future generations can’t control the present. They need international institutions that defend their rights. The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) to be held next year in Rio de Janeiro gives the opportunity to create them, agreed representatives of civil society from all over the world in their contributions to the Social Watch Report 2012, that will be launched in New York on Friday 9.

"Indignados" of Barcelona.
(Photo: Calafellvalo/Flickr/
Creative Commons)

European civil society organizations had already focused on the issue of sustainable development before the beginning of the current economic, environmental and social global crises. This concern has spread throughout the societies in several forms, from a mounting pressure on governments, massive demonstrations and calls to referenda, stresses the Social Watch Report 2012, to be launched this week in New York.


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