Minister for Finance Uhuru Kenyatta.

Sources
Sodnet: http://bit.ly/iQaDPT and http://bit.ly/kUE248

Kenyan citizens will have time until the end of this month to participate in the public discussion of the budget statement delivered to the National Assembly by the Ministry of Finance. The Constitution orders the parliamentary budget committee to process the representations of the people and to take into account their recommendations. The Social Development Network (SODNET, national focal point of Social Watch) has committed itself to play an important role delivering information to the public about the budget in an open fashion.

Leonor Magtolis Briones

Source
Business Mirror

“On June 12, 1898, we declared ourselves independent from the crushing heel of Spanish colonialism” but “became a colony of the United States after a bloody war that killed thousands of Filipinos,” wrote Leonor Magtolis Briones, lead convenor of Social Watch Philippines, in this column for Bussiness Mirror, a major paper in her country.

Chilean legislators meet with CENDA's experts. (Photo: Congress of Chile)

Sources
Cámara de Diputados de Chile
Cenda 

Men who retire under the new Chilean pension system – exhibited as a model throughout Latin America – obtain now an income 33 per cent higher than women who have saved the same funds, informed researchers Manuel Riesco and Mireya Baltra, of the Centre for National Studies on Alternative Development (CENDA, national focal point of Social Watch) to the Chamber of Deputies of that country.

Demonstration at Tahrir Square, Cairo, in January. (Photo: EACPE)

Sources
Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement
Magharebia.com
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies

Twenty Egyptian civil society organisations are looking at the Tunisian example to recommend giving priority to the draft of the Constitution that will rule “the institutions of a democratic regime“, and to postpone the parliamentary and presidential elections.

Lena Mbaye and Geraldine Dávila (Photo: Afrocolombianos Visibles)

Sources
Asociación Diásporas
Report by the Colombian newspaper El Informador
EFE agency report
Previous report by the Colombian newspaper El País

Black women from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa demanded this week a firm and final commitment to equality and the end of discrimination from governments and the international community, at the closing of the Second International Meeting of women of African descent held in Cali, Colombia.