IMF Executive Board in session. (Photo: IMF)

Sources: Press release from the Bretton Woods Project.

Dozens of civil society organizations launched a campaign calling for an open and merit-based process to elect the next International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director, after the resignation this Wednesday of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, accused of sexual abuse.

Egypt women after voting. (Photo: Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute)

Source: AWID

"The gains women achieved over the last decades were not granted, rather the result of the hard work and struggle of women's rights movement and its supporters in Egypt and the Arab region", warned the Network of Women's Rights Organizations in Egypt (NWRO) in a statement launched this month. 

Photo: CCOO

Source: Plataforma 2015 y Más

Plataforma 2015 y Más [Platform 2015 and Beyond], one of the focal points of Social Watch in Spain, urged citizens to exert their right to vote with responsibility in the upcoming autonomic and municipal elections on Sunday 22. Thus, citizens were urged to vote for the options that include the defence of public policies in their programmes so as to ensure the State’s commitment to the eradication of poverty and inequalities.

World Health Assembly (Photo: WHO)

Sources: AP, Wall Street Journal, NY Times, TWN. 

The Sixty-fourth World Health Assembly will discuss this Thursday in Geneva, for the fifth time, the destruction of the remaining smallpox virus samples that U.S. and Russia keep alive arguing they will be necessary in case of a breakout or a "bioterrorist attack". The Third World Network  is lobbying for the destruction, while Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that "the chance of an outbreak is reasonably low,  but not zero".

Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League

A hundred civil society organisations from 17 arab countries condemned this Sunday, in an open letter to the Arab League and to the heads of government of the region, the killing of over 800 peaceful demonstrators and the arrest of 9,000 in 16 Syrian cities since the 15th. March. The also urged the League "to show consistent [...] leadership in dealing with the situation in Syria".