Social Watch E-Newsletter - Issue 240 - November 16, 2015

After a two days meeting in Bangkok, at the end of October, the statistical experts of the UN agencies have come with a controversial list of 159 “generally agreed” indicators to measure the Sustainable Development Goals approved last September by the UN.
Traditionally, development agencies have tried to summarize in a single indicator or index complex development goals. Thus, UNICEF emphasized infant mortality as a proxy indicator of its mandate to protect children, the World Bank has traditionally equated development with per capita income, and UNDP enriched that idea with its Human Development Index based on a larger but still reduced set of indicators. Those single figures were considered to correlate so closely with other relevant indicators (for example infant mortality correlates with child underweight) that they were considered as useful to represent broad trends, progress or regression, in realities that everybody understood as being complex. Read more

During the 23rd Working Group session of the Universal Periodic Review the situation of human rights in Lebanon were reviewed by the UN member states. During the interactive dialogue several member states directed recommendations to Lebanese Delegation on the issues of women’s rights, torture, migrant workers, establishment of a moratorium on the death penalty.
Presentations made by the Lebanese delegation failed to adequately respond to civil society recommendations with regard to Palestinian Refugees. Currently Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and those who have recently fled conflict in Syria do not have access to the basic human rights they deserve. We would encourage the Lebanese delegation to take on board the recommendations tabled by those seven members of the Human Rights Council who mentioned the problems faced by Palestinian refugees in access to the labour market and access to basic services. This should be complemented with genuine implementation of the 18 recommendations on Palestinian refugees that were directed to Lebanon in 2010 review. Those recommendations were tackling key violations faced by the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, with regard to the right to work, identification documents, freedom of movement, and the right to own land, housing and property. Read more

With this year’s Business and Human Rights Forum (November 16-18) scheduled to take place at almost the same time as the Group of 20 Summit (November 14-15), the temptation to highlight the dissonance between what is happening in each of these venues is just too great to resist.
At the Forum on Business and Human Rights, the main theme will revolve around a report on measuring implementation of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (“Guiding Principles”), submitted last July by the Working Group on Business and Human Rights. Read more