Social Watch news

The Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (“the Committee”), deciding on the first case filed before it using a novel individual complaint mechanism, took the opportunity to address the behavior of a private bank. The body mandated Spain to reform aspects of its legislation that allowed banking entities to get away with abuses in mortgage proceedings thus violating the right to housing consecrated by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

In 2008, States adopted an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which, among other things, created a remedy allowing individuals to bring a complain before the respective Treaty –monitoring body (the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights).

Twenty years have passed since the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing. Then, a parallel NGO Forum—entitled “Look at the World through Women’s Eyes”—was also held during the official conference. Over ten thousands of women from all over the world, including over 70 women from Thailand, participated. It was also the first time that Thai women at grassroots level took part in an international conference.

Many of these participating Thai women were very excited to find out that so many groups of women from different corners of the world shared common problems. The difficulties that affected women ranged from domestic violence to structural violence in society. For instance, poverty, conflict over resources, destruction of natural resources and the environment, changing pattern of women’s work, massive lay-offs, subcontraction of homeworking, and the informalization of formal labour sector.  Several issues were new to the Thai women’s movement, such as economic globalization, structural adjustment programme, or certain significant but distant topics like peace and human security, militarization and arms trade.

Last month, the “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) were launched at the UN in New York. This is the outcome of two years of consultations, lobbying, and debate about what the “post-2015” agenda should look like. This agenda is likely to have far-reaching implications both for development finance and for the promotion of social and economic rights. However, why adopt goals at all? Any systematic effort to answer this seemingly elementary conceptual question has been disturbingly absent. What’s more, not only has this basic question not been answered, what is most striking is that it has hardly been asked.

Iraqi al-Amal Association in collaboration with Ala Ali (Independent Researcher/Analyst and Peace Activist) conducted a focus-group based conflict analysis of the Iraqi province of Nineveh. The findings provide important insights into recent developments in Iraq, and the advancement of ISIS.

Several key issues contributing to and sustaining conflict were identified through this research, as were points of entry for peacebuilding, which can be capitalised on to reduce tensions.