Social Watch news
Published on Mon, 2013-09-09 00:00
The human rights impacts of fiscal and tax policy will be the subject of an upcoming report by the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty. The report, to be presented in June of next year (at the 26th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council) comes on the throes of growing scrutiny of economic policies by human rights advocates and will likely be welcome not just by them, but also by organizations that work on tax justice and revenue transparency issues and will draw reassurance from seeing their concern become a human rights issue.
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Published on Thu, 2013-09-05 22:09
A consortium of civil society organisations (CSOs) of which Women for a Change is part, has reiterated its call on government to suspend the current non-governmental organisation (NGO) registration exercise and immediately initiate a process to repeal the Act.
The civil society organisations said they will remain resolute and unshaken to any innuendos and manoeuvres by any section of society to force them to be registered under an instrument that they claim was aimed at ‘killing’ the country’s democratic liberty.
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Published on Mon, 2013-09-02 09:16
The political stalemate continues in Egypt; the dismissal of the Rabeaa and Al‐Nahda sit‐ins was one of its bloodiest events. Although many players are keen to protect the Egyptian state, safeguard its persistence and support its role, efforts are still required on all fronts, including the international front, to reach effective and permanent solutions s that respect human rights and allow for a resumption of the transitional political process. This process includes promulgating a new constitution that meets the aspirations of all Egyptians s of all factions and affiliations and making conditions suitable for holding fair, democratic and unchallengeable elections. This will guarantee the right of Egyptian men and women to decide a future for them and for their representative institutions. The Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND), Beirut released a statement on August 27, 2013.
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Published on Fri, 2013-08-30 00:00
The U.S. Federal Reserve recently announced it is reviewing its policy allowing financial firms to trade in physical commodities, which has been known to distort market prices of food, fuels, and metals. This reassessment comes almost a decade after the Fed ruled that Citigroup Inc. could continue trading in physical commodities after finding the practice within the bounds of the firm’s trading and investing in financial instruments.
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Published on Thu, 2013-08-22 13:37
Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon. (Photo:
UN Photo/Rick Bajornas).
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"A life of dignity for all" should be the common goal of world governments, says Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations in the report sent on Friday August 16 to the General Assembly of the UN.
The sixty agencies and programs of the UN dealing with development currently guide their actions by the Millennium Development Goals proposed and imposed at the beginning of the century by donors, without the member states having had a chance to discuss them. The MDGs "expire" in 2015 and their replacement by a new development agenda is being hotly debated by the international community, including now also civil society organizations, philanthropic foundations, corporations and even the Internet-based social media.
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Published on Thu, 2013-08-22 00:00
"Citizen monitoring and accountability of governments, corporations and international institutions are essential for a new development agenda to succeed".
Roberto Bissio, Coordinator of Social Watch, shares his reflections on the Social Watch Philippines' National Consultation on the High Level Report on the Post 2015 Agenda.
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Published on Wed, 2013-08-21 00:00
Photo: CEDLA.
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For Bolivia – and generally the rest of Latin America—the demands for economic and social inclusion during the 1960s and 70s were associated to the struggle for greater political participation and the transition to democratic government. Therefore, social organizations devoted their energy to fighting dictatorships, considering that political rights and democratic openness would bring as a consequence the much-awaited economic democratization and the improvements in life standards for the whole population.
But political participation in democracy through voting (but delegated in terms of representation to the monopoly of the political parties) and progress in respect for individual political rights (recognition to ethnical, gender and other differences) came together with a liberal economic model based on deeply despotic premises.
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Published on Thu, 2013-08-15 23:37
The Czech Social Watch Coalition released the new National Social Watch Report summarizing the development in the year 2012. The title of the report is Czech Republic: Decline and Resignation and it focuses on social development and gender equity, particularly on the following areas: economics, family and social politics, Roma minority, gender and environmental issues.
The year 2012 was not a good one for most inhabitants of the Czech Republic. In 2012, the country still did not reach the level from 2008 and the gap between the neighbouring countries is widening. The government had no vision and positive economic programme, "fiscal consolidation," which meant budget cuts, was its only objective. One-fifth of the working people are endangered by poverty, more women than men. Absence of an effective conception of social housing also represents a problem. Forced moving of people into overpriced unsuitable dormitories didn’t help to solve the situation and only supported further ghettoisation. Therefore trivial personal conflicts, in which Roma people often find themselves, lead to big anti-Roma demonstrations and attempts of pogrom. Last but not least corruption is big and visible problem of Czech politics as well.
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Published on Thu, 2013-08-15 21:56
Ahafo Mine at Kenyasi, in
Asutifi District. (Photo:
Ghana’s Mining Portal)
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The commodity dependence of most African countries has intensified, despite claims of remarkable economic performance in recent times, Dr Yao Graham, Coordinator of the Third World Network Africa, has said.
Addressing participants at the 14th Review and Strategy Conference of African Initiative on Mining Environment and Society (AIMES), Dr Graham said amidst the deafening rhetoric that Africa is rising; most countries on the continent continue to reel under unfavourable economic conditions.
“The economies of most countries on the continent are fragile and this is going side by side with the deafening rhetoric that Africa was rising,” he said, at the opening session of the conference.
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Published on Mon, 2013-08-12 11:39
In 2000, as part of the Millennium Development Goals, governments committed to Goal 8 on a “Global Partnership for Development.” While the other 7 goals dealt with issues that were measurable at the domestic level (percentage of people in poverty, maternal mortality rates, etc.) the Global Partnership for Development was meant to address areas where international cooperation was seen as necessary to make progress towards the goals.
But, what were the consequences for human rights and capabilities of how such international cooperation was conceptualized in MDG 8, and of the targets and indicators that were attached to it as representative of progress?
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