DIGNITY INTERNATIONAL: MONTHLY NEWSBULLETIN - April 2005
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Dignity News
* Working Group on Budget Analysis & ESC Rights
* New Contacts for Dignity International
* 2004 Annual Report of Dignity International

Other News
* WSF International Council meets in Utrecht, Holland
* Wolfowitz to the World Bank, NGO reactions
* Get On Board, Driving from Africa to Scotland to meet the G8
* Global Week of Action on Trade, 10-16 April
* Send my Friend to School, 24-30 April
* Coca-Cola: unthinkable, undrinkable, Indian campaign for the company’s accountability

* ESC Rights at the 61st UN Human Rights Commission
* 34th Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Publications
* Kofi Annan’s new report: the proposals for a reinforced UN
* Millennium Development Goals Online Campaigning Toolkit for Civil Society, CIVICUS new release
* Kenya and Housing Rights, A new COHRE report launched

Announcements
* Manifesto for Transparency, Participation, Balance and Access

Forthcoming Events, Highlights
* First Summer School on Cinema and Human Rights
* The Washington Colloquium on the Inter-American Human Rights System
* 4th International Human Rights Academy

DIGNITY NEWS

*** Working Group on Budget Analysis and ESC Rights on its way. Five organisations, the International Human Rights Internship Program, the International Budget Group, FUNDAR, ESCR-Net and Dignity International joined forces to organise the first ever Linking and Learning Programme on Budget Analysis and ESC Rights. The 7-days intense Learning Programme took place from 11-19 March in Alcochete Portugal.

The programme aimed to introduce to the development and human rights fields skills in using budget analysis as a new tool for monitoring ESC rights observance.

20 participants highly evaluated the contents and context of the programme. It is hoped that an initiative of this kind will further strengthen this field of work and that a range of follow-up activities will take place in the near future.

To assist with information and exchange in this growing area of activity, participants of the Learning Programme requested ESCR-Net to move towards the formation of a working group on Budget Analysis and ESC Rights.

To know more on follow-up activities and to subscribe to the list serve send an e-mail to: ESCR-Budgets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

The core contents of the Learning Programme will soon be available at http://www.dignityinternational.org/A/P1/docs/budgetanalysisbinder.pdf
And at http://www.dignityinternational.org/A/P1/docs/binder.doc

ESCR-NET is preparing a report of the Learning Programme which will soon be available at
http://www.dignityinternational.org/A/P1/docs/budgetanalysisreport.doc

*** New contacts for Dignity International, From April 2005, the new mailing address and contacts for Dignity International will be:
Dignity International
2 Rue des Ecrivains
67000 Strasbourg
France
Tel: +33 873 600 142/ Fax: +33 388 363 709

E-mail addresses and websites remain at:
e-mail: info@dignityinternational.org
website: http://www.dignityinternational.org

*** 2004 Annual Report of Dignity International,An easy to read annual report of Dignity International in English is now available and can be accessed at: http://www.dignityinternational.org/A/P1/docs/2004annualreport.pdf

Portuguese and French versions of the annual report are under preparation.

OTHER NEWS

*** WSF International Council meets in Utrecht, Holland. The World Social Forum International Council (IC) met in Utrecht, Holland, from March 31 to April 2 2005. The meeting evaluated the V WSF that took place in Porto Alegre, from January 26 to 31 2005. The IC also discussed the direction that the WSF process will take, specifically, the WSF 2006, which will be decentralized, in different parts of the world. The WSF will be polycentric; this means it will have multiple centers.

The meeting was preceded by a conjoint seminar of the Expansion, Methodology, Thematic, Content, Communication and Resources Commissions, from March 28 to 30.

WSF 2006, polycentric: chapter Latin America will be in Venezuela
The International Council confirmed that the VI WSF, chapter Latin America, will take place in Caracas, Venezuela, during the same period of the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland), at the end of January 2006. The Americas Hemispherical Council will meet on April 25th and 26th, in Havana, Cuba to discuss the beginning of the VI WSF and II Americas Social Forum construction processes.

There are still two more proposals of places where the polycentric WSF 2006 will take place: one in Africa and the other in Asia. The exact places and dates will be decided in regional meetings that should take place this year between April and May.

In the WSF process, the predicted events are:
- Mediterranean Social Forum, in Barcelona, Spain, from June 16 to 19 2005
- Caribe World Social Forum, in Martinique, in November 2005
- Asian Social Forum, in Pakistan, in November 2005
- European Social Forum, in Athens, in April 2006

Soon, the full report of the IC meeting will be on the WSF website. Please, wait.

The next meeting will be in Barcelona
The next IC meeting is supposed to take place this year from June 20 to 22, in Barcelona, Spain. The meeting will take place right after the I Mediterranean Social Forum (June 16 to 19). The IC commissions will also meet during the Med SF.

See:
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/index.php?cd_language=2&id_menu=

*** Wolfowitz to the World Bank. Paul Wolfowitz, despite voices against, was unanimously appointed by the 184 country-representatives present at the meeting on 31 March, as the new president of the World Bank. Wolfowitz will take over the World Bank next 1st of June. Wolfowitz affirmed the fighting against poverty, especially in Africa, as his main goal: ˜Poverty reduction is a unifying goal and one that I believe in deeply". He added that he will focus his mandate on issues such as international trade, subsidies and private sector investment. For official Bank information on his appointment, see:
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:20422192~pagePK:34370~piPK:34426~theSitePK:4607,00.html

Economic justice NGOs are highly critical with this appointment. "Paul Wolfowitz is the most controversial choice Bush could have made" said Njoki Njoroge Njehu, Director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network. "As the most prominent advocate of imposing the U.S.A's will on the world "the architect of the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq" this appointment signals to developing countries that the U.S. is just as serious about imposing its will on borrowers from the World Bank as on the countries of the Middle East. Coming on the heels of the nomination of John Bolton as Ambassador to the U.N., it reveals the contempt this Administration has for the international community."
For some NGO reaction to his appointment see http://www.50years.org/index.html
In a few days from 16-17 April, the World Bank and the IMF will meet for their annual spring gathering. Social & Economic Justice NGOs like 50 Years Is Enough Network and its partners will organise activities to demand 100% debt cancellation, the end of structural adjustment, and the cessation of economic violence against the Global South!

*** Get On Board, An African bus leaves Johannesburg and heads to Scotland. March 31st marked the start of a long 12 000 mile journey of a small African bus, which will be collecting messages of African people to deliver in Edinburgh, Scotland, on July 6, at the G8 summit. The G8 is composed by the heads of State or Government of the major industrial democracies (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and the USA), which meet annually to deal with the major economic and political issues facing their domestic societies and the international community as a whole.
The African bus, then, rather than transporting passengers, it will be transporting the messages of people from South and East Africa and bringing these to the G8 leaders. These messages will form a challenge from the people of Africa to the world leaders to support, and not undermine, Africa´s own efforts to overcome poverty and injustice, especially focusing on the AIDS crisis in Africa and visiting people living with HIV and AIDS. Get on Board will be meeting people living in extreme poverty - those whose voices are rarely heard.
Follow the campaign day-to-day at http://getonboard.actionaid.org.

*** Global Action Against Poverty, two Action Weeks in April:

*** Global Week of Action on Trade, 10-16 April.This will be the first big event of 2005, which is, as many say, the year offering a unique chance to end definitively extreme poverty. The aim of the week is to challenge the free trade myth, which says that the only way to reduce poverty across the world is through more and more free trade, liberalisation and privatisation, and to expose the devastating results of Northern government policies which seek to impose free trade wherever they can. It is vital to show that trade is about more than business and economics "it is about food, water, health, education, livelihoods" that alternatives to the current trade system do exist. There is a strong global movement for Trade Justice. To publicise these ideas, many events are planned, from public debates, art competitions and votes for Trade Justice, to concerts and mass rallies.

Millions of people are getting ready to take action to say that "free trade is not working" and to call on governments and the international financial institutions to "stop forcing economic liberalisation on the world's poor" http://www.april2005.org/

*** Send my Friend to School, 24-30 April. The aim of the week is to deliver the urgent message to world governments, education is the key to end poverty!
Governments have to be strongly called upon to live up to their promises made on education five years ago when they signed up to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for ending world poverty. The MDGs set out eight priority actions to halve world poverty by 2015. This year, they will break the first of their promises - to get as many girls as boys into classrooms by 2005. Such a failure costs lives: this year alone, one million children will die, who would have lived if governments had kept their 2005 promise on girls" education.
See how you can act at
http://www.campaignforeducation.org/action/action_2005.html

*** Fax action Campaign, Coca-Cola: STOP destroying lives, livelihoods and communities in India. April 2005 has been designated as the month of actions against Coca-Cola, and there will be actions around the world to hold Coca-Cola accountable for its crimes in India, Colombia and all over the world. Coca-Cola in India is considered guilty of causing severe water shortages for communities all across the country; polluting groundwater and soil around its bottling facilities; distributing its toxic waste as fertilizer to farmers; selling drinks with extremely high levels of pesticides. Communities in India are calling upon the support of the international community to pressure Coca-Cola to stop all these atrocities.

See how to act at http://www.indiaresource.org/action/faxcoke.php
Source: Choike

*** The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (14 March "22 April. The UN Commission on Human Rights is the world" foremost human rights forum, established in 1946. It is currently in session.

At the beginning of the session (30-31 March) the Commission considered specific issues related to the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR), stressing the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights. During these days there were interventions from:

- Chairperson-Rapporteur of the Working Group to consider options regarding the elaboration of an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on ESCR (Catarina Albuquerque); the Independent Expert on the effects of structural adjustment policies and foreign debt on the full enjoyment of all human rights, particularly ESCR; the Independent Expert on human rights and extreme poverty (Arjun Sengupta), and the Special Rapporteur on the right to food (Jean Ziegler).

According to Sengupta, poverty as to be regarded as deprivation of human development, and extreme poverty as an extreme or severe deprivation. Above all, if extreme poverty could be identified in itself as a violation of human rights, it would become an obligation for both the concerned States and the international community to make the best efforts directly to remove it.

Ziegler reaffirmed the idea of all human beings having the right to live in dignity, free from hunger - eradicating hunger and poverty is not only a question of finding resources, it is a question of Governments and other actors refraining from taking actions that caused great hunger, poverty and inequality.

Several non-governmental organizations (NGOs), speaking mainly about the violation of those rights in many countries. Several NGOs called attention to the fact of the lack of effective national legislation or its insufficient application impedes people from fully enjoying their economic, social and cultural rights as enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Further details on the 61st session of the UN Commission on Human Rights can be found at
http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/chr/index.htm

*** 34th Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - The 34th session of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights will meet in Geneva from 25 April to 13 May. The Committee will consider state party reports from Zambia, China, Norway, as well as from Serbia and Montenegro.

One of the main priority items for the Committee will be the consideration and adoption of a draft general comment on the right to work. NGO submissions to the committee will be considered on the afternoon of Monday 25 April 2005.

For a full agenda and state party reports, please see: http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/cescrs34.htm

PUBLICATIONS

*** A New Report by the UN Secretary General.On the 21st March, Kofi Annan presented to the United Nations General Assembly his new report: ‘In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all’.

Annan presented now the report, for it to be discussed in September 2005, at the Summit in New York, when world leaders are bound to discuss the progress of the Millennium Declaration (2000), which set the Millennium Development Goals venture. The report is a very comprehensive one, dealing with material as well as structural problems of the UN. Annan reinforces the need of strengthening the UN in order of being capable of respond to today’s pressing challenges, and for that, proposing changes in the General assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat as well as defending the creation of a Human Rights Council to substitute the actual Commission on Human Rights.

To Annan, "we will not enjoy development without security, we will not enjoy security without development, and we will not enjoy either without respect for Human Rights..we must act together and now is the time to act!"

A Summary of the Report can be fund at : http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/executivesummary.pdf

*** A New Tool Kit on the MDGs, CIVICUS recently released its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Online Campaigning Toolkit for Civil Society. Civil society organisations who are or would like to be involved in MDGs can now build MDG campaigns with a free online toolkit released by CIVICUS. The toolkit aims at providing a framework for the development of strategies customised for different national and regional contexts. It provides basic information on MDGs, advice on how to plan a campaign, a range of essential campaigning tools, practical campaigning skills as well as a number of case studies on MDG campaigns that have been taking place around the world.
Toolkit is available at www.civicus.org/mdg/1-1.htm.

*** Kenya and Housing Rights, A new COHRE report launched - 3 March 200 - Kenya emerged in late 2002 from the legacy of authoritarian rule with a new coalition government facing enormous challenges. In the capital Nairobi, more than half the city lives in informal settlements in slum-like conditions.

But threats of mass evictions in early 2004 led to a national campaign involving the Kenyan Coalition Against Forced Evictions and leading churches. Organisations like COHRE carried out international advocacy: see Letters sent to Government of Kenya. The evictions were suspended on 1 March 2004 after some demolitions were carried out.

COHRE then carried out a fact-finding mission into housing rights of Nairobi to investigate continuing threats and the provision of alternatives. The mission report Listening to the Poor documents the experiences of victims of demolitions as well as those still living under the threat of eviction. You can also see an Executive Summary of the report in Swahili(coming soon) and English plus the media release of 3 March 2005.

Improving conditions in informal settlements is also a major challenge, particularly ensuring the accountability of local officials and the extension of slum upgrading. Yet, the mission report documents a tendency to ignore residents in housing projects and programmes, a problem that will need to be urgently redressed to ensure the success of these programs.
COHRE is also supporting litigation efforts to ensure victims of forced http://www.cohre.org/kenya/1.html

COHRE also has just released the first number of its new bulletin - Quilomb@ - which from now on will be produced on a monthly basis. Quilomb@ is a publication about the struggle of the Quilombos people of Brazil for land and property rights - a struggle COHRE is closely involved in through its Americas Programme, based in Porto Alegre (Brazil).
English version at:http://www.cohre.org/quilombos/downloads/Boletim-Marco-05-Ingles.pdf
Portuguese version at:http://www.cohre.org/quilombos/downloads/Boletim-Marco-05-portugues.pdf

ANNOUNCEMENTS

*** Manifesto for Transparency, Participation, Balance and Access.Open Letter to the United Nation’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Activists and organizations are calling for an immediate participation of civil society and consumer-interest non-governmental organizations within WIPO’s activities. Specifically, but not limited in the two nest meetings: the Inter-sectionals Intergovernmental Meeting (11-13 April 2005) and in the Permanent Committee on Cooperation for Development Related to Intellectual Property (14-15 April 2005).

Civil society calls for participation at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)'s activities. This participation would provide a balanced discussion on WIPO's Development Agenda and on the IP system in general, observing an equilibrium between IP right holders and consumers. They also urge that WIPO plays its role in making access to knowledge feasible for humanity, bearing in mind different needs and stages of development.

Sign the letter online at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/wipo/petition.html

FORTHCOMING EVENTS HIGHLIGHTS

*** The European Inter-University Centre (EIUC) for Human Rights and Democratisation is organising the first EIUC Summer School on Cinema and Human Rights, which will be held in Venice from 25 August to 15 September 2005. The aim is to bring together students and professionals involved in both the fields of Human Rights and Cinema to reflect on the use of cinema as an instrument for enhancing human rights awareness.
See: www.cinemahumanrights.org

*** The Washington Colloquium on the Inter-American Human Rights System. A first annual meeting on Human Rights convened and organized by the American University Washington College of Law and its Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law,. The colloquium will take place on May 26-28 2005, in Washington D.C. The goal of the colloquium is to initiate an annual series of conferences in which representatives of academic institutions, civil society organizations, and government will convene to debate the central questions that affect the functioning of the Inter-American Human Rights System.

Contact information: hracademy@wl.american.edu
See: http://www.wcl.american.edu/humright/hracademy/2005/meeting.cfm

*** The 4th International Human Rights Academy will take place, from 16 to 29 October 2005, in Cape Town, South Africa. This is a course offered by the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University (Belgium), the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights at Utrecht University, the Faculty of Law of University of the Western Cape (South Africa) and the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organisations. This is a course designed to provide high quality legal education in comparative international human rights and in humanitarian law, with emphasis on the practical aspects in the various fields including health. Courses include the Universal System of Protection of Human Rights, the Regional Systems of Protection of Human Rights, International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law and Transitional Law.

Application Deadline: 1 June 2005 For more information, see www.law.ugent.be/pub/humanrightsacademy

Posted by Evelin at April 14, 2005 03:11 AM