Announcements

March 4, 2010

"The Fourth World Conference on Women produced the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA), a comprehensive women’s human rights paradigm that envisioned the transformation of power relations. This was a global vision of social justice, equality, development and peace. Fifteen years later, the BPfA would seem to be considered by governments as technical instrument, and its substance has been depoliticised and diluted.The key implementation strategy of gender mainstreaming has lost its critical perspective and transformative purpose in terms of power relations and inequalities.

The Urgent Action Fund-Africa, a Pan-African women’s human rights organisation, notes with great concern Uganda’s draconian Anti-homosexuality Bill 2009, the ongoing parliamentary debates and the suggested amendments to the Bill.

March 5, 2010

"International Women’s day is an occasion for us, women, all over the world to celebrate and to unite for social and gender justice, environmental sustainability, peace and equality and make our voices heard! We are in the midst of the most serious crisis since decades: the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of women and men, girls and boys worldwide are threatened by the complex set of the financial, economic, energy, food, climate, and inequality crisis..."

March 4, 2010

"Madam High Commissioner, we recently had the privilege of communicating to you a letter in support of your inclusion of issues of sexual orientation and gender identity in your SMP, outlined in your Annual Report, and would like to take the opportunity of reaffirming that support in this more public setting..."

New York, March 4th, 2010

The Fourth World Conference on Women produced the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA), a comprehensive women’s human rights paradigm that envisioned the transformation of power relations.

March 8, 2010

In celebration of International Women's Day, the Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX) is launching its new website. The FTX is both a training initiative for women's rights advocates and a community of feminist and technology activists. The FTX was developed by the Association for Progressive Communications Women's Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP) in response to calls from feminist and women's rights movements for greater understanding of emerging technologies, their potential and impact on the rights and lives of women.

We need to understand what it means to be heterosexual as well as homosexual, and that our sexualities affect whether we live or die

"The Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) Campaign, a network of over 300 women’s, human rights and social justice groups around the world urges UN Member States and the UN Secretariat to move swiftly forward to create the new UN gender equality entity. GEAR also urges the UN to set up a transparent process now for recruiting the best qualified Under Secretary-General to head this agency. On the 15th anniversary of the historic Beijing World Conference on Women, the United Nations must move without further delay to implement changes that it has repeatedly recognized as critical to fulfilling its mandate of working for gender equality as a crucial component of development, human rights, peace, and security.

"As women human rights defenders and members of the Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition (WHRD IC), we note with grave concern the circumstances under which Gita Sahgal, a member of the WHRD IC Executive Committee and head of the Gender Unit of the International Secretariat of Amnesty International (AI), was suspended on the same day that she publicly questioned the specific alliances entered into by AI in its advocacy to defend victims of torture in Guantanamo Bay.

"The Central American Indigenous Council (CICA) and the Continental Network of Indigenous Women of South America have nominated Dr. Mirna Cuninngham Kain, of the Miskito Peoples from the Autonomous Region of the North Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, as a representative for Latin America and the Caribbean in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues for the period 2011 to 2013. This was a joint decision made with other Indigenous regional and subregional networks..." Please consider sending a Letter of support for the candidacy of Mirna Cunningham.