Each issue, we chat with readers of Facing Fundamentalisms and share a brief summary of recent events relating to religion, tradition, culture and rights-based organizing in your contexts.
The Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (YCSRR) and Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) applaud the Commission’s focus on the assessment of the status of implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development.
We ask the members of the CPD47 to build upon the principles agreed to during the affirmation of ICPD in 1994 along with its 5 and 10 years review the 1994 ICPD and develop a rights-based approach to youth and adolescent sexual rights within the post-2015 development agenda.
At the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean conference (ECLAC) Regional Conference on Population and Development in Montevideo, Uruguay in August 2013, AFM launched an innovative and engaging campaign calling on passersby to "Talk to God" without intermediaries, via a telephone booth.
CSW58 AGREED CONCLUSIONS
This year’s negotiations at the CSW were hotly contested, as usual, and very important because of the new development framework that is being put forward to replace the MDGs when they expire in 2015. As such, women’s rights advocates, organisations and movements worked extremely hard to retain existing language and tried to push forward language so that the Agreed Conclusions contained clear commitments for gender equality and women’s human rights.
The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) strongly condemns the repeated efforts, now for the third time, to introduce the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda’s Parliament. We stand in solidarity with Ugandans who are calling for their government to withdraw this bill, once and for all, and respect the human rights of everyone.
In 2003, Sylvia Tamale was named as the “Worst Woman of the Year” by a conservative bloc within Uganda. Working at the time as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at Makerere University (she later became its Dean), she was vilified for weeks within one of Kampala’s major daily newspapers, New Vision, as responsible for everything from the moral degeneration of the nation to the reason Ugandan teenagers were going to go to hell.
Jane Bennett, African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town
In the light of a report commissioned by the United Nations secretariat, we reflect on the global economic crisis and what it means for civil society organisations.
Civil society organisations (CSOs) have been hit hard by the global economic crisis, not only because it has restricted their access to money, but also because the demand for their services has increased as a result of the crisis.
Access to money
FRIDAY FILE: Three months after the enactment of the Framework Law for true Equality between Women and Men in France, AWID spoke to women’s and LGBTQI rights activists about the various components of French policy on gender equality, to learn more about its limitatio
FRIDAY FILE - Russia’s QueerFest 2014 was marred by four last-minute venue cancellations, over 40 venue refusals, one bomb threat, frequent visits by aggressive men, and guests being “sprayed with a green, noxious substance”. More than ever before, however, QueerFest demonstrated its necessity and relevance in a country hostile towards LGBTI rights.
By Rochelle Jones
FRIDAY FILE - AWID spoke to Dawn Cavanagh* of the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) in South Africa and Sexual Rights Initiative (SRI), about the significance of the resolution on Human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity recently adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council.