Roma Women – Speak Out! Be the Change!
We are Roma women who wish to build a movement powered by us Roma women to shape our own image and empower ourselves and our communities as we share our experiences, our view of current issues, our vision of the future. For the very first time, modern communication technologies are giving us the chance to build a virtual space for our own self-representation and make connections, wherever we are. It is up to us to speak out and be the change!
We work together to make our lives and our communities stronger! Our own strength ensures that our children can grow up healthy, ready to learn and proud.
Young women and girls carry water in Nigeria. Photo: World Bank
World’s Women Progress 2015-2016 Unveils an Alternative Policy Agenda for Economies & Gender Equality
27 April 2015 – A major new report released today in seven locations around the world by the United Nations entity for gender equality and women’s empowerment (UN Women) calls for the transformation of economies to make women’s rights and equality a reality.
The UN Women report, Progress of the World’s Women 2015-2016: Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights, brings together human rights and economic policymaking to call for far-reaching changes to the global policy agenda and imagines what the global economy would look like if it truly worked for women, for the benefit of all.
“Our public resources are not flowing in the directions where they are most needed,” said UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. “For example, to provide safe water and sanitation, quality health care, and decent child- and elderly-care services. Where there are no public services, the deficit is borne by women and girls.”
The report’s publication comes as the international community negotiates a transformative new agenda for sustainable development, 20 years after the landmark Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing, China, which set out an ambitious agenda to advance gender equality. Despite significant advances in many societies, particularly in advancing women’s legal rights, millions of women remain consigned to low paid, poor quality jobs, and lack access to health care, clean water and sanitation.
Human Rights Reader 360
Only with stronger cooperation and integration between social movements and public interest civil society groups will the shift in paradigm towards human rights become a reality. (Right to Food+Nutrition Watch 2014, People’s Health Movement)
The centrality of politics
1. Do politics matter? We should realize that if the answer to this important question is no, then we --those living in so-called democratic societies--are in deep trouble. Why? Because we know that democracy does not work under primarily technocratic regimes. Do note that the evidence shows that the answer to the question above is a strong YES: politics do indeed matter. Political parties, for example, do shape outcomes --although not always in the direction we would expect or like them to, e.g., having human rights (HR) considerations at the forefront… (V. Navarro). What this Reader has been saying repeatedly is that people need to conquer the right to fight for their rights* --and this is only possible in democracy. (F. Mestrum)
*: Independently of how powerful economic, political or even military institutions are, they persist because they are legitimized and that legitimation rests on the acquiescence of people. But people can legitimize and delegitimize! One of the characteristics of legitimacy is the power of people to change its precepts. History has certainly been a witness. (W. Herman) We are all what we remember, but also what we choose to forget and those of us who do not protest are insensitive to the inequalities in this world. (Albino Gomez)
2. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. (F. Douglas) Take, for instance, patriarchal power. It is embedded in political power and is inimically opposed to dialogue. It places all types of obstacles to dialogue. Patriarchal politicians pass judgment and give explanations as if they were the sole truth. (J. Monsalvo) Greed, hunger for power and patriarchy are congruent desires. (P. Simonetti)
