Civil society organisations in the European Union play a crucial role in promoting fundamental rights, but it has become harder for them to do so – due to both legal and practical restrictions. This report looks at the different types and patterns of challenges faced by civil society organisations working on human rights in the EU.
Link to Full 8-Page 2018 SUMMARY Publication
Link to Page to Access FULL 92-Page Report:
http://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2018/challenges-facing-civil-society-orgs-human-rights-eu
Rachel Moussie, Deputy Director, Social Protection Programme, Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), Paris, France
Women informal workers across the world have set out their demands for quality public childcare services through a campaign organised by the research-action-policy network WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing). The campaign grew out of research in five cities – Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Accra, Ghana; Ahmedabad, India; Durban, South Africa; and Bangkok, Thailand – in which interviews with women in informal worker organisations revealed the extent of the need for quality public childcare services (Alfers, 2016).
Informal employment accounts for more than half of non-agricultural employment in the global South, and more women than men work informally in South Asia (83%), sub-Saharan Africa (74%) and Latin America (54%) (Vanek et al., 2014). Given the size of the informal economy, our approach at WIEGO is to start from the perspective of informal workers and the daily struggles they face to earn a livelihood. Workers want to secure a better future for their children but their long working hours, low earnings and poor working conditions make it difficult to find the time and resources to care for them. As informal workers, most do not receive any maternity protections and are obliged to earn an income even though their infants may be only a few weeks old. In focusing on women informal workers, we are also reaching some of the most marginalised children in urban areas.
Direct Link to Full 4-Page 2018 Document:
https://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/document/2595/packardasrh20180321.pdf
14 September 2018 - By Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, UN Independent Expert on the Effects of Foreign Debt and Other Related Financial Obligations of States on the Full Enjoyment of All Human Rights, Particularly Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - Independent Expert Website - https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/development/iedebt/pages/iedebtindex.aspx
Direct Link to Full 23-Page Independent Expert Report: http://www.undocs.org/en/A/73/179
The UN Independent Expert on Foreign Debt just released his latest report to the UN General Assembly on Gender and Austerity, to which CADTM has contributed. The report is part of his larger piece of work on developing guiding principles on human rights impact assessments of macroeconomic reform programmes. It makes a strong case for conducting gender impact assessments of economic policies.
http://www.cadtm.org/Impact-of-economic-reforms-and-austerity-measures-on-women-s-human-rights
The Link Between Corruption & Gender Inequality: A Heavy Burden for Development & Democracy
July 2, 2018 - By Angelica Fuentes
Corruption, understood as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, is a major obstacle for sustainable economic development in Latin America. It endangers democracy, equality, the rule of law, ethical values, and justice. Furthermore, many forms of gender inequality are closely linked to high levels of corruption.
Corruption can concisely be defined as the improper use of public office in exchange for private gain. Nevertheless, corruption can take multiple forms. It can be classified as grand, referring to high levels of government corruption, petty when the abuse of power is carried out by lower-ranked officials, or political where the manipulation of policies, institutions, and rules in the distribution of resources and financing by policymakers are abused to sustain political power, status, and wealth.
Recently Latin America has undergone several massive and unprecedented anticorruption investigations. Consider Brazil, where the prosecution of politicians, and business leaders resulted in the recent incarceration of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as well as the case of Peru, with the resignation of former president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Beyond these cases, the region is continually perceived as highly corrupt.
