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VOICES RISING
YEAR IV - Nº183
May 26, 2006
Please note: ICAE's General Secretariat has a
new address and phone number:
Av. 18 de Julio 2095 / 301
CP 11200,
Montevideo,
Uruguay
Tel/fax: (598-2) 409 79 82
secretariat@icae.org.uy
www.icae.org.uy
content
1.- *LOSS OF A GREAT ADULT EDUCATOR AND INTERNATIONAL STATESPERSON - P.J. MHAIKI*
2.- UNGASS update 24 May
3.- UNESCO at 60: Focus on Africa
4.- MONITORING AND EVALUATION SPECIALIST, WOMEN'S JUSTICE PROJECT
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1.- *LOSS OF A GREAT ADULT EDUCATOR AND INTERNATIONAL STATESPERSON - P.J.
MHAIKI*
Paul Bélanger
paulbel@videotron.ca
Paul Mhaiki, the first Tanzanian Director of the Institute of Adult
Education in Tanzania, former
Principal of Kivukoni College, first African Vice-President of the
International Council for Adult
Education, co-founder of the International Council for Adult Education,
former Ambassador of
Tanzania to France, Spain and UNESCO and former Director of Adult Education
and Literacy
at UNESCO passed away in Songea, Tanzania, his birthplace on about the 7th
of May. He had
lived in Songea since he retired from UNESCO in the late 1980s.
Paul was the Chairperson of the organizing committee for the first world
assembly of the
International Council for Adult Education in Tanzania in 1976. He was an
early supporter
of the Julius Nyerere vision for a transformative system of lifelong
learning with an emphasis
on adult education and community schools. He went to secondary school at
the Paramio
Mission boarding school in southern Tanzania where he experienced racism and
oppression
first hand at the hands of the expatriate priests and teachers. He studied
in the United
States for an undergraduate degree in teaching and was named as the
Principal of one of the
best secondary schools in Tanzania in Moshi in the mid 1960s.
He met J. Roby Kidd of Canada and many others at the third UNESCO
International Conference
on Adult Education in Tokyo in 1972. It was there that he agreed to
become the Vice-president
for Africa for the International Council for Adult Education. He
subsequently recruited the late Julius
K. Nyerere, then President of Tanzania, to become the First Honourary
President of the International
Council for Adult Education.
He carried a sense of wisdom and a capacity to listen from a young age. He
was a deep believer in
the power of adult education and of learning to transform the world. He was
a great internationalist,
an inspiring friend, a devote Catholic, a generous and loving human being.
He is survived by a wonderful family of accomplished sons and daughters.
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2.-
UNGASS update 24 May
Below
update on today's proceedings. Please note next steps and action points at
the end.
Alejandra scampini
ACTION AID AMERICAS
Dear all,
We wanted to update you on what has been going on today at the UN with the
negotiations. First we want to
brief you on the issue of NGO access.
We had been monitoring the negotiations by being in the corridors outside
the Trusteeship Council but we have
now been kicked off the floor and while we are still in the UN, our access
is now severely limited as we cannot
interact as much with delegates coming in and out of the room. There are
definitely government delegations who
do not want NGOs there.
Countries are attempting to improve the tensions of yesterday and are trying
to work together more on text.
There are a few sub-groups that will work together to try to resolve
conflicts on specific text areas.
The Africa group is still not using the Africa common position and are
reiterating their position that the May
19 draft is acceptable to them. In this regard, at least, they are more
closely aligned with the OIC countries.
One potentially dangerous dynamic is the continuing divisions between
Northern and Southern governments,
much along the same lines as we reported yesterday. We, as civil society,
need to reach out to governments
and push the need to have a well balanced declaration.
The negotiations today started on issues of prevention (paragraphs 17-19)
and somehow, they managed to
get through the whole document. On prevention, the US introduced language on
abstinence and fidelity supported
by the Holy See, Syria, and China while Canada and the EU
introduced text to promote human rights,
gender equality, and comprehensive and evidence-based education. This is a
major issue of contention and
Syria introduced additional language related to taking into account local
and cultural norms, as well as taking
into account religious and moral values in the HIV response.
The paragraph on the Global Fund was also discussed (24). Some countries
wanted to add "middle-income"
to the text (which is a major issue right now within the Global Fund board).
The US has opposed the language
on health systems strengthening within the paragraph as well but many
other countries spoke in support of it.
India and Brazil introduced a number of excellent and strong proposals
related to trade and TRIPS, that received
quite widespread support. The US came out as most strongly against these
ideas, and asked for references to
incentives for research and development that would weaken substantially
these proposals.
NOW, the co-chairs will take into account all amendments and proposals and
present a revised text on Friday
afternoon. Negotiations will not start again until Tuesday as Monday is a
holiday here in the US.
This is good and bad - it gives us a lot of time to coordinate a strong NGO
response, including to push the issues
in the NGO declaration within countries. By Tuesday, a good number of
delegations from countries will have arrived
and can play an active role in the negotiations. However, it also means
that there is not a lot of time to reach
agreement and there may end up being a lot of compromises.
It will be important for CSO speeches and interventions at the panels,
roundtables, and plenaries to be strong
and address the deficiencies and strengths of the text under negotiation.
We feel that it's important to hold back on discussing the detailed state of
the negotiations in your media outreach
efforts at this time as things are evolving very rapidly and we ask that you
not share this email beyond
other civil society. However, we urge you to continue to reach out to the
media to discuss our demands
and hopes for the meeting.
All the best,
Maria Antonieta Alcalde, IPPF/WHR
Naina Dhingra, Advocates for Youth
Shannon Kowalski, Family Care International
Aditi Sharma, ActionAid International
Prateek Suman, Youth Coalition
Marcel van Soest, World AIDS Campaign
Zonny Woods, International Women's Health Coalition
_____________________________________________
URGENT ACTION on UN Declaration
Center for
Health and Gender Equity
YOUR
IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED TO STRENGTHEN UN DECLARATION
Dear
friends,
Several
colleagues are working literally day and night in New York to strengthen the
draft political declaration to be
considered by government delegations at UNGASS in less than two weeks. The
current document is quite weak,
and they are calling for our support in pushing governments to press for and
agree to a stronger declaration.
The following steps are taken from communications from Shannon Kowalski,
Kieran Daly, Zonny Woods and
Prateek Suman.
WHAT YOU
CAN DO: See the letter below sent yesterday by several civil society
organizations.
Please USE
AND ADAPT this letter to SEND TO YOUR OWN COUNTRY DELEGATIONS AND MISSIONS
or write your own similar letter.
This needs
to happen now.
Once the
Civil Society Declaration is finalized, we will send it to you. It would be
really helpful if you
could email and fax it to capitals -- ministries of health and national aids
councils at the least
-- as well as your missions here in New York. Follow up phone calls would
also be good.
Let them know we are watching, and want and need something good to come out
of this.
PLEASE ACT NOW IF YOU CAN.
17 May 2006
H.E.
Khunying Laxanachantorn Laohaphan
Ambassador
and Permanent Representative of Thailand Permanent Mission of Thailand to
the United Nations
H.E. Mr
Christopher Fitzherbert Hackett
Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Barbados Permanent Mission of
Barbados to the United Nations
Dear
Ambassadors
We write to
express our profound concern and alarm at the content and direction of the
political declaration being prepared for the high level meeting of the
General Assembly (31 May to 2 June).
Accordingly, we are calling for urgent intervention to make a number of key
changes to the draft declaration
to ensure that a bold, meaningful and action-oriented declaration is put
before the General Assembly.
Without
this, progress gained in the global response will likely be set back and a
vital opportunity missed to
avert many more millions of HIV infections and AIDS related illnesses and
deaths.
As the Secretary-General says in his Report on Declaration of Commitment on
HIV/AIDS:
5 years later (A/60/736), the high level meeting is “a critical opportunity
for world leaders to
chart a way forward so that the goals and vision of the Declaration are
achieved in their entirety and so that
an exceptional response is sustained into the future. This leadership
commitment is the key to
ultimately putting an end to AIDS.”
We agree
with the Secretary-General that the world is at a defining moment in its
response to the AIDS crisis and
that “to generate the exceptional response demanded by this most
exceptional global crisis, all partners in the global
AIDS response must embrace new ways of doing
business and new ways of working together.”
We are dismayed that a number of the Secretary-General’s important findings
about barriers to progress
(in A/60/737) are not specifically referred to in the text, but only alluded
to, often vaguely.
A short, but clear assessment of the global response its major failings
and areas of progress - is
an essential opening to the declaration text.
As it stands, the draft declaration does not provide a bold statement of
leadership, nor does it propose a
clear framework for future action, nor does it adequately chart new ways of
working together to sustain progress
toward the MDGs and 2005 World Summit goals - including the
bold
ambition to get as close as possible
to Universal Access by 2010.
Instead,
much of the current draft text is a selective recapitulation of the 2001
UNGASS Declaration’s
commitments, resulting in an unnecessarily long and disorderly document.
Once the 2001 Declaration is
re-affirmed, then logically there is no need to then go on and selectively
repeat
paragraphs, statements and principles already made in the 2001 Declaration.
In any case,
many of these repetitions are not verbatim but are instead often obscurely
worded and open ended with the
unintentional effect of weakening the 2001 Declaration’s commitments.
The
approach being taken so far does seem rather at odds with the objectives of
the high level meeting
called for by the General Assembly. We note the General Assembly’s
resolution (A/60/224) called for
consultations by UNAIDS and co-sponsors with Member States and other key
stakeholders to identify
common obstacles to scaling up prevention, treatment and care. It also
called for recommendations for
addressing such obstacles, as well as accelerated and expanded action. The
results of this important
consultation process are contained in the Secretary-General’s Note “Scaling
up prevention, treatment,
care and support (A/60/736)”, which also makes sound, practical
recommendations for actions and timelines.
We are disappointed to find these
recommendations are not fully included in the text, nor even referenced.
We urge
this be reconsidered.
The
inclusion of these recommendations and timelines would provide a major step
towards transforming
the text into the kind of blueprint for action which we believe is needed.
We also
believe that recommendations already forwarded to you by the UNGASS Civil
Society Coalition
contain many practical measures which would greatly enhance the declaration.
As you know, this document
is endorsed by over 250 civil society organisations across the world.
We note
that a number of the text amendments proposed by Member States are
consistent with the Civil Society
Coalition document and with the goal of a forward looking, action oriented
political declaration. We welcome this.
However, some of these new proposals lack strategies for
implementation and timelines for their completion.
We urge further efforts to refine them.
As for the
next steps, we believe that reworking the draft text into a shorter,
practical and action-oriented
declaration is achievable through utilizing existing wording, reworking
sections and with
additions as needed.
We would be pleased to assist with providing text to support your work and
that of Member States consistent
with the partnership approach to HIV/AIDS as envisaged by the 2001 UNGASS
Declaration.
As you may
be aware, in 2001 the community sector was closely involved in the
development of the UNGASS
Declaration and we were generally very supportive of the text as it
evolved. At the General Assembly, civil society
welcomed the Declaration and promoted it enthusiastically.
As it
stands, we do not see that many community based organisations and
organisations of people living with
HIV/AIDS, and indeed wider civil society, will be able to endorse this
declaration or support its use at national,
regional and community levels. Such a position would be very
regrettable, but we simply could not support a
weak declaration at this critical juncture in the global epidemic.
Indeed,
without a change in direction, we fear that the high level meeting could be
little more than a hugely
expensive exercise which instead of fostering hope and action, will instead
cause disappointment, resentment
and serious loss of momentum.
While our
comments are strongly worded, they are nonetheless meant to be
constructive.
We have no doubt of the good intentions of all those working on the text in
New York and elsewhere.
However good intentions are not sufficient to turn the tide of the
epidemic. Leadership, clear
directions
and resolve are needed more than ever.
We very
much look forward to your consideration of the points made in this letter
and to your early response.
Yours
sincerely
Jo Watson,
National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS (Australia)
Alessandra Nilo, Gestos- Soropositividade, Comunicação e Gênero
Don
Baxter Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO)
Kevin Moody, Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS
Marcel Van Soest, World AIDS Campaign
Masaki Inaba, AIDS Task Force, Africa Japan Forum, Japan
Micheal O’Connor, Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development
Omololu Falobi, African Civil Society Coalition on AIDS
Prateek Suman, Youth Coalition
Richard Burzynski, International Council of AIDS Service Organizations
Richard Elliott, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
Shannon Kowalski, Family Care International
Sisonke Msimang, Africa Civil Society Coalition on AIDS
Susan Chong, Asia Pacific Council of AIDS Service Organizations
Zonibel Woods, International Women’s Health Coalition
Cc.
H.E. Mr Jan Eliasson, President of the United Nations General
Assembly
Dr Peter Piot, Executive Director, UNAIDS
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URGENT: Sexual/Repro Rights Advocacy Needed for UNGASS Declaration
"Center for Health and Gender Equity
change@genderhealth.org
Dear Colleagues,
As you know, several of our colleagues have been working around the clock at
the UN to help shape
the final UNGASS declaration, which remains weak in critical areas. They
have asked for your urgent
help in contacting ministers of health and missions in New York -- whomever
you need to contact --
to strengthen the document's language and commitments on critical aspects of
reproductive and sexual
health and rights.
Sample letters containing key points that need strengthening or inclusion in
the draft are now available
in both
English (Muestra
carta en español). Please use these samples as you see fit or write
your own
letter and send these to your Ministers and/or Missions, etc. Please
don't forget also to attach a copy
of the Civil Society Recommendations when sending your letters as the
sample text refers to these.
Find U.N. Mission contact information via the
Blue Book.
As further information we have linked on our website to the
current draft Political Declaration and the
Civil
Society Recommendations (
Recomendaciones de la Sociedad Civil para la Declaración Política en español;
Les Recommandations de la Société Civile pour la Déclaration Politique,
version française).
Please act now!!! Time is of the essence. Best always, jodi
Jodi
Jacobson
Executive Director
Center
for Health and Gender Equity
Takoma Park,
MD, USA
(You will find all documents linked on this page:
http://www.pepfarwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68&Itemid=87 )
---------------
The Center for Health and Gender Equity is a U.S.-based non-governmental organization
focused on the effects of U.S. international policies on the health and rights of women, girls,
and other vulnerable populations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. www.genderhealth.org.
If you have difficulties viewing this message or wish to unsubscribe, please e-mail change@genderhealth.org.
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3.- UNESCO at 60: Focus on Africa
edwebmaster@unesco.org
UNESCO is celebrating its 60th anniversary over 60 weeks, with each week devoted to a theme.
The week of 22-28 May is dedicated to Africa.
Africa’s main concern is providing basic education to all children, youth and adults by offering them
a fair chance to receive quality teaching and acquire life skills.
Since the 1960s when new African states began joining the Organization, UNESCO has woven
a solid partnership with Africa
© David Fish - ActionAid
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=19521&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
UNESCO at 60: Focus on Distance Learning
UNESCO is celebrating its 60th anniversary over 60 weeks, with each week devoted to a theme.
The week of 29 May-4 June is dedicated to Distance Learning.
The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education is rapidly expanding worldwide.
UNESCO views ICT as both a necessity and an opportunity.
The Dakar Framework for Action (2000) identified the use of ICT as one of the main strategies for achieving
the Education for All (EFA) goals.
http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpURL_ID=42332&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
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4.- MONITORING AND EVALUATION SPECIALIST, WOMEN'S JUSTICE PROJECT
National Center for State Courts / South Africa / Closing date: May 31, 2006.
AWID
Resource Net
Jobs - Issue 314
Monday, May 22, 2006
resource@awid.org
SUMMARY:
The
National Center for State Courts, a non-governmental organization supporting
the justice sector
both in the United States and internationally is interested in recruiting
specialists to assist with a
forthcoming international development activity to strengthen women's justice
and criminal justice programs in South Africa.
The international donor activity will help prevent gender-based violence (GBV),
improve law enforcement and prosecution
of GBV, assist victims of gender violence and support research for combating
gender violence.
PROFILE:
We are especially interested in South African specialists with the following
capabilities:
Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist with at least 5 years experience
reporting, monitoring and
evaluating complex, multiple objective projects, results management,
performance indicators and data gathering
and measurement.
TO APPLY:
Interested qualified candidates should send your CV and note ''Women's
Justice Project'' in the referral section to:
(ipd.jobs@ncsc.dni.us).
DEADLINE
DATE: MAY 31, 2006.
(cross-posted from admin@afrea.org)
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