2.- INTERNATIONAL INDIGENOUS WOMEN'S FORUM ON THE OCCASION OF THE ADOPTION BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

IIWF welcomes the adoption by the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations General Assembly, on September 13, 2007.

The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples will serve as a comprehensive international human rights instrument for Indigenous women, men and youth around the world. The Declaration specifies consultations, cooperation, or partnership between Indigenous Peoples and States, which would allow Indigenous women to strengthen their advocacy in local, national and international arenas. The adoption of the Declaration will allow Indigenous women and their families to infuse local human rights struggles with the power of international law and hold their governments accountable to international human rights standards.

Through the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations marks a major victory in its long history towards developing and establishing international human rights standards. It marks a major victory for Indigenous Peoples who actively took part in crafting this Declaration. The 13th of September 2007 will be remembered as an international human rights day for the Indigenous Peoples of the world, a day that the United Nations and its Member States, together with Indigenous Peoples, reconciled with past painful histories and decided to march into the future on the path of human rights.

Effective implementation of the Declaration will be the test of commitment of States and the whole international community to protect, respects and fulfill indigenous peoples collective and individual human rights. IWWF will draw upon this new international tool to continue its commitment to advance the rights of Indigenous Women.

The votes of member states were as follows:

143 votes in favor; 4 votes against;and 11 abstentions.

Mónica Alemán
International Coordinator
International Indigenous Women's Forum
www.indigenouswomensforum.org
121 West, 27th Street, Room 301
New York, New York 10001
USA
E-mail: maleman@madre.org




3.- ICAE invites to support and suscribe

ICAE invites to support and subscribe this statement and send it to UBUNTU, to the following address: josep.xercavins@ubuntu.upc.edu 

On the occasion of the opening of the Sixty-second Annual General Assembly of the United Nations:
“LET US MAKE THE UNITED NATIONS THE CENTRAL INSTRUMENT IN DEMOCRATIC WORLD GOVERNANCE”

On 18 September this year, the sixty-second annual session of the General Assembly of the United Nations will be opened under an umbrella slogan proposed by the Secretary General: “Revitalisation of the work of the General Assembly”. A necessary and worthwhile aim.

On this occasion, we, the undersigned organisations and individuals, at the initiative of the “World Forum of Civil Society Networks UBUNTU”, wish to convey the following thoughts and proposals to the member-State representatives at the United Nations and to world public opinion in general:

1. Whether the session is arranged in its normal form, as in this case, or in a special form as when it is preceded by a Summit meeting of Heads of State and Government (the last one of that kind having been in the year 2005), its opening should always be a particular time for the world to focus on the situation of the world and on the policies to adopt for tackling its problems, challenges and collective projects.
However, as is only too customary, this opening event will almost certainly be seen as virtually insignificant on account of its meagre projection and in particular its very meagre real substantive content and resolutions beyond “politically correct” diplomatic declarations.
A far cry indeed from the “noisy” G8 gatherings, which are becoming the meetings that set the political agenda for the year, with no legitimacy of course!

2. Insisting on the lack of legitimacy of the G8 to define the year’s agenda, as those are topics which should be embraced by a United Nations of the kind we need, we wish to avail ourselves of this occasion to raise just some of the topics to be included in this agenda - without seeking in any way to be exhaustive.

2.1. The return to the arms race. Just when the Treaties of the Cold War period and the “fall of the Berlin wall” made us fancy that the world would cease once and for all to threaten self-destruction and that the “war economy” would cease to be a way for the world’s most prosperous to get richer while controlling and impoverishing still further the poor... now everything seems to be sending us back to the most absurd and pathetic of human activities: the build-up of arms. The recent US initiatives on missile shields and 60.000 million dollars in arms for “friendly” countries in the Middle East are two more tokens of this trend that requires the most firm and universal rejection.

2.2. Greedy attempts to appropriate world public assets. One of the devastating effects of climate change (as referred to by the Ubuntu Forum in its statement http://www.ubuntu.upc.edu/index.php?lg=esp&pg=2&ncom=22 ) is the thawing of the polar regions. Now we are seeing a race by neighbouring countries to claim property rights over those regions, regions which no doubt hold major natural resources. Now is the time to move on further with the concept of, and legislation on, world public property rights, held by Humanity as a whole, over those global assets.

2.3. Global speculative financial movements. When a financial crisis risks affecting the pockets of the world’s rich, those who invest in “ ‘venture capital”, the central banks rush to supply the liquidity the system needs, to make sure they suffer no loss. Almost exactly the opposite of what happened when such financial crises affected developing countries. The poor always end up losing everything.
Meanwhile, the IMF and the WB, institutions which are meant to watch over the macroeconomic and financial health of the planet as a whole, are now immersed in utterly antidemocratic processes in the “election” of their presidents. How long will it take us to refound those Organisations from the ground up as part of the United Nations system, placing them at the service of all, not just of the G8?

The above examples, the thoughts in section one, and many other realities besides, all lead as we see it to a single conclusion: the state of the world at the beginning of this twenty-first century of ours needs, as a matter of the greatest urgency, a democratic world governance system, centred on a thoroughly reformed United Nations, and possessing full legitimacy and capacity to tackle the issues and challenges facing us.

There is at least one pre-requisite for this in-depth reform: the democratisation and strengthening of the “new” United Nations system. Not just the world’s States but its citizens too should be, and feel themselves to be, directly represented in that institution, thus transforming it into the central instrument of this new democratic world governance.

In this sense, a Parliamentary Assembly or a General Assembly not only formed by States (as it is the case of the Governing Body of the ILO) could help recovering the main characteristic of the United Nations highlighter at the beginning of the Charter: “We, the Peoples”.





4.- 8 September 2007, International Literacy Day

Rosa Maria Torres
rmt_fronesis@yahoo.com

TO: United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD) Section

Mr. Mark Richmond M.Richmond@unesco.org
Director of the Division for the Coordination of UN Priorities in Education,
Education Sector, UNESCO

Ms Margarete Sachs-Israel m.sachs-israel@unesco.org
Head of the UNLD Section

With the occasion of the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD) Expert Group mid-decade review meeting convened by UNESCO’s UNLD Section, coinciding with International Literacy Day, we want to request UNESCO to adopt and reinstate the “renewed vision of literacy” proposed in the Base Document prepared for this Decade in 2000.

This Base Document was the result of a consultation and participatory process led by a selected group of literacy experts from the various regions of the world, invited for this task by UNESCO’s Basic Education Division: Chander Daswani (India), Agneta Lind (Sweden), Michael Omolewa (Nigeria), Adama Ouane (Mali) and Rosa-María Torres (Ecuador). None of them - except for A. Ouane was invited to this mid-decade review meeting and to integrate this newly created UNLD Expert Group.

The proposal for a Literacy Decade and the Base Document were submitted to consultation and approved during the World Education Forum in Dakar (April 2000). The Strategic Session “Literacy for All: A renewed vision for a ten-year global action plan" was attended by nearly 100 individuals and organizations from all over the world. It was organized on behalf of the EFA Forum by the UNESCO Institute of Education (UIE), UNESCO´s Basic Education Division, the International Literacy Institute (ILI), ISESCO, Action Aid and Sida. UNESCO also organized a wide online consultation on the subject in 2000.

The "renewed vision of literacy” proposed in that Document and endorsed in Dakar, talked about ensuring effective access to, and meaningful use of, reading and writing to the population children, youth, and adults in and out of the school system, making use of all available media and technologies, and throughout life. The proposal was not to develop child, youth and adult literacy as separate goals, policies and programmes, but rather to integrate them within a single “Literacy for All” policy framework, and to understand literacy not in isolation but as an essential and integral component of Basic Education for all people “Education for All”.

This holistic and inclusive vision of literacy is coherent with the lifelong learning paradigm and reflects the abundant research and empirical evidence accumulated in the field over the past decades.

Unfortunately, this “renewed vision of literacy” is not what is being promoted within the Decade and has apparently been abandoned by UNESCO. The Decade continues to be understood in a conventional and restricted manner, associating literacy only to youth and adults, and to out-of-school education interventions.

We thus call UNESCO, through the newly created UNLD Section and the UNLD Expert Group, to revisit the original proposal. At the same time, we commit ourselves to continue defending and advocating this renewed and expanded vision of literacy in our work and in our respective countries.

The Base Document of the UNLD (original versions in English and Spanish) and the report (in English) of the Strategic Session on the UNLD held in Dakar can be found in http://www.fronesis.org/alfabetizacion.htm

Sincerely,

Members of the Latin American Group of Specialists in Literacy and Written Culture (GLEACE) - linked to the Center for Regional Co-operation for Adult Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (CREFAL) http://www.crefal.edu.mx/

Latin American Council for Adult Education (CEAAL) http://www.ceaal.org/

 

5.- UIL Launches Best Practices Website to Mark International Literacy Day and African Regional Literacy Conference

UNESCO
Institute for Lifelong Learning
Announcement, 10 September 2007


Today marks the start of the African Regional Conference in Support of Global Literacy in Bamako,
Mali, entitled “Renewing Literacy to Face African and International Challenges”.

On the occasion of International Literacy Day 2007 and the Regional Conference in Mali, UIL has
launched a website listing Effective Adult Literacy and Numeracy Programmes. It currently consists of
19 programme descriptions, which include all 14 programmes selected for presentation at the African
Regional Conference in Support of Global Literacy in Mali. The site is designed to provide an ongoing
and constantly growing collection of effective programmes, and further programme descriptions from
all regions of the world will be added in the following weeks.

Its main objectives are to:
- facilitate access to information on adult literacy and numeracy programmes for a broad clientele,
including policy-makers, researchers and practitioners;
- share experiences and gain a global overview;
- identify current trends, challenges and information gaps; and
- encourage a dialogue for synergies, partnerships, networking and cooperation.

In a next step a database will be set up to act as a global platform for the provision of information
exchange of knowledge on ongoing, effective adult literacy and numeracy programmes worldwide.

The website and the future database will support UNESCO and UIL’s role as a clearinghouse in the
field of adult literacy and numeracy, and will complement the efforts of the UNLD and LIFE by
responding to the demands of UNESCO Member States for innovative and state-of-the-art evidence
that can inform and help improve their literacy policies, strategies and practices.

The website can be accessed at:
http://www.unesco.org/uil/literacyprogrammes
Contact: Lisa Krolak (l.krolak@unesco.org  ) or Ulrike Hanemann (u.hanemann@unesco.org )

 

6.- Invitation to a Forum: Women’s Rights to Land and Natural Resources

Alejandra Scampini
Alejandra.Scampini@actionaid.org 

Rural women provide 80% of food needs world wide, yet, they own less than 10% of the land. Despite international commitments to address inequality in men and women’s land and property rights, why is this still happening?

ActionAid International in collaboration with theInternational Women’s Tribune Centre and the Global Action on Aging invite you to A Field of One’s Own

A FORUM on Women’s Rights to Land and Natural Resources

9am to 12pm, Thursday
20th September 2007
10th Floor, Church Center for the UN
New York

After the Forum, we invite you to join us at the Bunche Plaza and call on the UN to put Women and Land on its agenda

 

7.- Invitation to Armenia for the Adult Education Week

Dear all:

Within the Adult Education Week 2007 scheduled for 8-15 October 2007, we would like to invite you to take part at the International Workshop on Adult Education and Intercultural Dialogue at the Crossroad ofMillenniums.

The three-day workshop will take place in Yerevan, 9-11 October 2007, and will bring together adult educators and other relevant experts from EU, non-EU Eastern Europe, CIS and Asia.

The workshop agenda will focus on issues such as:
· History and Identity;
· Arts as a Language of Intercultural Dialogue;
· Tolerance Education and the Culture of Tolerance;
· Intercultural Dialogue in Europe;
· Migration: Art of coming Home;
· Migration: Cooperation for Integration.
The working languages will be English and Armenian.

Brief information

The Adult Education Week is a project of the DVV International Branch Office in Armenia, the Adult Education and Lifelong Learning Association of Armenia in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Science of the RA supported by European Training Foundation, State Employment Service affiliated to the Ministry of Labor and Social Issues of RA and Chamber of Commerce and Industry of RA. It is a component of long-term efforts by these organisations to promote the development of Armenia's educational system for integration into European education system in accordance with the Lisbon Strategy.

Best regards,
Dr. Arevik Sargsyan (Ms.)
Assoc.Prof. of SEUA
Director of ARLIAN Consulting and Training LLC
President of AE&LLL Association
Tel./fax: +374 10 56 23 36 of.
Cell.: +374 91 40 98 37
E-mail: antenna@seua.am  , info@arlian.am


 

8.- AWID Young Women's Institute on Challenging and Resisting Religious Fundamentalisms: Call for Participants!

Source: Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)

Are you a young woman working for women's rights in the context of religious fundamentalisms? If so, we welcome your application to a Young Women's Institute on Challenging and Resisting Religious Fundamentalisms from the 18th-21st of November in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Institute is part of AWID's (the Association for Women's Rights in Development) multi-year initiative to create a better understanding of religious fundamentalisms and women's human rights. This initiative aims to produce research on the issue across religions and regions, and to create
new resources to support women's rights organizations resisting and challenging fundamentalisms.

The Institute will provide a unique opportunity for young women to:

- Share, explore and understand how fundamentalist projects work, grow and undermine women's human rights across different religions in different countries, regions and contexts;

- Discuss effective strategies by women's rights advocates to challenge fundamentalist projects, and brainstorm strategies that could be used by young women;

- Review and provide feedback on the preliminary findings of AWID's research on this topic, and help shape AWID's ongoing work on young women's rights and religious fundamentalisms.

This Institute will allow participants to explore the issues in depth whilst at the same time enabling participants to hone their skills, articulate their own visions, and work collaboratively on strategic and
cutting-edge responses to this area of women's rights work.

The Institute will be conducted in English, though provision may be made for translations into French and/or Spanish and/or Arabic, depending on the needs of the participants accepted to attend the Institute.

To be eligible to attend this Institute you must:

- be aged 18-29
- have at least 2 years experience working on gender issues, women's rights or feminist activism (voluntary or employment), preferably also with experience working with young women or youth activism;
- be working on women's rights issues which are directly affected by religious fundamentalisms and able to share your analysis about this impact as well as existing or proposed responses led by young women;
- be willing to work with AWID after the institute and make a commitment to participate in any follow-up activities.

Cost: Full scholarships to cover travel and accommodation are available to selected participants at the discretion of AWID. However, all participants will be expected to fundraise to pay a registration fee of $75US.
The registration fee will NOT be waived.

The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) is an international, feminist, creative and intergenerational membership organization working for women's rights and gender equality. AWID works to strengthen the voice, impact and influence of women's rights advocates, organizations and movements internationally. This Institute is part of AWID's Young Feminist Activism program, which implements AWID's commitment to integrate the specific priorities of young women through all of its
initiatives.

Please note: To receive an application form, please email Kataisee
Richardson at kataisee@awid.org

The deadline for applications is September 15th.

For further information, please visit www.awid.org
--
Anasuya Sengupta
www.sanmathi.org
 

9.- Professor Sue Jackson
‘Exclusionary practices? Gendered choices, opportunities and challenges in the academy’

Sue Jackson is Professor in Lifelong Learning and Gender at Birkbeck, University of London,
where she is also Head of the School of Continuing Education. She has written and published widely on gender, social class and lifelong learning, and lectures on policy and practice in lifelong learning. Her latest books include Reconceptualising Lifelong Learning: Feminist Interventions (Routledge 2007) and Challenges and Negotiations for Women in Higher Education (Springer 2007).

It is possible to argue that expansions in higher education have benefited women more than they have men. Increasing numbers of women are entering the academy, both as students and as academics. However, despite claims by some to liberalism and equality, the academy remains highly gendered. There remain stark and gendered differences in disciplinary ‘choices’; in access to and participation in postgraduate study; and in hierarchies of employment. The Gender Equality Duty (GED) came into force in April 2007, with an onus on public authorities to promote equality, rather than on individuals to highlight discrimination.

But what difference will changes in policy make to practice and to the lived experiences of women in higher education? The seminar will focus on policy and practice in the academy, addressing these issues and exploring the impact of and for gender on widening and enhancing participation in higher education.

The Chancellor’s Centre Wolfson College Barton Road
Cambridge CB3 9BB
17th October 2007 at 5.30pm
with light refreshments afterwards

For further information and/or if you would like to reserve a free place, please contact Research Division, University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education

Madingley Hall Madingley CB23 8AQ
E-mail: wmk22@cam.ac.uk
www.cont-ed.cam.ac.uk 





10.- ISRRC - Advocacy In Practice Advocacy Training

International Women s Health Coalition

IWHC Advocacy in Practice at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children Review

December 6-13, 2007

New York City, USA

IWHC believes that young women need to be heard and have a place at the policy table. The commemorative high-level plenary meeting devoted to the follow-up to the outcome of the twenty-seventh special session on children (The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children Review) offers the opportunity to bring together a group of young women (ages 18-24) from diverse backgrounds and a desire to discuss and advocate on sexual and reproductive rights and health (SRRH).

From December 6-8, IWHC will facilitate a discussion and advocacy training with fifteen young women in the lead up to The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children Review. Participants will:
· explore what today's most pressing SRRH issues mean to them;
· learn how international agencies and agreements have an impact on countries, communities, and young people's lives;
· gain skills needed to voice their needs effectively to stimulate attention, agreement, and action;
· develop plans and learn tactics to successfully negotiate with social and political leaders;
· put lessons learned into practice during the The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children Review, December 11-12.
IWHC will cover costs for travel, lodging, meals, visas and travel insurance for all participants.

Participants must:
· be a woman between the ages of 18-24;
· hold a valid passport;
· have experience working in social movements (i.e. HIV/AIDS, women's, health, youth, human rights, indigenous peoples, LGBT);
· be able to read, write, and work in English.
Applications are due to aip@iwhc.org  by 27 September 2007.

Zonibel Woods
Senior Advisor, International Policy
International Women's Health Coalition
333 Seventh Avenue, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10025
zonnyw@yahoo.co.uk





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