December 2010
December 24, 2010
December 17, 2010
December 10, 2010
Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico Comes To A Close
The UN Conference on Climate Change in Cancún, Mexico began on November 29th and ended today. Following last year's highly anticipated but extremely disappointing conference in Copenhagen, this time around attendees were not only much fewer in number but also much less optimistic.
The bleak outcomes of last year's conference produced the Copenhagen Accord, a vague document that failed to legally bind any of its signatories to an effective agreement. Contrast that with the Kyoto Protocol, adopted at the climate change conference in 1997, which set binding targets for 37 industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, adding urgency to this conference and next year's conference in South Africa.
But as international leaders and officials negotiate climate change within the walls of a luxury resort, members of grassroots organizations continued to protest outside, demanding policies that acknowledge those people most directly affected by climate change, including Indigenous Peoples.
MADRE and our partners have long advocated that Indigenous Peoples possess valuable knowledge about climate change and must be involved in the decision-making concerning climate change. MADRE's projects in Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama, address this link between Indigenous rights, climate change, and food sovereignty. Friends of MADRE, like Tarcila Rivera of our partner organization CHIRAPAQ and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, were also in Cancún pressuring officials to recognize the central role Indigenous Peoples and women must play in the climate change conferences.
(For more information on the links between women's rights and climate change, see our resources entitled "Climate Change and Women's Human Rights: The MADRE Model" and "A Women's Rights-based Approach to Climate Change".)
Unfortunately, civil society and officials alike remain pessimistic about the outcomes of the Cancún conferences. Even as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged that "nature will not wait while we negotiate", most acknowledge that no overarching, binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases will come out of this year's conference. And as Tom Goldtooth, one of the most prominent North American Indigenous activists was barred from attending the conference on Wednesday, the UN's readiness to engage with Indigenous Peoples in the process has been called into question.
But you can support Indigenous rights and Indigenous participation in combating climate change by supporting MADRE's various projects on climate change and environmental justice by clicking here.
http://unfccc.int/home/items/5262.php
On Human Rights Day, Call for an End to Violence against Women and Download Public Education Tools
We're drawing close to the end of the year, and like many others, we at MADRE have been looking back on everything that 2010 has been. We've supported the struggle of our sister organization in Haiti to protect women against sexual violence in the displacement camps in the aftermath of the earthquake. We've partnered with human rights advocates in Colombia who have demanded an end to the use of child soldiers. We've strategized with the leaders of a women farmers' union in Sudan to
push for fairer and more effective global food aid policies.
The list goes on, and our work will continue and grow in 2011. Today is Human Rights Day, a chance for us to celebrate these and other tireless efforts of advocates worldwide to build a world based on human rights. Every year, Human Rights Day is celebrated on the 10th of December to commemorate the United Nations' adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights in 1948. This landmark document was the among the first global efforts to officially recognize the human rights to which all people are entitled.
December 10th also marks the end of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, a campaign sparked by the Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL). This annual event begins on November 25 (International Day Against Violence Against Women) and calls for
the elimination of all forms of gender-based violence.
In recognition of both Human Rights Day and the end of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, we are releasing a series of public education materials. These highlight the many threats women around the world continue to face--but they also uplift the multitude of ways women have struggled to demand their human rights and to live a life free of violence. (Click on the thumbnail images at left to open a printable PDF version of the flyers -- and share them with your friends!)
December 09, 2010
KOFAVIV Fights the Cholera Outbreak in Haiti
The road from the Port-au-Prince airport to the women’s center established by our sister organization, KOFAVIV, is lined by a sea of blue and gray tents, tarps, and cloth that provide the only shelter thousands of displaced families have. In recent weeks, a deadly cholera outbreak has reached the displacement camps, further threatening residents’ health and security.
Our sister organization, KOFAVIV, immediately mobilized to fight the epidemic. As human rights defenders working in displacement camps, their members are uniquely positioned to assess and respond to the needs of women and families living in dozens of camps.
When I recently visited Haiti with Natalia Caruso, MADRE Program Director, we saw KOFAVIV draw on its members’ disaster management expertise to distribute life-saving cholera prevention and treatment kits. Within hours of receiving financial support from MADRE, KOFAVIV leaders had transformed it into small towers of salt, Clorox bleach, water jugs, and dark yellow soap that filled the office patio. Late into the night, they ran a makeshift assembly line, taking inventory and dividing the materials into small plastic grocery bags for distribution.
Two days later, over one hundred women crowded into the sprawling courtyard outside KOFAVIV’s center. Babies dozed in the early afternoon heat. Between trainings on cholera prevention and treatment, KOFAVIV members led the women in song. At the end of the meeting, KOFAVIV leaders distributed the cholera kits, making sure they were given to women from each of the camps represented.
KOFAVIV’s ability to turn a small donation into an event that educated women, welcomed new participants, and provided life-saving materials to displaced families is a testament to the organization’s expertise in both human rights advocacy and disaster management. MADRE is committed to continuing support for their courageous and tireless efforts to ensure that every Haitian woman and girl may life in security and free from violence.
[Ed. Note: This blog entry is the first by Nora Smiley, our new staff member who has come on board to help manage our work with our partners in Haiti. Welcome, Nora!]
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