for Peace and Freedom
Peace Disarmament Economic Justice Environment Racial Justice UN Human Rights Contact
| Women's International League
for Peace and Freedom |
|
Peace Disarmament Economic Justice Environment Racial Justice UN Human Rights Contact |
|
|
28 September 2007 WILPF Monthly Update Dear Section Presidents, International Board Members, International Affairs Representatives and Committee Convenors, We send warm greetings from the Geneva office. In this mailing you will find:
As always, we welcome feedback and input to these monthly mailings. If you have something to contribute, please send it to susi.snyder@wilpf.ch no later than the 12th day of each month. Please remember that you can find this, and past monthly mailings archived on the WILPF international website at: http://www.wilpf.int.ch/updates/up_index.htm With best wishes, Susi Snyder 1. WILPF Executive Committee- Update on activities Contacting the ExCom Presidents: Here are some highlights of what your Executive Committee (formerly called the Officers Team!) have been doing:
Dear Friends, Congress Report will go out in November: Since the conclusion of the Congress, WILPF staff have been working hard to make sure that the Congress Report is finished and ready to send to all participants by November. If you were not at the Congress and would like to receive a copy of the report, please send an email to inforequest@wilpf.ch with your name and contact information and we will send one to you. In addition, we hope that all Congress participants have submitted their evaluation forms and thank Regina Birchem, Susan Smith, Krishna Ahoojapatel and Kozue Akibayashi for agreeing to review the evaluations and produce a report on them. Human Rights Council: The 6th session of the Human Rights Council is currently meeting in Geneva and, with the wonderful support of our UN team, WILPF has been monitoring and making interventions. Recent reports and statements we have made are below. The UN General Assembly: The one place where all governments can and do come together, is currently underway in New York. You can follow what is happening in the General Assembly on the web. All speeches are available here: http://www.un.org/ga/. You can also watch the General Debate here: http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/62/. The UN Office of WILPF is once again extracting the relevant part of each speech on disarmament and war issues, as well as on women, peace and security issues. On the PeaceWomen and Reaching Critical Will websites you will find indexes, both by country and by theme, of what your government is saying. The RCW project is following these issues: Disarmament, Non-proliferation, Security, Multilateralism, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Energy, Terrorism, Iran's nuclear programme, North Korea's nuclear programme, Nuclear Weapon Free Zones, Missiles, Conventional Weapons, Small Arms and Light Weapons, Arms Trade Treaty, and Disarmament and Development/Military Spending. It is available here: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1com07/disarmindextopic.html The PeaceWomen Gender Index includes all references to gender, women, females, girls, gender equality, violence against women and participation made in statements delivered during the General Debate, available here: http://www.peacewomen.org/un/genass/GA62/ga62.html Keep Space for Peace is 4-13 October. 10 October is the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty which seeks to ensure the peaceful uses of space for the benefit of all humankind. Yet wars are already being waged from and through space -- and weaponization is already underway. This year we are invited to report our events to the publication for the UN World Space Week and it will be good to emphasize the need for a treaty on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space. Background information on Keep Space for Peace Week can be found here: http://disarm.wilpf.org/enews. Carol Urner, co-convenor of the WILPF Peace and Security working group is collecting information about events WILPF members are planning. Please contact her with your information at: carol.disarm(at)gmail.com with a copy to globalnet@mindspring.com. You can find additional background information on the Reaching Critical Will website here: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/paros/parosindex.html Interns: In the Geneva office, we are pleased to welcome Sara Arvidsson, who has recently joined our team from Sweden. Sara will be working on economic justice issues and will be assisting us by creating materials about militarism using the military spending lens. We would like to thank the Swedish Section again for their innovative and exceptionally helpful intern cooperation project. The UK section is growing in membership: Below you will find and excellent paper by Sheila Triggs about how they are attracting and keeping members. Please review their tips and see if they can apply to your section. International Criminal Court: This mailing also includes information about how to join WILPF’s delegation to the upcoming Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court (30 November – 14 December) in New York, as well as an update from the Constitution Committee and the proposed three pillared programme for WILPF. With best wishes, From a shopping list to three pillars: 1. Build WILPF + + + + + Within each pillar we need to clarify
For each we need to develop
Build WILPF: 1. Objectives:
2. How
Campaign tools to include:
b) Ideas for slogans for posters, t-shirts, stickers –
c) Celebrate WILPF’s birthday as a routinely celebrated and known item on the calendar.
3. Products statements, backgrounders, intellectual products WILPF members & sections can use
4. Events around these dates where possible, especially the birthday, and the Manifesto process, inviting intellectuals, other NGOs, leaders, students to engage with our papers and ideas 5. Benchmarks:
Challenge Militarism: Invest in Peace 1. Objectives
2. How:
Political lobbying
3. Events:
4. Products
5. Benchmarks
Strengthening the United Nations system and multilateralism 1. Objectives
2. How
3. Products
4. Events
5. Benchmarks
4. WILPF Delegation to the Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court WILPF has been very engaged in the ICC throughout the history of its development. This is an opportunity for us to remain engaged and to work with the civil society Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC). WILPF has the opportunity to send representatives to this meeting. To attend the meeting you need to register by sending your name and email address to sara@wilpf.ch by 15 October 2007.
The civil society Gender Justice Team - which is part of the Coalition for the ICC will be working during this meeting to ensure that gender issues are appropriately considered. If you would like to learn more about this please visit the website for the Women's Initiative for Gender Justice: http://www.iccwomen.org http://www.icc-cpi.int/asp/documentation/doc_6thsession.html (documents) and http://www.icc-cpi.int/library/asp/ICC-ASP-6-1_English.pdf (agenda). 5. WILPF Constitution It is the practice of some organisations that changes take effect immediately, most wait until after the meeting where the amendments were adopted to put changes into effect. There are costs and benefits of both ways, and the Constitution Committee believes it is important to formalise what exactly is WILPF’s way on this. Sections should discuss this issue and submit proposals. 6. Building WILPF Suggestions from WILPF UK President, Sheila Triggs Some suggestions of ways to stem the fall in membership in old established WILPF sections – Sheila Triggs UK WILPF Nov. 2006 This paper is specifically addressed to the problems of older WILPF sections typically in Europe, which probably have a high proportion of less active members. I hope that it will stimulate discussion and I welcome other ideas for building WILPF’s membership. The problems
Are there answers?
Membership can grow This WILL lead to some membership growth. This growth may still be more than offset by membership loss, (deaths, travel abroad, non-renewals etc). But although a high proportion of section members may currently be of retirement age, this may not be true of new members, especially if they join through your website. They are likely to be drawn in by their interest in gender, development and peace and may be recently graduated and in their twenties and thirties. Membership retention. The real question is getting your new members to rejoin the second year.
Two ideas to get new members active A ‘get together’ day. (a sort of induction) UK has tried this successfully on a small scale. Recently joined members, (initially from the last 3 years, now we have a base of about 50 recently joined members every 6 months) are invited to a Saturday which is a mixture of more information on WILPF organisation and campaigns, and ways to get involved, and role play of e.g. lobbying. These have been good fun and have motivated new members to become activists.
with small revisions, September 2007
The Reaching Critical Will project of WILPF served as the main NGO focal point for the fifth conference on facilitating the entry-into-force of the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty. In this role, we coordinated the NGO statement to the conference (here: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/ctbt/NGOstatement2007.html) as well as submitted a statement on behalf of WILPF (below). The meeting was designed to figure out ways to get those who have not yet signed or ratified this treaty to do so and join the international consensus to end nuclear testing. There are ten (10) governments who still need to ratify the treaty in order for it to come into full effect. These are: China, Colombia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan, and the United States of America. A strongly worded Final Declaration was adopted by consensus on the final day of the Conference with a clear political message in support of the Treaty. It described the ban on nuclear testing as an "effective measure of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation in all its aspects". WILPF submitted the following statement to the conference: Women have organized to oppose nuclear weapon testing since it began. For example, women collected and tested their children’s teeth for iodine 131 contamination as an important awareness raising action. Nuclear weapons are weapons of terror, weapons of a genocidal, ecocidal, and suicidal nature. Their abolition is fundamental to the security and prosperity of humanity. Security, for citizens and for nations, cannot exist when the threat of nuclear annihilation is maintained through government policies and defense industry priorities; when money is used to further develop technologies of destruction rather than education, health, employment, and the environment. As with militarism in general, nuclear weapon testing represents an ultimate injustice to people around the world. Furthermore, the effects of nuclear testing, such as cancer, birth defects, and environmental degradation, have been felt primarily by indigenous people, as most of the nuclear test sites are situated on their lands. The entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) would constitute an important step towards the nuclear free world envisioned by the vast majority of the world's citizens. The cessation of all nuclear test explosions would constrain the development and improvement of nuclear weapons. The CTBT provides measures both to determine compliance with the Treaty (ie. to detect nuclear tests) and to remedy any situation of non-compliance. It is thus one of the best tools the international community currently has at its disposal to establish a process of complete nuclear disarmament. There was universal condemnation of the October 2006 nuclear test by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in October 2006. Yet, the US, the UK, Russia, and possibly China have continued conducting subcritical tests to maintain and upgrade their nuclear arsenals. The nuclear weapon states, in particular the US and the UK, have also continued with or introduced plans to modernize or extend the lifetime of their nuclear arsenals. These actions violate the spirit of the CTBT. It is unfortunate that the CTBT does not expressly forbid qualitative improvements to nuclear weapons through subcritical testing and experimentation. Its stated ultimate objective, however, is the prevention of further nuclear weapon modernization and subsequent arms races. WILPF calls upon the nuclear weapon states to cease subcritical testing immediately. A special emphasis should be put on the UK and Russia, who have ratified the CTBT, yet undermine its efficacy by continuing to conduct these tests. In addition, the US and the UK should be condemned for their nuclear weapon modernization and extension programmes, which also weaken the CTBT. WILPF totally opposes the US-India deal which undermines the CTBT and violates the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The deal also contradicts the US' condemnation of India's nuclear weapon tests in 1998, for which economic sanctions were imposed. The proposed deal does not require a commitment from India that it will refrain from nuclear testing in the future. WILPF opposes specially tailored safeguard agreements for India, and exceptions for certain countries, as undermining multilateralism and the standards it has established. Both the US and India need to make legally-binding commitments to core non-proliferation and disarmament standards, including the CTBT. Every signature and ratification of the CTBT increases its strength and normalizes its provisions, which contributes greatly to international security. WILPF calls on those who have already ratified the Treaty to use their influence to encourage those standing outside the treaty to sign and ratify. We appreciate the comments of the UK's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Margaret Beckett, at the Carnegie Conference in June 2007, wherein she expressed interest in the US ratifying the CTBT as an impetus to its entry into force. We encourage the UK as a close ally of the US to continue pressuring for US ratification of the CTBT immediately. We also urge the UK to maintain a more consistent policy on nuclear disarmament—it is difficult to accept its support of the CTBT at face value while it continues subcritical testing of nuclear weapons and has decided to renew its Trident nuclear submarine system. WILPF also urges China, Colombia, DPRK, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and the US to sign and ratify. Every state has more to gain by ratifying the Treaty than by remaining outside of the international cooperative security regime. It has been more than a decade since the CTBT was opened for signature—it is well past time for the Treaty to enter into force. In the meantime, it is imperative that the voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing remain in place, that the Provisional Technical Secretariat and the CTBTO maintain their efforts to drive the Treaty's entry into force, and that the citizens of the world continue monitoring, questioning, and pressuring their governments to support the strengthening of international treaties and agreements such as the CTBT, with faith that international law will prevail over the absurdity of nuclear militarism. WILPF believes that through confidence-building measures, the strengthening of verification systems and regimes, and strict adherence to international law, nuclear disarmament is possible. We do not have to reinvent the wheel—we just have to support, use, and reinforce the existing viable and effective tools we have already created through diplomacy and multilateralism.
In the last monthly update, we noted the work related to the follow-up to the Durban World Conference Against Racism. The report on the Preparatory Committee is available on the WILPF website here: http://www.wilpf.int.ch/humanrights/2007/racism/PrepComReport.html. WILPF submitted a statement, in conjunction with a number of other organisations on that issue. The statement can be found here: http://www.wilpf.int.ch/humanrights/2007/durban.statement.html In this update, we’d like to share our report on the recent discussions of gender integration into the work of the Human Rights Council. INTEGRATING A GENDER PERSPECTIVE IN THE WORK OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL On 20th and 21st September 2007, the discussion focused on the integration of a gender perspective in the work of the Human Rights Council. This would represent a major challenge as well as a fundamental requirement for the effective working of the Human Rights Council. It is imperative, in fact, to address gender concerns during the institutional-building phase, rather than trying to integrate them later on, as they must be considered a constitutive part of the efforts to protect and promote human rights worldwide. The presentation given by the panellists rapidly became an interactive dialogue between delegations from member states, NGOs, and the panellists themselves. Mrs. Maria Nzomo, Ambassador of Kenya, opened the debate by highlighting the fact that gender is not a new concept, and neither is the concept of gender mainstreaming. Nevertheless, the tendency is that of misunderstanding it. Gender is not about women, but about social relations between men and women, boys and girls, indeed the entire humanity. Hence, it is an issue that lies at the very fundamental core of the work of the Human Rights Council. The need is to understand how to integrate gender concerns into the work, methodology and agenda of the Human Rights Council and the UPR (Universal Periodic Review) mechanism. This will be a challenging process, requiring the total commitment of the international community as a whole. The second intervention was presented by Ms. Kyung-wha Kang, United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights. Ms. Kang explained that gender refers to the socially constructed roles between men and women, boys and girls. Social roles and differences are deeply rooted in all cultures, but are changeable over time. At the same time, the concept of gender equality refers to the equal enjoyment of rights, opportunities, and resources. This idea is inexorably linked to the commitment of the United Nations human rights system to ensure human rights for everyone. Gender mainstreaming as a strategy has been perceived as inefficient and its lack of implementation has caused frustration among practitioners, so that the strategy has now been renamed as “gender integration”. Equal protection of the human rights of men and women is a fundamental priority if real equality between men and women is to be really achieved. Ms. Radhika Coomarazwmy, Special Representative of the Secretary General on Children and Armed Conflict, focused on the fact that gender integration is a dual process. The concern in the past years has been mainly on violence against women. Now it is time to move to the implementation phase, to ensure help for survivors and victims, Ms. Coomarazwmy said. But the need is also to move the agenda of the United Nations human rights system beyond this very issue, analysing the role of armed girl children in conflicts, recognising women’s economic and social rights, as well as reproductive rights. The intervention by the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Mr. Miloon Kothari, stressed the need for an intersectional approach to integrating a gender perspective in the work of the Human Rights Council. Not only the Special Rapporteurs whose mandate specifically regards gender issues should be concerned with this process, but the involvement of all bodies of the United Nations system for the protection and promotion of human rights is required. Moreover, consultations and a regular dialogue with grass-roots women’s organisations and civil society in general are a fundamental step to ensure the Human Rights Council and UPR mechanism will be effectively able to fill the existing gaps between recognition and protection on the ground of women’s human rights. Finally, the panel hosted Mrs. Charlotte Bunch, from the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership. Mrs. Bunch welcomed the opportunity for the civil society to work with the Human Rights Council, recalling the excitement in Vienna, where women’s concerns and the issue of violence against women were addressed. Her intervention focused on methodology, since gender integration into the work of the Human Rights Council is an urgent and practical matter, and not a mere academic exercise. The need for information, based on sex-disaggregated data and consultations with civil society, was stressed together with the consideration of the interrelationship between discrimination against women and other forms of discrimination. The key requirement for the effective implementation of a gender-specific mechanism is the true commitment of financial and human resources, and political will. Interventions by States and NGOs followed the experts’ opinions, posing interesting questions and presenting useful views for proceeding with the integration of gender into the work of the Human Rights Council. In particular, it was stressed that this represents a moral imperative in that gender integration can have a significant impact on the life and death of all women and girls worldwide. Moreover, it would be the only way to obtain an accurate picture of the modalities according to which women’s rights and concerns are addressed in member states. It was agreed that a two-track approach was needed: gender should be integrated both at the international and the national level, and intersection between the mandates of the different bodies and special procedures of the United Nations system is required. As for methodology, the work of the Human Rights Council should be guided by what has already been done and what continues to be done by other UN agencies and offices, such as UNIFEM, UNICEF, OHCHR, etc. Moreover, the UPR should be designed as to include a gender perspective too. The aim should be that of transforming commitments into real improvements of the situation of women and girls worldwide. And this is a fundamental priority if the Human Rights Council wants to really raise itself as a body that is able to fully protect and promote human rights. Indeed, its credibility cannot be ensured if it fails to address the human rights violations of half of the worldwide population. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
WILPF
1, rue de Varembé,
Case Postale 28,
1211 Geneva 20,
Switzerland Tel: +41 22 919 7080 /Fax: 7081
To contact the website manager, send an email to web@wilpf.ch |