Photo: Social Watch India

Central and local authorities’ failures are responsible for the gloomy performance of the health sector in Indian state of Chhattisgarh, according to the most recent report produced by the local Social Watch coalition. The governments must be held accountable for the fulfillment of this Constitutional and basic right, but the citizens also have the responsibility to monitor its implementation, activist said while they released the study.

Aung Htoo. (Photo: The Best Friend International)

The names of some 2,000 people removed from a blacklist of foreign and Burmese nationals regarded as threats to the regime, among them Aung Htoo, former secretary of the Burma Lawyers Council (BLC, national focal point of Social Watch), was released by the office of President Thein Sein last week.

Leonor Briones. (Photo: Freedom from Debt Coalition)

Social Watch Philippines is questioning some items in the 2013 budget submitted by the government to the Congress. The convenor of this national coalition of civil society groups, Leonor Briones, said there are lump sum appropriations called “special purpose funds”, which did not provide any breakdowns.

Photo: SODNET/Kenya

“Improving gender equity in itself may be a goal with clear, intrinsic value. However, a substantial body of research now suggests that gender equity and the achievement of other development goals, such as health, education, social and economic rights fulfillment, and even growth, are inseparable,” wrote expert Terra Lawson-Remer, of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), based on several statistical studies, including the Gender Equity Index issued by Social Watch.

The Great Depression. (Photo: Heath School Social Studies)

For decades successive governments in the United States have resisted pressure to implement social assistance policies to help the sectors most in need, and this has serious consequences today. According to the Peruvian lawyer, sociologist and university professor Héctor Béjar in his latest column for Agenda Global, some 47 million of the USA’s 308 million inhabitants live below the poverty line, 15 million workers are unemployed and the prison population is 756 per 100,000 people.