|
Social Watch Bolivia
This month´s "Focus on..." section highlights the work of Social Watch (SW) Focal Point in Bolivia: the Labour and Agricultural Development Research Centre (CEDLA, in Spanish), which will be hosting the next regional training workshop for Latin America, to be held from 20 to 22 October 2010 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
CEDLA has been a focal point for SW since 1997 and one of its principal researchers, Gustavo Luna, is currently a member of the Social Watch Coordinating Committee. The national coalition is composed of over 20 non-government organizations throughout the country. These organizations work in various different areas, such as human rights, child rights, labour rights, the indigenous peoples and peasant movement, development, territorial concerns and poverty reduction.
<<more
|
Forum on Cooperation for Development: we need new aid delivery mechanisms
The second Forum on Cooperation for Development held 29-30 June at the UN headquarters in New York, reviewed the Official Development Assistance (ODA) agenda. The main conclusions focused on aid effectiveness to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the need to reconsider the financial paradigm and incorporate new forms of cooperation.
<< more
Launch of the Arab Social Watch Report 2009
Members of Social Watch Lebanon and the coordinator of the network came together with government representatives in Beirut in July 2010 to launch the Social Watch report 2009 for the Arab region. The event also followed the presentation of the UNDP report "Assessing the MDG Process in the Arab Region" and provided an opportunity for a public debate between government authorities, civil society organizations from several Arab countries and United Nations experts.
<< more
Cameroon: bill pushes for gender mainstreaming in development policies
The Federation of Organizations of the Cameroon Civil Society (FOSCAM, for its initials in french), Social Watch´s Focal Point in Cameroon, participated in the elaboration of a draft bill for mainstreaming gender into national policies for growth and employment in that country.
<< more
Technology transforms election monitoring in Kenya
Civil society organizations, including Social Watch´s focal point in Kenya, SODNET, developed a web platform to monitor the development of the country´s constitutional elections that took place on 4 August 2010. This was the second attempt to give Kenya a new constitution after the failure that provoked post election violence in 2008 killing thousands, displacing 300,000 and affecting all Kenyans. The crowdsourcing platform Uchaguzi ("decision" in Kiswahili), was initially developed as a website aimed to map reports of violence in Kenya. The website was used to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via mobile phone (SMS) and the web (e-mail or Twitter).
<< more
UN creates new entity for gender equality
On July 2010, at the UN headquarters, the United Nations General Assembly voted unanimously to create the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women - to be known as UN Women - a new entity to accelerate progress in meeting the needs of women and girls worldwide. Will it be able to meet expectations?
<< more
|
Multidimensional Poverty Index presents new ways of measuring poverty
The idea that poverty can be measured by income alone has been sustained by international organizations including the World Bank to this very day. Numerous efforts were made in the recent years to provide new approaches to measure poverty that are more complex and multidimensional.
<< more
Blame and Banishment: new UNICEF report on children affected by HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
The current economic and political crises in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have revealed crumbling social safety nets when confronted with economic hardship. Children and young people living with HIV/AIDS face social exclusion in the only region where infection rates remain clearly on the rise. A new report by UNICEF launched at the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria, revealed the region is badly off track to meet MDG 6, which calls for halting and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.
<< more
UNODC report presents data on transnational organized crime
In July 2010 the UNDOC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) launched the report: "The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment". It is the first ever "threat assessment", that tries to fill a knowledge gap and pave the way for future world crime reports. It focuses on trafficking flows, connects the dots between regions, and gives a global overview of illicit markets: it reports about the ways and means international mafias have grown into an international problem.
<< more
Online courses on knowledge management for developing countries
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) have signed a cooperation agreement to deliver jointly a series of online courses on knowledge management and web 2.0 technologies for developing countries.
<< more
|
