Social Watch E-Newsletter - Issue 153 - November 8, 2013

The Palestinian Non-governmental Organizations Network  PNGO  raised concerns and warned of a dangerous deterioration in the humanitarian  situation in the Gaza Strip due to severe drop-long power cuts caused by the fuel outage.

PNGO stated that power outage in the besieged Gaza Strip seriously affects basic life facilities in particular health , water, education and sanitation as well as vital sectors. Read more

Right based civil society networks in cooperation with different students’ cultural organizations of Dhaka University organize a seminar at the Nowab Ali Chowdhury Senate Building and a photo exhibition at the Teacher Student Centre (TSC) in Dhaka University. The vice chancellor of the university Mr. A A M S Arefin Siddique inaugurates the photo exhibition.
The distinguished speakers in the seminar emphasize new leadership especially from youths and students with scientific perspective, so that they can implement appropriate climate strategies. Read more

South Centre presents its view on the Post-2015 Development Agenda and Sustainable Development.

The United Nations’ Post-2015 Development Agenda should not simply extend MDGs, or reformulate the goals, but focus instead on global systemic reforms to remove main impediments to development and secure an accommodating international environment for sustainable development.  This is a big, ambitious agenda which cannot be acted on overnight. An action plan for systemic reforms could be supplemented, but not substituted, by specific goals in some areas of economic and social development. Read more

The latest report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Water and Sanitation (“the Rapporteur”), Ms. Catarina de Albuquerque, focuses on the theme Sustainability and non-retrogression in the realization of the rights to water and sanitation. The report offers useful and welcome guidance for those seeking to draw meaning from the human right to water on the areas of finance, investment and other related economic ones. Some of its developments will arguably be useful beyond the right to water, charting a path for how to draw such meaning in the case of other rights.

The Special Rapporteur devotes a portion of her report to develop the concept that sustainability is “non-dissociable” from human rights law. Read more