What do we do?

Social Watch was created in 1995 during the “Social Summit” (World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen) to create a civil society instrument to make governments accountable to their solemn commitments to eradicate poverty, achieve gender equity and reduce inequalities.

In 2011 an international Assembly with participation of a hundred civil society groups from over eighty countries defined Social Watch as “an international network of citizens’ organizations in the struggle to eradicate poverty and the causes of poverty, to end all forms of discrimination and racism, to ensure an equitable distribution of wealth and the realization of human rights. We are committed to peace, social, economic, environment and gender justice, and we emphasize the right of all people not to be poor.”

The Assembly established a secretariat in Montevideo, hosted by ITeM with the mandate to implement “a comprehensive strategy of advocacy, awareness-building, monitoring, organizational development and networking”.