Take Action Archives

Calls to Action

• From IWRAW Asia Pacific: Call for Support for Ms. Heisoo Shin, Republic of Korea, in election of new members of UN Economic, Social & Cultural Rights Committee. There will be an election of Economic Social and Cultural Rights Committee members in April 2010. Heisoo Shin has been nominated by the government of South Korea. We are especially excited by her nomination as the addition of more women to this committee will work towards the greater accountability of state parties to the economic, social and cultural rights of women. We would like to urge you to support her nomination. Please write to the Foreign Ministry and the permanent mission of your government and other governments to urge their support of her nomination. It is especially important to lobby the 54 governments that make up the ECOSOC, as only they can vote during the election. The 54 members are listed here. The contact details of missions to the UN can be found here.
  
• Highlights from the Testimonies by Honduran Women’s Rights Advocates Regarding Women’s Human Rights Violations in the Context of the Coup, Presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Washington, DC, November 2, 2009 / Situacion de los derechos de las mujeres en Honduras en el marco del golge de estado
• Women from the Honduran Feminists in Resistance asking for Solidarity from the International Community
• Uganda Action Alert: Dismiss the Anti-Homosexuality Bill
• Optional Protocol to UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Call For - Need For - Countries/UN Member States Signatures, NGO Advocacy Request, via IWRAW Asia Pacific. The Optional Protocol to the Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP ICESCR) has been adopted. However there is still some way to go before it becomes an instrument women can use to promote and protect their rights. On 24 September 2009, the OP ICESCR opens for signature by States. The OP ICESCR can only come into force if enough States sign it. You can help to make this happen by contacting your government and pushing them to sign the OP ICESCR in September. Additional information in French and Spanish is available from IWRAW Asia Pacific, iwraw-ap@iwraw-ap.org. We hope that you can help to bring the OP ICESCR into force and make it an effective instrument for women.
• Kenya Electoral Crisis
  From MADRE (www.madre.org): Outrage in Kenya has exploded into violence and thousands of women and their families are caught in the crisis. You can help!
  Hundreds of people have been killed and more than a quarter of a million people have fled their homes since violence erupted across Kenya after last month's rigged presidential election.

  Thousands of uprooted families are subsisting in make-shift camps without sufficient food, medical care, or safe drinking water. Incidents of malaria are on the rise, especially among children, as people crowd around stagnant water pools in areas that lack sanitation.

  Families who remained in their homes also face a humanitarian emergency. Many of the wounded have no access to medical care. Some towns have been totally cut off from essential supplies and markets. Children are going hungry because their parents cannot reach their jobs or collect their wages.

  In the countryside, mothers are rationing food and drinking water among their children because venturing into the bush to collect water or firewood for cooking is simply too dangerous. In the women-led village of Umoja, where MADRE works, economic life has ground to a halt because the tourist trade on which the women depend is completely suspended.

  Help provide food, medicine, and other basic necessities so that women and thier families in Kenya can survive this crisis and begin to rebuild. Please contribute to MADRE's Emergency and Disaster Relief Fund. With your help, MADRE can respond to this emergency.

  Call for Urgent Resolution
  http://www.petitiononline.com/kenya08/petition.html

  Updates
  http://www.pambazuka.org/actionalerts/index.php

  Press Releases
  Kenya: YWCA Calls for Peace With Justice and Protection of Women's Rights

• International Women Leaders Global Security Summit and Call to Action: The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands in partnership with The White House Project, the Council of Women World Leaders and the Women Leaders Intercultural Forum convened the International Women Leaders Global Security Summit from November 15-17, 2007 in New York City, New York. The Summit brought together women governmental and civil society leaders, e.g. Mary Robinson, former President, Ireland; Kim Campbell, former Prime Minister, Canada; and Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Fomer President, Latvia. Charlotte Bunch, Executive Director, CWGL, was among those who attended. Participants focused on issues such as global security, climate change, terrorism, economic insecurity, and humanitarian intervention and peace building. During the Summit a Call To Action was formulated, which can be signed by others. Please click here to read more about the The International Women Leaders Global Security Summit and the Call to Action.
• Open letter asking for solidarity from Nicaraguan women activists: "We regret to inform you that in Nicaragua, a new action that bears witness to the increased presence of fundamentalists attacking feminists for defending the human rights of women is taking place..." Click here to read letter
• Bomb blasts in Algeria
  A call from concerned Algerian citizens to citizens' organizations, progressive parties and unions in Europe
  http://www.siawi.org/
  Today December 11, 2007, Algiers was devastated by two bomb blasts. The first reports claim 26 dead and 177 wounded. According to press reports, Al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb has claimed responsibility for these attacks.
  After a decade of murder and terror in the nineties that made 200,000 victims, the Algerian people are exhausted. Yet this new escalation in violence is no surprise to us. In spite - or because - of the blanket amnesty officially labeled a 'reconciliation' policy  - i.e. an overall presidential pardon granted without even establishing facts and responsibilities -, Islamic armed groups never surrendered arms, and 'pardoned' perpetrators paraded in villages, threatening  their opponents and the survivors of their atrocities again, forbidding music, controlling 'morality' and imposing gender apartheid.
  For a long time, in Algeria as well as in other Muslim countries,  European and North American governments led by their interest in gas entertained the most ambiguous relations with the extreme right political forces working under the cover of Islam.
  But for a long time too, the vast majority of progressive parties and organizations in Europe and North America, as well as progressives in Asia and Africa and the anti globalization movement, refused to  distance  themselves from these same extreme right forces, under the pretext of defending the rights of the oppressed.
  We are numerous, in Algeria as well as in other Muslim countries and in the North African diaspora, to oppose the theocratic project of Islamic armed groups (i.e. the law of God as interpreted by extreme right religious forces), and to stand for a secular republic (i.e. the laws of the people that can be changed by the will and vote of the people). But we fought this battle virtually without support from  those in the international community who should have been our allies.
  On the eve of yet another battle against theocratic extreme right Islamic armed groups in Algeria, we call on citizens' organizations, progressive parties and unions, human rights groups and all concerned citizens in Europe and beyond, to extend direct immediate and sustained political support to all progressive forces, parties, unions, people's organizations, and women's organizations working for a secular republic in Algeria.
  Reach out to these forces, network with them, exchange with them. They/we need support and visibility.
  It is an illusion to think that this theocratic project will stop at your borders. Supporting those who are on the front line ultimately serves the interest of democratic freedom in the world.
  
  First signatories:
  SIAWI, Secularism Is A Women's Issue (siawi.org)
  Marieme Helie Lucas, Founder of WLUML, coordinator SIAWI, Montpellier
  Hakim Arabdiou, Paris
  Selim Ducos, Paris
  Lalia Ducos,women human rights defender, Paris
  Cherifa Kheddar, president Djazairouna, Blida
  Amir Rezzoug, photographe, Marseille
  Saleha Larab, journalist, Alger
  Samia Allalou, journalist, Paris
  Mohamed Ali Allalou, animateur radio, Paris
  Aziz Smati, film director, Paris
  Karima Bennoune, Associate Professor Rutgers School of Law, Newark
  Malika Zouba, journalist, Paris
  Mohamed Sifaoui, journalist, Paris
  Asma Guenifi, psychologist, Paris
• Women's Coalition Demands G-8 Action on Violence Against Women
  The 2007 G8 Summit is scheduled for June 6-8, in Germany, the country holding the current presidency of the G8. Chancellor Merkel and her Minister of International Development, Heidi Wieczorek-Zeul, have indicated their intention to raise issues of gender discrimination and disparities as integral to G8 funding commitments to addressing HIV&AIDS. The Women Won't Wait campaign calls on the G-8 to go beyond rhetoric and to commit substantial resources to efforts aimed at responding to, addressing, and eventually ending violence against women and girls, as an epidemic in and of itself and as a major driver in the HIV and AIDS epidemic. The following call to action is directed toward the G8 countries on the eve of the Heiligendamm Summit. Women Won't Wait to the G8
• Sign the global petition to support UN Special Procedures!
  The petition below has been launched by a number of human rights organizations and is intended to show support for the people who work within the UN system who are "Special Rapporteurs" and members of working groups that focus on certain issues and countries. The rapporteurs are "independent experts" and many have been instrumental in making advances in areas of women's human rights, human rights defenders, health and sexual rights. Certain States are trying to weaken or eliminate their mandates. We believe that a strong system of Special Procedures is necessary within the UN, and in the Human Rights Council, to ensure advances in the human rights framework and protection of gains already made. To read more about the petition, visit the petition website at http://www.actforspecialprocedures.org.