Regions Refocus 2015, a new initiative fostering regional and feminist solidarities toward justice

In 2015 the world’s governments will define a global agenda for sustainable development, amidst global trends of rising inequality, declining economic growth rates, and mega public-private partnerships accelerating the scramble for resources, assets, and markets. In this context, a new initiative housed at the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation – Regions Refocus 2015 – fosters regional and feminist solidarities toward justice.

Please join us on 26 January for the launch of Regions Refocus 2015, at the Ford Foundation Headquarters or online via live webcast at www.daghammarskjold.se/regions-refocus. This event and collaborative publication will present experiences of advancing progressive public policies based on nine regional workshops held over the past nine months in partnership with civil society, government, sub-regional alliances, and the UN. Just as negotiations get underway for the Third Conference on Financing for Development and the Post-2015 Summit, this launch will feature regional perspectives on overcoming global obstacles that impede structural change for justice.

We hope you will be able to join us in New York or online for the launch of Regions Refocus 2015. In the meantime, follow us on Twitter @ReFocus2015 and join the conversation using #ReFocus2015. More information is attached and on our newly launched website, here: www.daghammarskjold.se/regions-refocus

Regions Refocus 2015
Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation
Website: www.daghammarskjold.se/regions-refocus
Twitter: @ReFocus2015
Email: team@regionsrefocus.org
Register: https://regions-refocus.eventbrite.com
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a little colder

Happy Sunday night, the first beautiful fall Sunday of the year. I spent it huddled in the garage, typing with fingerless gloves and (eventually) drinking one of my brother's Coronas (after I turned the heat on). Still working on my SDGs paper, which is alternately depressing and fascinating and boring and hard. It really needs to be done soon though, both because of the deadline and because, drumroll please,

Full-time work on the DHF project starts tomorrow! We're planing five regional meetings between now and the end of the year, the first in Lima, Peru on financial transparency. (After which I am going to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, yay.) More updates coming soon after we implement our very exciting solid comms plan and website.

I've been thinking a lot about The Future, especially since apparently all long-term planning sends me into spirals of anxiety. (Last night I dreamed I had to move my entire apartment out to the street without assistance, piece by piece, and last week I dreamed my friend C* and I were randomly in charge of two tiny babies at an orphanage. Gasp, adulthood awaits!) Spending a week in Mexico working as rapporteur for the RESURJ retreat was an incredible experience in lots of ways (made friends, drank tequila, spent lunchtimes lying in a beach chair, sent baby turtles on their way into the sea, etc) but mainly admiring this incredible group of women and their shared activist path. I was jealous, I wanted to be one of them, I wanted to have a thing that I care about more than all other work things and to be working towards one singular goal. But I don't see myself as an activist, exactly, just a facilitator with an activist bent. And I'll have to figure out what to do with that in life... I'm sure I'll think of something.

But in the meantime, I am so grateful that this project has become a full-time gig and I can't wait to see what comes of it. And in other exciting news, my sister Becky is getting married! So this large blonde muzungu will have to get myself in a gomesi for her introduction ceremony in Uganda in December. Yay.

Some parting thoughts:

ixtapa sunset (mexico)

and the album/song I can't stop listening to:

An important reminder

Double standards beget cynicism, apathy, corruption and deterioration of democratic life and the very social fabric that holds communities together. Double standards also motivate people to raise their voices, organise, demand transparency and advocate for change. Therein lies our hope.
                            - Roberto Bissio, Prologue, The Social Impact of Globalization in the World (2002)


Reading through old Social Watch reports for the paper I'm writing...



Another observation, this one from 2008:

In October 2008, when the crisis hit the financial institutions and stock markets of the OECD member countries, their governments started a massive and unprecedented programme of government intervention, nationalizing banks, injecting massive subsidies into ailing institutions and re-regulating their financial sectors.
This response sits in direct contrast to the austere neoliberal policies pressed on developing countries by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and developed countries for the past 30 years. Governments in the South, as abundantly documented in this report, have been pushed to liberalize trade barriers, deregulate financial and labour markets, privatize national industries, abolish subsidies, and reduce social and economic spending. The State saw its role severely reduced. 
This double standard is unacceptable. The international financial system, its architecture and its institutions have been completely overwhelmed by the scale of the current financial and economic crisis. The financial system, its architecture and its institutions must be completely rethought. [...]
                                                      - Roberto Bissio, Rights in the Time of Crisis (Introduction) (2008)


And also, we're still waiting for the results of this point, depressingly prescient and as relevant now as in 2008...

The developing countries have been affected by the falling prices of their export commodities, the devaluation of their currencies against the dollar, the rising interest rates on their debts, outflow of foreign investments and lack of credit. If the world is plunging into a global recession the result will be unemployment and with it an erosion of the rights and the standard of living of workers everywhere.  [...]
It is therefore critical that all countries have a say in the process to change the international financial architecture. No equitable and sustainable solutions to transform the current system will come out of gatherings that are rapidly-prepared and exclude many developing countries as well as civil society. Such efforts are in fact more likely to further undermine public trust and confidence, and to further disenfranchise countries that are already opting for regional solutions over a stronger, more coherent and fairer international financial system. [...]
Many difficult issues will have to be addressed and agreed upon in the transition from the current system – which has fostered instability and inequity – towards a just, sustainable and accountable one, which yields benefits for the majority of the world’s people. In such a system human rights must be the starting point and not some distant goal in the future, and a rights-based approach to development (with gender equality, decent work and human rights at its core) must be the main guiding principle. 

www.socialwatch.org 

Living the dream (?)

I'm currently working on my first commissioned article - as in, the first article I will get paid to write, as a product in itself rather than just part of my job or an item on an invoice. It's pretty exciting, in theory... the subject of the article (an overview of the SDGs) less so.
I am so sick of hearing about the SDGs, which is problematic given that the real negotiation process for post-2015 hasn't even started (and won't for months) and I seem to be locked into this scene given that it's where I've spent the most significant part of my career. Not that I'm not grateful - I am, extremely, especially when I think about the people I've met and the things I've learned and the concepts I now understand. I'm grateful for having gotten to go to Rio+20 and then cover the SDGs process, grateful that I'll still be around, probably, to see what happens next and keep doing work with some amazing organizations around this process. This "package" of the UN's work encompasses an incredible amount of interesting issues, and will potentially affect a lot of people's lives.
And hey, I get to write! I've always said all I wanted is to write... so I need to go write the article, dammit, and then draft the interview for the one after that, and pull together some pieces for the paper after that. It's an August full of writing, which is exactly what I want. And of traveling, my other favorite activity. First Uganda, then London (on miles, yay) - to squeeze my godson, see friends, eat Nile perch and posho, buy things I don't need at Banana Boat, spend quality time with my host fam, and sit outside in a plastic chair drinking a Tusker and listening to reggae. Yes please.

squeezing my godson, Aug 2012

squeezing my godson, May 2013

Update

squeezing my godson, August 2014

Mercy Global Action Advocates at the UN for the Right to Water and Sanitation

As part of my ongoing consultancy for the Sisters of Mercy/Mercy International/the Mining Working Group at the UN, I wrote the article below, about the important work on the human right to water and sanitation that my colleagues have led over the past few months. Even though the Open Working Group won't end up including the language we want - including the explicit mention of the right - in its report, we're proud of our efforts and will keep working. 

In accordance with the Sisters’ of Mercy great concern with the future sustainability and availability of water for all, Mercy Global Action has focused much of our recent advocacy work at the UN on the human right to water and sanitation.

Davide Restivo. under CCO

Particularly through convening the Mining Working Group at the UN, we have been advocating for the inclusion of the human right to water and sanitation in the ongoing discussions of the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our message to governments, UN officials, and fellow civil society organizations has consistently focused on the need for the SDGs to prioritize – for present and future generations – the human right to water for health, life, food, and culture over other demands on water resources.

Over the past few months, the Mining Working Group has made a series of oral statements in OWG meetings, submitted detailed recommendations for text amendments to subsequent iterations of the OWG draft, and written a series of advocacy letters – to the UN Secretary-General, to the co-chairs and government representatives of the Open Working Group, and to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. We have met with almost 30 governments at the UN, tracked their positions, and targeted several groupings of member states based on the progression of their views on water and sanitation.

Significantly, the MWG and the Blue Planet Project spearheaded a joint letter on the urgent need to protect and promote the human right to water and sanitation in the Sustainable Development Goals. This letter was sent to every UN government on June 13, and has so far been signed by more than 300 civil society organizations all over the world. 

Through Mercy Global Action, Sisters of Mercy and our partners in mission have strongly engaged in this advocacy effort, sending letters to their national governments in anticipation of the OWG meetings and signing on to the global letter writing campaign. This letter is available online, along with the list of its signatures, on the World We Want web platform.

In accordance with our universal approach to analyzing systemic, structural and root causes of poverty and injustice, in our advocacy around the OWG we call for the promotion of a hierarchy of use that places potable water and sanitation, small-scale food production, ecosystem needs and cultural use before large-scale commercial use. We insist that the SDGs must take a people-centered approach, categorically rejecting the commodification and privatization of water. In line with our consistent advocacy for a rights-based approach to natural resource management, we advocate for a human rights-based approach that explicitly names the right to water and sanitation, aligns targets to the human rights framework, and guarantees non-discrimination, accountability, and public participation in decision-making. We insist on a meaningful commitment on the human right to water and sanitation must include indicators that accurately measure safety, affordability, accessibility and acceptability of water and sanitation services from the perspectives of rights holders. Our advocacy is grounded in the experience of Sisters of Mercy and our partners in mission in their work all over the world, fighting against the poisoning and destruction of watersheds from Cajamarca to Patagonia to Newfoundland.

As the Open Working Group nears the end of its mandate and its thirteenth and final session nears, it remains to be seen whether its report will in fact include an explicit mention of the human right to water and sanitation, as we have advocated so strongly for over the past months. Either way, Mercy Global Action will continue our work at the UN setting to hold governments accountable for the commitments they have made. Moreover, we will continue to promote a sustainable and forward-looking global agenda that prioritizes people’s human rights and the protection of the environment in all regions of the world.

Read the original article on the Mercy World website here.

Recap of Pacific Partnerships to Strengthen Gender, Climate Change Response and Sustainable Development

In early June, I got to go to Fiji for a meeting on Pacific Partnerships to Strengthen Gender, Climate Change Response, and Sustainable Development (as I mentioned earlier). The meeting brought together a total of 60 participants - most of them women, most of them from the Pacific, and pretty much all of them amazing - for five days of strategizing, capacity-building, and collective planning towards the SIDS, post-2015, UNFCCC, and relevant regional processes.

here we are

The set-up of the meeting - two days CSOs, then two days CSOs with national women's machineries, followed by a high-level dinner and final day - was the best-designed of any I've been to. All of us staying in the same hotel the whole week, sharing meals, drinks, swims (not to mention the unexpected presence of the entirety of the Fijian national rugby team) built an incredible atmosphere of camaraderie and collectivity. 

me with the amazing rapporteur team - representing GIZ/SPC, Pacific Youth Council, DIVA for Equality, & SPC

The participants worked hard on two outcome documents: a civil society/social movements/Major Groups statement, and a joint outcome agreed by both the civil society and the government representatives present - the first of its kind, with strong language on climate finance, structural issues of trade and the international financial system, and gender equality as a cross-cutting regional priority. 

The statements were presented by participants at the high-level dinner and have already served as advocacy tools in the second SIDS prepcom, held the week before last in New York. 

For more on the meeting, see its Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube page (don't miss my fairly awkward recap of my presentation) and stay tuned - this important intersectional analysis, led by the Pacific itself, will continue to be taken forward in key regional and global fora. 

Thoughts on Iraq, from Beirut

Sitting in Doha airport last Saturday, waiting for my third flight of a 30-hour journey, I read this article, and immediately burst into tears. At first I chalked it up to exhaustion, to the peculiar effects of an airplane journey, to the strange coincidence of landing in my first trip to the Middle East just as my country steps back into a never-ending mess of a military situation. All true, but it's more than that.

The war on Iraq made me a political person. I was fifteen when it started, studying abroad in Rome. We went to protest marches in every Italian city, hung PACE flags in our dorm rooms, lied and said we were Canadian to anyone who asked. We cut class and went to a rally at the Coliseum, chanted with Italians holding makeshift torches that blew ashes into our faces as the sun set, aghast with them at Berlusconi's agreement to send troops when 80% of his country was against it. I watched CNN International in the school cafe, shocked at what they showed on television outside the US. I came home and wrote scathing essays in my American History class, mocking the "PROUD TO BE AMERICAN" bumper stickers that popped up on every SUV. Proud to be American - as opposed to what?, I wrote. Iraqi?

My first year in college I worked at an indie coffeeshop, wearing a t-shirt with a red line through the president's face, making friends with the Eritrean ladies who worked 12-hour shifts there, chatting with the customers about "anyone but Bush." I was seventeen and a half during Bush's reelection, livid at being six months away from eligibility to vote, staging heated arguments with my father, accusing him and all other Republican voters of standing against everything I stood for. We sat on couches in the Barnard student lounge in stunned silence, crying at Kerry's concession speech, ashamed and embarrassed of our leadership. Not My President, we said.

And then 2008 came and Obama was elected. I stayed up all night in another student lounge, in London, watching the results come in. I cried myself to sleep at 6am in utter gratitude and disbelief. We'd come so far. We had a black president! A true liberal, a community organizer, who'd been against the war in Iraq from the beginning, who promised to close Guantanamo and ensure real social services and stand up for all those the Republicans kicked to the curb in their preference for corporate profit, oil money, global policing. My friends who were in New York for election night told stories of taking city buses in which all the riders spontaneously burst into our national anthem. I bought every newspaper with Obama's picture on it, put them all up on my wall, told anyone who asked that I'd voted for him in both the primary and the presidential election, that this was the first time I was old enough to vote, that I was proud of him and no longer ashamed to say I was American, abroad.

It was bound to be disappointing. He would never have been able to live up to the hype of how we felt reading his books, watching him speak during his campaign at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Private insurance companies and the American right were never going to let him create a true public option for healthcare; Obamacare has been frustrating at best. He hasn't closed Guantanamo. He's only recently started talking about climate change. And we're no longer eighteen, stunned into believing that anything was possible.

Even so, how can we be right back where we started? How can Obama be sending "advisers," planning airstrikes, eleven years later, in Iraq? Because we dismantled a state and now have to prop it up forever, to justify the sacrifices and the money spent and the efforts and injuries and deaths of all those Iraqi civilians and American soldiers and everybody who loved them and worried about them? Because the War on Terror is real, and we're losing? Because Obama is just another politician, because Bush and Cheney didn't account for the consequences of their choices, because in the end the US cares more about being a military powerhouse than anything else? Because now we have drones, and drones "don't count," new war isn't the same as old war, we can just press a button and destroy whole villages, wedding parties, and maybe some terrorists while we're at it? Because it was all for nothing: all that political awakening and shouting in the streets, the mobilization of young voters, the reuniting of a disgruntled left with the concerns of the people, the forming of new identities of what we thought was good about being American?