Seven in ten of the world’s poor people are women. Yet Oxfam’s long experience tells us that women are often most capable of tackling the conditions that keep their communities poor and vulnerable. All they need is the right support. To celebrate International Women’s Day (8 March), come with us on a journey to Oxfam projects in Yemen and Liberia, where women are making a huge difference. Inesc reproduces Oxfam GB's web site deadlines for international women's Day. Congratulations for women all over the world.
8 March 2008 – Top United Nations officials commemorated this year's International Women's Day by calling on countries to invest more in women and girls, warning that failing to do so will undermine efforts to achieve global development targets. In his message for the Day, Secretary-General drew attention to the “serious” gap between policy and practice in many countries when it comes to gender equality, as reflected in a lack of resources and insufficient budgetary allocations.
More than half the women in the world live in countries that have made no progress in gender equity in recent years. This is the main conclusion of the Social Watch 2008 Gender Equity Index (GEI) which, for the first time, shows recent evolution and trends in bridging the gap between men and women in education, the economy and empowerment. Inesc reproduces Social Watch informations over Gender Equity Index.
Climate change is widely considered to be one of the gravest threats to the sustainability of the planet's environment, the well-being of its people and the strength of its economies. Mainstream scientists agree that the Earth's climate is changing from the build-up of greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as carbon dioxide, that result from such essential human activities as electricity generation, transportation and agriculture.
At the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women`s annual meeting all the world's governments endorsed an agreement that says they have failed their previous commitments to enforce women's rights, These commitments were agreed in 1995 in a high-level international conference in Beijing, and reaffirmed at every summit since then. And worse, UNIFEM, the U.N. agency specializing in women, has been without a head for months despite the existence of a strong candidate -Indian Economist and activist Dr. Gita Sen- backed by women's organizations and with the recommendation of the selection committee. March 2008, by Roberto Bissio.
NGOs are concerned about the potential conflict between the Bank proposed Adaptation/ Climate Resilience Pilot Fund and the United Nations Framework Convention (UNFCCC)’s Adaptation Fund agreed at the climate change talks in Bali, Indonesia in December last year. The NGOs said: “While this latter fund faces some challenges going forward, it importantly has a far greater degree of developing country ownership.” Source: Third World Network
