Advocacy and Lobbying

Lacking basic services and living under the constant threat of eviction, the people of Bhola wanted to change their situation but needed support to formulate a plan of action. Enter the Local-to-Local Dialogue, a strategic process developed by the Huairou Commission through decades of grassroots women’s organizing efforts. Through the L2L process, women document their realities, build consensus, form alliances, and build a power base to access resources and create solutions to community issues. They engage in decision-making in partnership with local authorities.

´One billion rising´, a global campaign for gender equality and justice was launched in the capital on Sunday amid a program attended by more than 50 noted women rights activists from south Asian nations, local civil society organizations, students, politicians, journalists and people from different walks of life.

Speaking at the program, South Asian coordinator of the campaign Kamla Bhasin said that ´one billion rising´ was a historical attempt and an unique call for gender equality and justice.

The Hungarian parliament has changed course on a bill that introduces domestic violence to the Hungarian penal code.

A citizen led proposal, that domestic violence be criminalised with specific legislation, found resistance from members of parliament who instead suggested that in light of the declining birth rate, women should bear children first and worry about freeing themselves later.

Several NGOs staged a demonstration on Kossuth tér on Sunday to draw attention to violence against women and to speak up for women’s rights more generally.

Several speakers expressed outrage at Fidesz MP István Varga’s comment during parliamentary debate last Monday night, to the effect that there would be no domestic violence if women had four or five children instead of only one or two.

A number of community organisations in Solomon Islands met with Government officials this week to try and advance their plans to have more women in Parliament.

There has been a unsuccessful push going back several years for reserved seats for women but this has taken on more urgency with a recent report saying Solomon Islands will not achieve any of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

Gender equality is one of the 8 goals and Solomon Islands has just one woman MP and has had just one other in 34 years since independence.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

On a cold Monday morning in June, some 50 women from various political backgrounds gathered in this Argentine port city to talk about gender roles inside the home. They conceived of a society in which men and women of all classes share both the responsibility to care for children and the sick and elderly and have the option to work.  

Tunisian women are rising up against a proposed article in the new constitution seen by many as an Islamist ploy to reverse the principle of gender equality that made Tunisia a beacon of modernity in the Arab world when it was introduced six decades ago.
The National Constituent Assembly parliamentary committee adopted last week a proposed article that activists say would compromise rights enshrined in the Personal Status Code (CSP) promulgated in 1956 under Tunisia's first president, Habib Bourguiba.

The End Violence Against Women & Girls (EVAW/G) Alliance August 6 put forth a charter of demand (COD) to the Pakistani government to protect, promote and sustain the rights of women and girls, with particular focus on woman NGO workers and women’s rights activists in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Read the complete story at Central Asia Online, published 6 August 2012.