International Women's Day: message from the IYCW

“Exploiting people is a crime, but exploiting

women is worse: it destroys harmony”

Pope Francis I

More than hundred years after we first celebrated the International Women’s Day, this year is a good time to review the developments and advances, to reflect on new inspirations, to act for change and to propose alternatives. It is also a moment to celebrate the courageous commitment of ordinary women in our lives, in the movement and in society, who have played a protagonist role in the history of the movement and their communities.

“I am 25 years old, I live in Egypt, and I am a woman.’ This statement connotes various difficulties in my life. “I live in a country where men dominate women. As a woman, I often get sexually harassed and I am considered a sexual object. As a 25-year-old single woman living in a country like Egypt where most girls get married at 18 years old, I am discriminated. My problems are not dissociated from other issues in our society where there are huge gaps between the rich and the poor, where jobs are increasingly precarious, where there are a lot of tensions and conflicts, and where women are strongly affected.” - Basma

Today as we celebrate the International Women’s Day with all young women workers and women of different backgrounds around the world, the struggle towards empowerment, gender equality, equal work opportunities and human rights is worth commemorating, but it is far from being over yet. The testimony of Basma reflects millions of situations of young women workers around the world. Statistics and data show that women are much more likely to have low salaries, including lower salaries than men for the same or comparable work, to engage in informal work, to lack access to social protection, and they are much less likely to be promoted. Most often, women are not given equal opportunities for education and they carry out multitask duties at work and at home. They are also subject to sexual harassment at work and in society. Female migrants and refugees face specific risks.

Today’s world of work is different from then. We are in a new era of globalization and digitalization of work, yet women remain disadvantaged, vulnerable, exploited, excluded, killed and abused, simply because they are “women”. These realities show how women are deeply suffering from the deficit of dignified life and dignified work. Pope Francis emphasized the value of women in the world, saying that women bring harmony and peace.

The International Young Christian Workers (IYCW) and its member national movements recognize the role of women in the movement, in the family, and in society. No man or woman is superior to the other, all humans are created equal in dignity and in rights.

International Women's Day: message from Latin America

Women have rights, including the right to a dignified life! This also means a life without violence! Women, either organized or not in social movements, have already struggled for a long time against violence of which they are too often victims. On the occasion of this International Women's Day, the "continental network for the right to social protection" in Latin America, facilitated and supported by WSM in recent years, sheds light on these women who suffer from physical violence, psycho -social and sexual in the workplace. The network calls for the International Labor Organization to adopt a new international regulation that clearly defines the concept of violence in the workplace and the responsibility of governments to provide an adequate response. Part of the answer is to guarantee access to a strong system of social protection.

The ANRSP meets in Manila

Almost fifty participants, members of the Asia Network on the Right to Social Protection (ANRSP) gathered for six days in Manila to discuss the issues decent living income and social protection. With the input from various international experts, like from the ILO, WageIndicator, ITUC and ITUC Asia Pacific, as well as from experiences in the Philippines regarding the state of the health system, two members from each of the eighteen WSM partners from the six Asia countries agreed on elements to be included in a living wage, compared methodologies and applied them in their national context and found current minimum wages largely insufficient.
A common position on minimum living wage was drafted by the steering committee members, before the participants went on field visits organized by the WSM Filippino partners to a jeepney union and two public hospitals.

Before the second half of the meeting, which focused on social protection, started,  OKRA from Belgium and GK from Bangladesh jointly facilitated a session on the impact of elderly in society and the links it has with social protection. The two other networks in Asia focusing on social protection, the Network for Transformative Social Protection and the Asia Round Table on SP also explained their priorities and how we could complement each other’s work. At the end, plans for the international network on the right to social protection were also discussed as well as the action plan for the years to come and where the network would be advocating. Participants afterwards expressed a 84% satisfaction of the content and how useful it was for them, stating it “helps me a lot to understand the various issues affecting the lives of the people especially in terms of SP and DLI. It helps me to see the whole picture of what kind of SP we have in Asia.”

Labour without Liberty: Female Migrant Workers in Bangalore’s Garment Industry

Press release from India Committee of the Netherlands, Clean Clothes Campaign and the Garment Labour Union, January 2018: 
An increasing number of migrants are being employed in India’s garment factories, supplying to big international brands including Benetton, C&A, GAP, H&M, M&S and PVH. They are more vulnerable and are treated differently than local workers, as new research into working conditions in three Bangalore garment factories reveals.

Uma came from a small village like many of her young colleagues. She was recruited and trained to go work into one of the 1200 factories in Bangalore, the ‘textile capital’ of India. Uma used to go to school and help her mother, now she stitches dresses and sportswear for H&M, Benetton, C&A, Calvin Klein and many other big international brands. Six full days a week. The target is 100 pieces per hour. For a minor like she is - her mates reminded her she was 18, but she turned out to be only fifteen - work at the factory in a faraway city is difficult. She misses her family and friends, who are thousands of kilometers away. Like the many other young female migrant workers, Uma has to support her family with the money she earns in the textile factory. But the monthly salary of 91 euros, minus the pay for rent, electricity and water, is less than the recruiting agent had promised her. He also falsely promised that board and food would be free, but it is not. Freedom of movement outside factory hours is severely restricted. As a young female migrant, not speaking Kannada, the local language, she is isolated and vulnerable to abuse. 

The two lives of social protection: the tale of cash transfers and social security

Why does one type of social protection gets (almost) all the attention while the other is shunned?

A interesting article by RASMUS SCHJOEDT  of Development Pathways I'd like to share, because it not only provides some insight in the logics (the political economy) of traditional development cooperation, but als a good summary of arguments for rights based, universal and life cycle social security systems.

http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/resources/two-lives-social-protection-tale-cash-transfers-social-security/

Recruitment Advisor: Advice for Migrant workers

Recruitment  Advisor  is  a global  recruitment  and employment review  platform  offering easy access to  information  about recruitment agencies and workers' rights when looking for a job abroad.
Recruitment Advisor is developed  by the International Trade  Union Confederation together with  its affiliates and partners national trade union centres from  Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal and the Philippines that also act as coordination teams.

Working with trade  unions  and  migrant  rights organisations  in each country, the  teams  reach out to  people  to  raise awareness of workers' rights and fair recruitment based on the  national legislations and the  I  LO General Principles and Operational Guidelines for Fair Recruitment and  encourage people  to  share and  learn about  recruitment experiences through Recruitment Advisor.

The best advisors are other workers with experience.
1. Check  the rating of recruitment agencies based on worker reviews.
2. Check  your rights where you will work .
3. Ask for assistance when your rights have been violated.

While expecting the birth of the platform early next year, here is an update from Nepal. The  team   in  Nepal  have done  several  outreach  activities  to  the  migrant workers  to  promote  Recruitment  Advisor  and to  collect  reviews  not  only  in Nepal  but  in  some countries  of destination  like  Qatar,  Malaysia,  and Kuwait. Beside that, the team  has also familiarized different stakeholders with Recruitment Advisor  in  several  events such  as International  Migrant  Day and the role of Journalist organized by People Forum on 14th  December and at the meeting by National Network for Safe Migration, an umbrella organization of NGO's working on safe migration  issue in  Nepal.  On the  18th  Dec, GEFONT members has also participated in the main event of International  Migrant Day celebration, organized  by Government and civil society jointly.

Asia Floor Wage Alliance looks back

After Ten Years of Asia Floor Wage Alliance’s work, they took the last few months to develop a “short” history of the development of AFWA. Please find here the link to this new Publication titled Asia Floor Wage Alliance: A Short History on the Brink of Transition, also available from the Home Page of the website. Writing this history has been a huge task going through volumes of old documents and correspondences.

AFWA is at a brink of change or a threshold….. much has been accomplished but till garment workers get dignity, living wage, and collective power, our work is not yet finished. Going forward, AFWA will be engaged in developing new strategies to make living wage and collective power a bargained and enforceable reality in the global supply chain of garment.

Universal Health Coverage Day

Today is the International day for Universal Health Coverage, one of the areas WSM and its partners focus on for the right to social protection.

Universal Health Coverage Day on 12 December is the annual rallying point for the growing movement for health for all. It marks the anniversary of the United Nations’ historic and unanimous endorsement of universal health coverage in 2012.Last year, this Coalition launched a petition calling for recognition of 12 December as Universal Health Coverage Day – and a few minutes ago, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that finally makes it official.The UN’s vote today doesn’t change the fact that millions of people still go bankrupt when they get sick. We all know we still have a lot of work to do. But official recognition for UHC Day is a sure sign that this movement has the staying power to transform societies.

The WHO and World Bank just released the 2017 Global Monitoring Report on UHC, with new data on service coverage and health financing for 132 countries – a major update to the 37-country report from 2015.

Here are the headlines:

• Half the world’s people – more than 3.5 billion – don’t receive all the essential health services they need. This includes one billion people living with uncontrolled hypertension, 200 million women without access to family planning and 20 million infants unprotected by vaccines.
• 800 million people experience catastrophic out-of-pocket health costs each year. In other words, 1 in 9 people spend more than 10% of their household budgets paying for health.
• And 100 million people are still pushed into extreme poverty each year by these costs, with even more falling below the official $3.10-a-day poverty line.

Here are just a few of the ways people committed to take action at the UHC Forum’s closing event:
·       The Government of Japan pledged $2.9 billion in support to countries pursuing UHC.
·       The Ministry of Health of Nigeria committed to providing free primary health care to 8 million more Nigerians in the first quarter of 2018.
·       A delegation of parliamentarians from the African Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development committed to advocate for UHC based on the needs of the people.
·       The Gates Foundation announced plans to invest in better measurement of primary health care and to rally parliamentarians behind UHC.
·       IFMSA – representing 1.3 million medical students from 127 countries – committed to empowering youth to advocate for and implement UHC.
·       UHC2030 committed to implementing an Advocacy Strategy that will help partners identify effective actions for a community-driven social movement.
·       The Civil Society Engagement Mechanism for UHC2030 released a statement of principles, pledging to prioritize the most vulnerable and urge a minimum 5% GDP level of health spending by all governments.
·       The WHO High-level Commission on Non-Communicable Diseases committed to find common ground for the NCD and UHC agendas.
·       UHC Youth Japan pledged to push their own government and the world to leave no one behind.

These commitments are promising steps. As a movement, we need to hold leaders and ourselves accountable for action and results in every country. And we need to recognize advocates and change-makers of all kinds—particularly at the national and local level—for every hard-fought gain.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, that all UN Member States have agreed to, try to achieve Universal Health Coverage by 2030. This includes financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.

ILO launches Global Report on Social Protection, WSM was there

The International Labor Organization (ILO) officially launched its Global Report on Social Protection 2017-2019 on 30 November. 71% of the world's population, according to the report, has still no access to proper social protection. Africa is lagging far behind, with more than 82% of the population having no form of social protection. WSM, together with the European Commission, employers and employees, shared its findings on the report and analysis on the world's social protection level during its official presentation in Brussels on 30 November 2017.

Three years after the first Global Report on Social Protection, the ILO draws up a second state of affairs on social protection in the world. Although several countries have taken important steps in the political field, by strengthening their social protection policy and by implementing ILO Recommendation 202 on Social Protection floors, progress is still slow. Since the first Report in 2014, the number of people without access to social protection has only dropped by 2%, from 73 to 71%. Hence, if we want to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, which include social protection for everyone (SDG 1.3.), then we will have to take serious steps forward.

World AIDS Day and the Access to Health

We would like to share and celebrate another important milestone for the right to health: World AIDS Day. In many ways, the advocates who drove revolutionary progress against HIV/AIDS laid the groundwork for the #HealthForAll movement. They showed us that communities could be mobilized and sensitized; that new drugs and tools could be rolled out in all countries, not just rich ones; that a diagnosis need not mean a death sentence when the right services are in place; and above all, that smart, focused, dedicated advocacy can truly change the world.

At the start of this century, just under 700,000 people had access to life-saving treatment for HIV. Today, that number has risen to 21 million.

#myrighttohealth campaign: 
This year’s World AIDS Day campaign will focus on the right to health. In the lead-up to 1 December, the #myrighttohealth campaign will explore the challenges people around the world face in exercising their right to health.

This World AIDS Day, let’s celebrate the progress made against HIV/AIDS, take stock of the challenges ahead, and recommit to rise against the health inequities that hold people back. Progress is possible when citizens stand up for their rights and leaders act on their pledges.

Cambodia's new social protection policy framework reviewed

In 2017, the Royal Government of Cambodia published a new Social Protection Policy Framework (SPPF), providing an ambitious vision for a social protection system in which a comprehensive set of policies and institutions operate in sync with each other to sustainably reduce poverty and vulnerability.The Social Protection System Review of Cambodia prompts and answers a series of questions that are crucial for the implementation ofthe framework : How will emerging trends affect the needs for social protection, now and into the future? To what extent are Cambodia’s social protection instruments able – or likely – to address current and future livelihood challenges? How does fiscal policy affect social protection objectives?

This OECD review provides a contribution to the ongoing policy dialogue on social protection, sustainable growth and poverty reduction. It includes four chapters. Chapter 1 is a forward-looking assessment of Cambodia’s social protection needs. Chapter 2 maps the social protection sector and examines its adequacy. An investigation of the distributive impact of social protection and tax policy is undertaken in Chapter 3. The last chapter concludes with recommendations for policy strategies that could support the establishment of an inclusive social protection system in Cambodia, as envisaged by the SPPF.

Why the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Safety will be here until 2021

The following is an op-ed by the witness signatories to the Accord published in the Bangladeshi paper, the Daily Star. 

c Daily Star

In reaction to recent statements concerning the future of the Bangladesh Accord, the Witness Signatories to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh—Clean Clothes Campaign, International Labor Rights Forum, Maquila Solidarity Network, and the Worker Rights Consortium—wish to respond regarding the continuation of the Accord's inspection programme. Recent statements have led some to erroneously believe that the Accord is scheduled to end in 2018, and one should ask whether such an early departure is even desirable given the limited progress made in the development of a credible and functioning national safety regulatory body.

In the wake of the Rana Plaza building collapse—the deadliest disaster in the history of the global garment industry, in which 1,134 workers were killed—three initiatives were launched with the purpose of averting further industry tragedies in Bangladesh: the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh (Accord), the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety (Alliance), and the National Action Plan on Fire Safety and Structural Integrity (NAP).

The Accord is an agreement reached between over 200 apparel companies, eight Bangladeshi union federations, and two global unions. This unprecedented safety agreement is based on legally-binding commitments by apparel brands to ensure that hazards in their factories are identified and corrected. The Accord has overseen factory renovations—from installation of fire doors to strengthening of dangerously weak structural columns and beams—that have already improved safety for over two million garment workers. This success can be attributed to the Accord's distinct approach, which combines independent safety inspections with multi-brand leverage, financial support and legal accountability to ensure that problems are not only identified but are fixed.

In comparison, the Alliance and the NAP are smaller, less transparent, non-binding programmes that do not benefit from the same level of brands' commitment to change, especially when it comes to financial feasibility.

To ensure that the safety improvements achieved under the Accord are maintained and expanded, brand and union signatories of the Accord announced in June of 2017 that the Accord has been extended for three years, until May of 2021. To date, 48 companies, including H&M, Inditex (Zara), Primark, and PVH (Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein), have signed the new Accord, with many more likely to follow in the months ahead. These signatories represent many of the largest brands and retailers in the world and most of the Bangladesh RMG sector's key customers. Their combined commitment means that the 2013 Accord successor agreement will cover at least 1,400 factories and a majority of all export garment production.

The purpose of the renewed Accord, which takes effect in May of 2018 when the current 2013 Accord expires, is to ensure that factories made safe under the Accord remain safe. At the same time, the new Accord will support improvements to Bangladesh's public regulatory regime, in order to strengthen and pass on this responsibility to the Bangladesh government at the end of those three years. As was agreed to in meetings on October 19 between brand and trade union signatories to the Accord, the BGMEA, and the Bangladesh Ministers of Commerce and Labour, the Accord will continue this work until the local regulatory bodies meet a set of rigorous readiness conditions.

It remains to be seen how long this transition will take; however, any objective assessment of the government's current state of readiness will conclude that there is a lot of work to do. In order for the Accord to conclude its operations, local mechanisms must be developed, put in place, and demonstrably running smoothly to ensure safe working conditions for the country's four million garment workers.

India: farmers make demands

The long preparation and efforts taken by Swaraj Abhiyan through various struggles and efforts to coordinate all the farmers movements and federations over two years has now come realise that a greater collective and coordinated move towards gaining their rights is necessary. Farmers from all over India have started their journey through various means to meet in Delhi on November 20th. It is expected that over 500.000 farmers from all over the country will join. The Tamil Nadu Land Rights Federation and RIEH Asia is part of this march.

They wrote this open letter to Modi, the Indian Prime Minister:

Dear Shri Narendra Modi,


We are farmers: women and men, landowner, sharecropper, tenant, forest gatherers and landless cultivators. We are primary producers: we grow crops, we collect forest produce, we rear animals and poultry and we fish. We use our labour to sustain life on this planet; yet we find it hard to sustain our own lives. We are told we are ‘annadatas’; yet we cannot feed our families. We are a majority in this democracy; yet our voice is not heard. More than half of us are women; yet we remain invisible. Our Constitution gives us Right to Life; yet we are forced to commit suicide.

Christy, farmers' rally preparation from Tamil Nadu to Delhi

Why? What is it that causes this tragedy?
It is not that we are lazy. We work very hard. We keep producing more and more. In the last ten years, we have raised the nation’s production of food one and half times. We have done our bit for the nation but why has the nation not done its bit for us?

It is not just the nature. Over the years, nature is more capricious. We suffer more droughts, more floods, more unpredictable climate than ever before. But why should we pay the price for changes in climate? Why don’t we get protection against natural calamities like farmers elsewhere do? And, why don’t we earn well even in a year when the nature is kind?

And it is not just the market. Everyone else seems to be doing well. Companies, businessmen, and salaried employees – everyone is earning better. Fertilizer, pesticide and seed companies are making big profits. Food industry and big retail are thriving. But a farmers’ family earns only Rs. 3,884 per month from farming, less than the minimum wages for unskilled workers! Why do we, who actually produce and feed others, lose out continuously?

After years and years of suffering, waiting and hoping, we realize that it’s about state policies, governmental action and political will. Governmental policies are driving the agrarian crisis and farmers’ suicides. Instead of helping us in this hour of need, we are still being made to subsidize other sectors of the economy. Successive central and state governments have withdrawn whatever little support we used to get and have left us at the mercy of market forces and vagaries of nature. What you call ‘development’ is nothing but our systematic loot.

Mr. Prime Minister, we trusted you in 2014. We believed your promises, but you reneged. We thought you would protect our land, but you tried to snatch it. We faced droughts, floods and other calamities, but adequate relief never arrived. We endured crash in crop price without the minimum support. This is when we needed your helping hand, but you cut down spending on agriculture. And we suffered demonetization without any gains. We feel abandoned and betrayed.

Hence this final appeal, this two-point Charter of Demands. We do not ask you for anything except that you make good your own promises. We do not claim more than what everyone else in this country can enjoy. We do not demand what we do not desperately need. And deserve. We, the annadatas, wish to start afresh on a clean slate. We wish to contribute to the making of future India.

We are,

Farmers of India

Find the Charter of Demands here.

A Trapeze Act: Women Balancing Paid Work and Unpaid Care Work in Nepal

Despite high rates of labour force participation by women in Nepal, there has been very little engagement by communities and the state on the issue of women’s ‘double burden’ of balancing unpaid care work with paid labour activities. The ‘Balancing paid work and unpaid care work – Nepal’ research study aims to create knowledge about how women’s economic empowerment (WEE) policy and programming can generate a ‘double boon’, i.e. paid work that empowers women and provides more support to their unpaid care work responsibilities. Research discussed in this report looks at two WEE programmes in Nepal: (1) a state programme, the Karnali Employment Programme; and (2) a non-state programme, Oxfam Nepal’s Enterprise Development Programme. One of the stark conclusions of the study is that women are currently unable to balance their paid and unpaid care work due to several factors: the lack of availability of decent employment opportunities in rural areas; a lack of quality public resources and services; migration of men; a lack of assets such as land; and prevailing gender norms, especially around women’s participation in unpaid care work and mobility. The report makes recommendations at state, non-state, market, community and family levels. Programmes aimed at women’s empowerment need to have a care perspective in their design and implementation, and grass-roots-level communication and advocacy needs to be encouraged and implemented, in order to reduce women’s ‘double burden’ and move towards a’ double boon’.

Download the study here.