Miscellaneous

ABSTRACT

This study examines how austerity measures may have adversely affected children and women in a sample of 128 developing countries in 2012. It relies on International Monetary Fund (IMF) fiscal projections and IMF country reports to gauge how social assistance and other public spending decisions have evolved since the start of the global economic crisis. The study finds that most developing countries boosted total expenditures during the first phase of the crisis (2008–09); but beginning in 2010, budget contraction became widespread, with ninety-one governments cutting overall spending in 2012. Moreover, the data suggest that nearly one-quarter of developing countries underwent excessive fiscal contraction, defined as cutting expenditures below pre-crisis levels. Governments considered four main options to achieve fiscal consolidation – wage bill cuts/caps, phasing out subsidies, further targeting social safety nets, and reforming old-age pensions – each of which would be likely to have a disproportionately negative impact on children and women.

This video presentation is part of the Tribute to Feminist and Women Human Rights Defenders who are no longer with us, which took place at the AWID Forum in Istanbul Turkey, 19-22 April, 2012. The exhibit featured Women Human Rights Defenders who died, were killed, or were disappeared since the last AWID Forum in 2008. Produced by Breakthrough, 2012.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUc6WcEKhMI&feature=g-upl

Women’s organisations in Egypt continue the struggle to put women’s rights on the agenda. Recently, 800 women’s organisations met in Cairo to discuss the way forward during this crucial transitional period.

In the end of September, The Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation’s partner organisation Alliance for Arab Women, together with the Solidarity Ministry in Egypt, organised a national conference on women’s role during the transitional period in the country.

”Women are now organised in such a way that they can put pressure on the government. But the conference also showed that NGOs are willing to cooperate with the government, as long as the government is willing to recognize women,” says Hoda Badran, chairperson of Alliance of Arab Women, one of the organisations that Kvinna till Kvinna supports in Egypt.

WLUML would like to add its voice to the myriad voices from around the world mourning the passing away of Sunila Abeysekera, human rights and feminist activists from Sri Lanka earlier this month, while remembering her contribution to the global women’s movement and the WLUML network in particular. Sunila worked closely with WLUML at our first feminist leadership institute held in Turkey in 1998 being one of a number of resource persons representing experiences from outside the Muslim world. She facilitated several sessions on using the human rights system and international mechanisms, monitoring and documenting human rights violations, and sexuality and sexual rights.