|
Friday, 18 May 2012 03:38 |
|
proposed by
Focus on the Global South (Thailand), Instituto Nupef (Brazil), IT for Change (India),
Knowledge Commons (India), Other News (Italy) and Third World Network (Malaysia)
and endorsed by
organisations and individuals listed at the end of the statement
The Internet is a major force today, restructuring our economic, social, political and cultural systems. Most people implicitly assume that it is basically a beneficent force, needing, if at all, some caution only at the user-end. This may have been true in the early stages when the Internet was created and sustained by benevolent actors, including academics, technologists, and start-up enterprises that challenged big businesses. However, we are getting past that stage now. What used to be a public network of millions of digital spaces, is now largely a conglomeration of a few proprietary spaces. (A few websites like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon together make much of what is considered the Internet by most people today.) We are also moving away from a browser-centric architecture of the 'open' Internet to an applications-driven mobile Internet, that is even more closed and ruled by proprietary spaces (like App Store and Android Market). In fact, some Internet plans for mobiles come only with a few big websites and applications, without the open 'public' Internet, which is an ominous pointer to what the future Internet may look like. What started off as a global public resource is well on its way to becoming a set of monopoly private enclosures, and a means for entrenching dominant power. At this stage, it is crucial to actively defend and promote the Internet's immense potential as a democratic and egalitarian force, including through appropriate principles and policies at the global level.
|
|
Tuesday, 08 May 2012 23:22 |
|
Letter from the Women’s Caucus and other civil society organizations and network participants of the ASEAN People’s Forum/ASEAN Civil Society Conference 2012 to the Government of Cambodia demanding justice for the communities within Phnom Penh that have lost their land and homes. It has also been signed and endorsed by other women’s and civil society organizations:
|
|
Thursday, 12 April 2012 23:32 |
|
Call for Action
Isis International has endorsed the following letter of the Women Human Rights Defenders calling for the immediate release of Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, a well-known and highly respected human rights defender who has been a strong and peaceful advocate for the rights of women in Bahrain and throughout the Middle East; and the letter of Nazra for Feminist Studies, Egypt also calling for his release and for the Government of Bahrain to respect the human rights of his daughters, Maryam Al-Khawaja and Zainab Al-Khawaja.
We encourage you and your organizations to write similar letters.
|
|
|
Thursday, 10 May 2012 22:57 |
 More than 120 activists, advocates and representatives from CSOs across movements and generations from 27 countries in Asia and the Pacific gathered in Kuala Lumpur from May 2-4 have spoken! The Kuala Lumpur Call to Action outlines our 12-point Call to governments, international organisations, including UN agencies, development partners and other duty bearers, for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for sustainable development.
|
|
Wednesday, 18 April 2012 01:16 |
|
by Lan Mercado
Oxfam Advisor to the ASEAN for Partnership and Resource Mobilisation for ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response and former Oxfam Country Director for the Philippines and former Regional Programme Manager for East and South Asia
Disasters have started to make big headlines, mainly for the drama that it evokes. While the attention that all kinds of media puts on the scale of a disaster’s impact and the suffering that people caught in one go through is welcome, this kind of focus excludes many other aspects of disasters.
|
|
Thursday, 05 April 2012 12:18 |
|
DECLARATION
International Women's Network Against Militarism
8th Gathering: "Forging Nets for Demilitarization and Genuine Security"
February 19-25, 2012 – Puerto Rico
 The 8th Gathering of the International Women's Network Against Militarism, that occurred on February 19-25, 2012, reunited 26 women representing 8 countries gathered in Puerto Rico. Delegates from the Philippines, Guahan (Guam), Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, Hawaii, and the United States joined their counterparts in Puerto Rico to evaluate the growing military threat and develop strategies to counter the impact of militarism, military contamination, imperialism and systems of oppression and exploitation based on gender, race, class, nationality and sexual orientation.
|
|
