social protections

Helping Children & Families Thrive in All Circumstances {in honor of the October 1989 adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child}

Please join us [at the NGO Committee on the Family] as we discuss important aspects of family life, in honor of the October 1989 adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Concept Note

In 1989, Member States adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a landmark treaty intended to ensure the protection and wellbeing of children around the world. In the intervening time, nearly every country has ratified the treaty, signaling commitment to its core principles of the best interest of the child, non-discrimination, right to life, survival, and development, and the right of the child to be heard. The Convention also notes that “the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community.”

Since the Convention’s adoption, children’s welfare has improved greatly. Child poverty and mortality before age five have halved since then, and school attendance has risen. Countries have directed more attention, resources, and legislation to reducing child vulnerability and respecting the rights of children. Yet challenges remain. Poverty, natural disasters, conflict, family separation, and now a global pandemic affect children’s wellbeing. Times of crisis place stress on families and put children at risk. How can we ensure that children, even those in vulnerable situations, thrive?

This month, we are pleased to host two expert speakers who will address children’s vulnerability and ways to ensure that children and their families are supported to thrive in all circumstances and despite challenges. Ms. Rima Salah has extensive experience in the protection of children and peace and conflict resolution, through several leadership roles in United Nations entities, including serving as served as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General in the Peacekeeping Mission in Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT), Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and as a member of the UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations. Mr. Nuno Crisostomo has worked for child welfare with various non-governmental organizations, with the Portuguese government, and, from 2001, with UNICEF, most recently as an Emergency Specialist in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We hope you will join us as we learn from these two distinguished experts on this important topic.

Please RSVP to attend at https://forms.gle/KajCCPdPak3XtWms7.

Meeting information will be sent out after the RSVP deadline to all registered attendees.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on the Family, please visit ngofamilyny.org.

Helping Children & Families Thrive in All Circumstances {in honor of the October 1989 adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child}

Please join us [at the NGO Committee on the Family] as we discuss important aspects of family life, in honor of the October 1989 adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Concept Note

In 1989, Member States adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a landmark treaty intended to ensure the protection and wellbeing of children around the world. In the intervening time, nearly every country has ratified the treaty, signaling commitment to its core principles of the best interest of the child, non-discrimination, right to life, survival, and development, and the right of the child to be heard. The Convention also notes that “the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community.”

Since the Convention’s adoption, children’s welfare has improved greatly. Child poverty and mortality before age five have halved since then, and school attendance has risen. Countries have directed more attention, resources, and legislation to reducing child vulnerability and respecting the rights of children. Yet challenges remain. Poverty, natural disasters, conflict, family separation, and now a global pandemic affect children’s wellbeing. Times of crisis place stress on families and put children at risk. How can we ensure that children, even those in vulnerable situations, thrive?

This month, we are pleased to host two expert speakers who will address children’s vulnerability and ways to ensure that children and their families are supported to thrive in all circumstances and despite challenges. Ms. Rima Salah has extensive experience in the protection of children and peace and conflict resolution, through several leadership roles in United Nations entities, including serving as served as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General in the Peacekeeping Mission in Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT), Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and as a member of the UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations. Mr. Nuno Crisostomo has worked for child welfare with various non-governmental organizations, with the Portuguese government, and, from 2001, with UNICEF, most recently as an Emergency Specialist in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We hope you will join us as we learn from these two distinguished experts on this important topic.

Please RSVP to attend at https://forms.gle/KajCCPdPak3XtWms7.

Meeting information will be sent out after the RSVP deadline to all registered attendees.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on the Family, please visit ngofamilyny.org.

[Webinar] Care & Labor Rights: Challenges from the Capitalist Pandemic

Save the Date, virtual meeting details TBA. Interested attendees are encouraged to check organizer websites or contact co-conveners in the meantime.

Care & Labor Rights: Challenges from the Capitalist Pandemic

This webinar by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and the Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development is part of a series of action-oriented dialogues on the macro agendas and the current crises: Macro Solutions for Women, the People and the Planet.

Wednesday, 29 July 2020 @ 9 am NY/ 10 am Montevideo/ 2 pm London/ 15 hrs Brussels/ 16 hrs Nairobi/ 20 hrs Bangkok

Speakers:

Corina Rodriguez, Executive Committee Member, DAWN

Shahra Razavi, Director, Social Protection Department, International Labour Organisation

Laura Alfers, Director, Social Protection Programme, Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)

Concept Note

The COVID-19 Pandemic has starkly exposed the multiple inequalities that are intertwined in the world of work. First, it has forcefully revealed something that feminists have been repeating for a long time: the role of care is central  to sustain life in our societies. In a context of a health crisis,  where “staying at home” is one of the main strategies to face the emergency, care arrangements  have become more complex while  sexual division of labor continues to weight on women. Furthermore, there is an added pressure in the form of forced teleworking, which leads to situations where the boundaries between paid work and unpaid care work become blurred, working conditions become precarious and rights are easily violated.

Secondly, those in the informal economy bear heavier burdens in this crisis. Not working and staying at home has meant losing jobs and  livelihoods for the majority of informal workers and their families. Physical distancing is difficult to apply to those working in public spaces, such as street or market vendors, paid domestic workers or others in manufacturing or retail trade. The majority of workers in the informal economy are having less access to income resulting in increasing poverty and plunging workers and households into more precarious living conditions. The dimensions of this crisis are severe: The International Labour Organisation (ILO) reported that informal workers in Asia and Latin America endured an income decline of 81 percent during the first month of lock-downs. The situation of migrant workers has been particularly affected, given the higher exposure to occupational health and safety risks, no appropriate protection, exclusion from social protection measures directed towards nationals, as well as the restriction of movement and the accelerated destruction of jobs.

The context has also exposed the weakness of social protection systems to deal with the situation, and in most cases the applied immediate public policy responses have been insufficient.

Third, in the current context, it is important to analyse those groups of workers that are exposed in a differentiated form. On the one side are those in “front-line” jobs: health workers, workers at essential retail shops, paid domestic workers. The “front-line” is a predominantly feminized “front-line” workforce. In tandem, workers in platform jobs, many of which have seen an increase in the demand for their services but also higher levels of exploitation of their working conditions.

While some countries and some working sectors are coping more successfully with the emergency situation, most, especially those countries in the Global South, face a more serious form of exploitation already imposed by the pre-existing global financial capitalist model.

Can the harshness of the exposure of deepening inequalities serve as a spark to ignite and accelerate processes of transformation towards a “new normal” that is indeed new and different from the old normality? What feminist strategies can we draw on to activate an agenda of transformation in the world of work that serves women, people and the planet? What new challenges do we face and how should we adapt our analysis, our advocacy, our activism? What space can we create so that the post-COVID-19 pandemic does not continue to be a capitalist pandemic?

This webinar aims at reflecting on these questions and will be organized with four 10-12 minutes presentations, followed by a session of Q&A.

Objectives

  • To draw key elements of the agenda of transformation in the world of work from a feminist perspective;
  • To Identify common strategies across movements working on informal economy, care and work with different groups and constituencies (migrants, domestic workers, grassroots women, rural women, women in health sector);
  • To map advocacy spaces and mechanisms within the UN that may be used to activate our agenda of transformation of the world of work;
  • Facilitate cross-movement building and solidarity among civil society groups and activists mobilizing for care, workers rights, gender equality.
DAWN is a network of feminist scholars, researchers and activists from the economic South working for economic and gender justice and sustainable and democratic development. DAWN promotes critical analysis on global issues (economic, social and political) affecting the livelihoods, living standards, rights and development prospects of women, especially poor and marginalized women, in regions of the South. DAWN seeks to support women’s mobilization within civil society to challenge inequitable social, economic and political relations at global, regional and national levels, and to advance feminist alternatives.

The Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development (WWG on FfD) is an alliance of women’s organizations and networks who advocate for the advancement of women’s human rights and gender equality in the Financing for Development related UN processes.

Co-Conveners:

Rosa Lizarde, Global Director, Feminist Task Force; rosa.lizarde@feministtaskforce.org  

Emilia Reyes, Program Director, Policies & Budgets for Equality & Sustainable Development, Gender Equity: Citizenship, Work & Family; emilia@equidad.org.mx

______________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-Vienna, please visit ngocswvienna.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-Geneva, please visit ngocsw-geneva.ch. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-NY, please visit ngocsw.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org.

[Webinar] Care & Labor Rights: Challenges from the Capitalist Pandemic

Save the Date, virtual meeting details TBA. Interested attendees are encouraged to check organizer websites or contact co-conveners in the meantime.

Care & Labor Rights: Challenges from the Capitalist Pandemic

This webinar by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and the Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development is part of a series of action-oriented dialogues on the macro agendas and the current crises: Macro Solutions for Women, the People and the Planet.

Wednesday, 29 July 2020 @ 9 am NY/ 10 am Montevideo/ 2 pm London/ 15 hrs Brussels/ 16 hrs Nairobi/ 20 hrs Bangkok

Speakers:

Corina Rodriguez, Executive Committee Member, DAWN

Shahra Razavi, Director, Social Protection Department, International Labour Organisation

Laura Alfers, Director, Social Protection Programme, Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)

Concept Note

The COVID-19 Pandemic has starkly exposed the multiple inequalities that are intertwined in the world of work. First, it has forcefully revealed something that feminists have been repeating for a long time: the role of care is central  to sustain life in our societies. In a context of a health crisis,  where “staying at home” is one of the main strategies to face the emergency, care arrangements  have become more complex while  sexual division of labor continues to weight on women. Furthermore, there is an added pressure in the form of forced teleworking, which leads to situations where the boundaries between paid work and unpaid care work become blurred, working conditions become precarious and rights are easily violated.

Secondly, those in the informal economy bear heavier burdens in this crisis. Not working and staying at home has meant losing jobs and  livelihoods for the majority of informal workers and their families. Physical distancing is difficult to apply to those working in public spaces, such as street or market vendors, paid domestic workers or others in manufacturing or retail trade. The majority of workers in the informal economy are having less access to income resulting in increasing poverty and plunging workers and households into more precarious living conditions. The dimensions of this crisis are severe: The International Labour Organisation (ILO) reported that informal workers in Asia and Latin America endured an income decline of 81 percent during the first month of lock-downs. The situation of migrant workers has been particularly affected, given the higher exposure to occupational health and safety risks, no appropriate protection, exclusion from social protection measures directed towards nationals, as well as the restriction of movement and the accelerated destruction of jobs.

The context has also exposed the weakness of social protection systems to deal with the situation, and in most cases the applied immediate public policy responses have been insufficient.

Third, in the current context, it is important to analyse those groups of workers that are exposed in a differentiated form. On the one side are those in “front-line” jobs: health workers, workers at essential retail shops, paid domestic workers. The “front-line” is a predominantly feminized “front-line” workforce. In tandem, workers in platform jobs, many of which have seen an increase in the demand for their services but also higher levels of exploitation of their working conditions.

While some countries and some working sectors are coping more successfully with the emergency situation, most, especially those countries in the Global South, face a more serious form of exploitation already imposed by the pre-existing global financial capitalist model.

Can the harshness of the exposure of deepening inequalities serve as a spark to ignite and accelerate processes of transformation towards a “new normal” that is indeed new and different from the old normality? What feminist strategies can we draw on to activate an agenda of transformation in the world of work that serves women, people and the planet? What new challenges do we face and how should we adapt our analysis, our advocacy, our activism? What space can we create so that the post-COVID-19 pandemic does not continue to be a capitalist pandemic?

This webinar aims at reflecting on these questions and will be organized with four 10-12 minutes presentations, followed by a session of Q&A.

Objectives

  • To draw key elements of the agenda of transformation in the world of work from a feminist perspective;
  • To Identify common strategies across movements working on informal economy, care and work with different groups and constituencies (migrants, domestic workers, grassroots women, rural women, women in health sector);
  • To map advocacy spaces and mechanisms within the UN that may be used to activate our agenda of transformation of the world of work;
  • Facilitate cross-movement building and solidarity among civil society groups and activists mobilizing for care, workers rights, gender equality.
DAWN is a network of feminist scholars, researchers and activists from the economic South working for economic and gender justice and sustainable and democratic development. DAWN promotes critical analysis on global issues (economic, social and political) affecting the livelihoods, living standards, rights and development prospects of women, especially poor and marginalized women, in regions of the South. DAWN seeks to support women’s mobilization within civil society to challenge inequitable social, economic and political relations at global, regional and national levels, and to advance feminist alternatives.

The Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development (WWG on FfD) is an alliance of women’s organizations and networks who advocate for the advancement of women’s human rights and gender equality in the Financing for Development related UN processes.

Co-Conveners:

Rosa Lizarde, Global Director, Feminist Task Force; rosa.lizarde@feministtaskforce.org  

Emilia Reyes, Program Director, Policies & Budgets for Equality & Sustainable Development, Gender Equity: Citizenship, Work & Family; emilia@equidad.org.mx

______________________________________________________________________________________________

CoNGO Notes: For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-Vienna, please visit ngocswvienna.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-Geneva, please visit ngocsw-geneva.ch. For more information on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women-NY, please visit ngocsw.org. For more information on the NGO Committee on Financing for Development, please visit ngosonffd.org.

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