CONTENTS

Editorial

WMW 2007-2010 Strategic Plan

World Social Forum Nairobi

Forum Nyéleni for Food Sovereignty

Filipina wins landmark case vs. US serviceman

Major Setbacks for Women in Québec

Referendum on Abortion in Portugal

Against the G8 Summit

Next Edition

 Editorial

Dear friends,

We are aware of the fact that it’s been a long time since our last newsletter in October 2006. We are sorry for the lack of communication, due to our efforts to organize the new International Secretariat in Brazil and continue various projects of the World March of Women at the same time.

One of the fundamental tasks of this period was concluding our 2007-2010 strategic action plan. We sent this plan to all national coordinating bodies and it is available on our website as well.

We actively took part in the World Social Forum held in Kenya in January 2007 and in the Forum for Food Sovereignty – Nyéléni held in Mali in February 2007.

Many National Coordinating Bodies have been active, telling us what they have been doing. On March 8, 2007, once again, thousands of women hit the streets as World March of Women activists held either their own actions or organized countless demonstrations with other women’s groups.

In Pakistan women demonstrated against discriminatory laws and violence against women, demanding, above all, justice and punishment for rape cases. They went back to the streets on March 18 to demonstrate their solidarity with the women and peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, and to protest against Bush and his military and imperialist government.

The World March of Women in Morocco has resumed organizing after the actions held in 2005. On March 8 they went on hunger strike and staged a sit-in in front of UN headquarters, demanding the cancellation of the sentence of execution for three Iraqi women arrested with their children in Baghdad, and demanding the end of the military occupation in Iraq as well.

In Algeria women have also showed solidarity to all those who suffer all kinds of injustice, in particular in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Western Sahara.

In Burkina Faso the March joined demonstrations for education, for the end of impunity for those who commit violence against women, and has rejected the exclusion in which women live, be they young pregnant women rejected by their fathers or old ladies considered witches (“mangeuses d´âmes”) by their communities.

In Burundi, women’s demand for March 8 was that all kinds of violence against women be considered crimes and therefore included in the Penal Code. They also asked for legislation that would ensure equal inheritance rights for her daughters.

In Peru women from Lima, Piúra and Arequipa asked the president for concrete action to achieve democracy without discrimination, expressed in changes in economic policies, having the right to abortion, and the end of violence against women, including the struggle against trafficking in women for sexual exploitation.

In Brazil, the Women’s Movement called for action in all regions to reject Bush’s presence in the country, which led to repression by the police in some places. In São Paulo the World March of Women held a march in which many organizations and 20,000 people took part. They affirmed that women’s struggle for equality is at the very core of the struggles for social change and against imperialism, racism and all kinds of injustice.

We are aware of the fact that many other demonstrations took place and we hope you send us your news and pictures. We are on the move, and as our friends from Burkina have written, “La bataille se poursuit toujours” (the struggle continues).

São Paulo, May 2007.

 WMW 2007-2010 Strategic Plan

Our 6^th International Meeting, held in Lima, Peru, in July 2006, attended by 51 delegates from 29 countries, was a key moment in our strategic planning. We decided the four action focuses for the next period: violence against women as a tool of control over our lives and bodies; peace and demilitarization; women’s work; and common good and access to resources. This is well described in our last Newsletter, published in October 2006. Proposals were also made concerning international actions and alliances.

The International Committee (IC) meeting that took place from December 10 to 13, 2006, in São Paulo, Brazil, finalized the plan. It presented the desired outcome, timetable, international activities and actions, responsibility, and suggested national and regional actions. The plan was sent to the National Coordinating Bodies (NCBs) and it is posted on our web site.

The strategic planning process lasted a year and a half, from the first meeting of the IC in Dakar in October 2005, to its last meeting in São Paulo. After the International Meeting, we consulted the participating groups and the NCBs during this period.

The World March of Women’s mobilizing strength is directly linked to our ability to mesh the global, national and local agendas. So our strategic plan of action and its political content has to be conceived in a way that enhances and reinforces these links. The action areas have been defined as a synthesis of the concerns and the actions already being taken by the NCBs. We will be even more focused on these areas in order to build concrete strategies and action proposals. We also want to support the relationship between the NCBs and the IC as well as among NCBs. In order to do that and strengthen the March as a whole, we want to highlight the actions of the NCBs by action areas and promote communication between NCBs to share their analysis, their evaluation etc.

We want to go further than identifying the impact of global policies like free trade agreements, militarization, etc. on the daily life of women. We want women’s resistance and the alternatives that we are building at the local level to be the basis of our global proposals and strategies.

We do not see the relationship between reflection and action as a hierarchy, nor do we want to establish them as separate moments and separate responsibilities of different women.

We want to deepen our analysis of each of the proposed action areas. We see this both as a discussion process among ourselves and also with our allies. We believe in the importance of transposing our analysis in actions by confronting the status quo, evaluating our actions and systematizing what we have learned to enrich our analysis. We also want to give ourselves time to reflect and study so we can learn from history and feminist theory.

In our strategic plan we strengthen alliances with other social and feminist movements, also as a source of learning. We learn from them, and can then propose to the other members of the March the concepts, principles and evaluations of other movements, reshaping them with a feminist practice and vision at the grass-roots level. Another of our main aims is to influence other movements to change through their contact and actions with us. Our objective is to build a constantly growing common identity through analysis and action, which reinforces our collective capacity to attain our goals.

We want to stage global, national and regional concerted actions. We (NCBs and our allies) also want to ensure the presence of the WMW in all major mobilizing efforts and joint actions of the feminist movement. The IC has undertaken to send out calls to action that reflect the vision of the WMW, strengthen the analysis and practice of NCBs, and enable us to take a stand on the current global context.

Thus we invite all of you to read the plan, discuss it in your group and national coordinating body. Then send us your comments and reactions, and tell us how you expect to develop it in your work.

 WORLD SOCIAL FORUM – NAIROBI 2007

CHANGE WOMEN’S LIVES – CHANGE THE WORLD

The 7^th edition of the World Social Forum took place from January 20-25, 2007, in Nairobi, Kenya. This was the first world social forum to be held on the African continent. Although Bamako hosted a polycentric social forum in 2006, Nairobi was the first global-level World Social Forum to be held on African soil. Here is a brief account of the Forum and the issues raised there.
First, I will describe the activities the World March of Women organized for the 7^th World Social Forum. We knew from the outset that the absence of a World March National Coordinating Bbody in Kenya would be problematic for the organization of our activities at the Forum. Fortunately, we were assisted by a young woman who belongs to a feminist theatre troupe that treats various issues of importance to Kenyan society. Her group is called the 5 C’s (referring to 5 centuries of colonialism).

Thanks to their hard work, the March delegation included women from the poorest neighbourhoods of Nairobi and we now have the foundation to form a March coordinating body in Kenya. A purple scarf bearing the Change Women’s Lives/Change the World slogan ensured our visibility throughout the Forum.

We wanted to use the opportunity presented by the WSF to give a voice to the women’s movement of Africa and reinforce its leadership within the World March of Women. Women from some 10 African countries who are active in the March attended the WSF. A meeting was held to talk with Kenyan women interested in participating in the March and propose a way to continue working at the regional level.

We organized a variety of workshops covering topics such as migration and violence against women; presentation on food sovereignty and the need for alliances between rural and urban women; women and work; and the general question of how to use the Women’s Global Charter for Humanity to build the alternative solutions being sought by different social movements. The version of the Charter that travelled around the world and the Solidarity Quilt were also presented to the WSF.

With regard to the issue of peace and demilitarization—a crucial issue for the African continent and for African women—women from COCAFEM of the Great Lakes region of Africa (the sub-regional WMW coordinating body) organized a caravan that started in Burundi and was joined by women from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. After a three-day trip, four women from March organizations in the Great Lakes region arrived to participate in the WSF for the first time. They spoke about the work of women in their region to build peace and campaign against militarism. The caravan was useful in strengthening ties between the peoples of their respective countries and highlighting women’s leadership.

When they arrived in Nairobi they joined the other women in the March delegation in participating in activities that had been organized by an allied network called Peace Women Across the Globe. They invited us to work more closely with them to heighten the visibility of the question of peace and demilitarization within the WSF. We formed new alliances and strengthened others through our participation in the Forum on Globalization and Work, the Forum on Diversity and the organization of the meeting of social movements.

It was a big challenge to organize the global event of the WSF in Africa: one of the aims of the WSF was to reach the maximum number of African organizations and social movements possible so they would have an opportunity to work together and create or strengthen their alliances through coordinated action; another aim was to further the work of preceding WSF’s in sharing common alternatives for the construction of another world.

Much concern was expressed during the WSF and the International Council that followed it regarding the Forum’s accessibility, in its broadest sense, especially to the poorest members. The registration fee for individuals was the equivalent of one week’s pay for most Kenyans. The fee had been even higher but was lowered after lobbying by the organizing committee. The WSF’s accumulated deficit of several years resulted in the WSF’s economical viability taking precedence over other concerns. In addition, participants’ safety was used to justify the decision to locate the forum in a spot far from downtown, making the forum even more inaccessible.

As in past forums, the contradictory decision to accept funding from major transnational companies and hire expensive caterers for the food booths was denounced. This accentuated the criticism regarding the increased commercialization of the Forum. We must act on the lessons of past Forums and make sure that the Forum reflects the situation and struggles of the host country.

Despite this dark portrait, we had a chance to meet some extraordinary people and form links with many groups and individuals, both women and men, during this 7^th edition of the World Social Forum. We were able to establish some important contacts for the March in Africa and make new alliances with feminist groups and groups in other social movements with whom we would like to work further to expand our thinking and develop our struggles. However, it is our responsibility to think further about the future of the tool that is the World Social Forum in terms of extending our struggle against the roots of poverty and violence against women. As the World March of Women, we continue to reflect on this question because we want to breathe new life into the Forum process and the Social Movements Global Network that has emerged from it so that these tools live up to our desire to change the world.

 FORUM NYÉLÉNI FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

Food Sovereignty is the right of peoples and persons to decide how they want to produce food, respecting nature and ensuring that everybody has access to healthy food, according to their own cultural references.
In order to affirm this right, Nyéléni - Forum for Food Sovereignty was held from February 23-27, 2007, in Sélingué, Mali, Africa. Taking part were over 500 delegates from over 80 countries and various organizations, including peasants, family farmers, traditional fisherfolk, Indigenous Peoples, landless peoples, rural workers, migrants, pastoralists, women, youth, consumers, environmentalists, and urban trade unions.

The World March of Women, Via Campesina, and Friends of the Earth International, among others, issued action calls for the Forum.
World March of Women militants activists from the following places have taken part from: Brazil, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Québec, Galicia, Turkey, India, the Philippines, Guatemala, Basque Countries, Algeria, Iran, Burkina Faso, and Mali took part in the Forum.

The main goals of the discussions held at the Forum were to strengthening the alliances among movements and sectors and building common strategies in the struggle for the right to food sovereignty.

These goals have been expressed in many issues: were addressed: international trade and local markets, technology; access to natural resources; the right to land; and the means of production.

At the end of the Forum, those who took part drew up the Declaration of Nyéléni, affirming that food sovereignty “gives us the hope and power to preserve, recover and develop our knowledge and capacity for producing food” and also functions as a strategy to resist and dismantle the market-imposed free trade and food regime. Food sovereignty implies new social relations, free of oppression and inequality among women and men, peoples, racial groups, social classes and generations.

The Forum was a space to collectively broaden the concept of food sovereignty, call for the meaning of social movements to adopt as a political symbol, and define practical forms of actions to intensify the struggle against agribusiness—the transnational companies that wield control over the whole food chain: seed production, fertilizers, agricultural trade, agro-industry and international trade.

One of the main points was affirming the criticism of biofuel, presented by many as the panacea for the problem of global warming caused by the use of fossil fuel, when it actually implies increased monocultures of sugarcane and oil-rich seeds like soybeans.

Before the Nyéléni Forum the sponsoring organizations issued an action call for The Meeting of Women, on February 22.

At the beginning of this meeting, women from Mali shared information on their struggle for food sovereignty and there was a discussion on the elements of a feminist point of view. At least two ideas emerged very strongly: recognizing women’s contribution and knowledge with respect to agriculture (the symbol of Nyéléni helps to convey this understanding), and ensuring women’s access to land by removing legal barriers, those of tradition, and rights that usually favour the expansion of monocultures and agribusiness.

Women organized broke up into sub-groups to discuss each issue addressed at Nyéleni from a feminist point of view, which was later reflected in the way they worked during the Forum.

The Women’s Declaration for Food Sovereignty reaffirms women’s determination to struggle to change the capitalist world based on patriarchy, where the market, rather than people’s rights, is the priority, and which considers food, water, peoples’ knowledge and women’s bodies simply as commodities.

Nyéléni Fórum was an opportunity to experience community, express solidarity, and share tasks. It also enabled a sharing of knowledge on the means of food production and cultural interaction among the peoples of Mali. We left the Forum strengthened, to continue the struggle for peoples’ sovereignty and women’s autonomy through the common action of women from the countryside and from the city.

For more information: www.nyeleni.org or in WMW’s web site.

 FILIPINA WINS LANDMARK CASE VS. US SERVICEMAN

On Dec. 04, 2006, US Marine Lance Corporal Daniel Smith was found “guilty beyond reasonable doubt” by a regional trial court, of having raped 22 year-old “Nicole” on Nov. 1, 2005 , inside a moving van in the Subic Bay Freeport and sentenced him to 40 years life imprisonment. As “Nicole” wept tears of joy and relief inside the courtroom, hundreds of her supporters who kept vigil since the night before, jumped and shouted in the grounds outside the courtroom. Thousands of others who waited for the news over radio and television manifested various emotions. One female supporter gave an instant pizza blow-out to her officemates. On the other hand, many felt dissatisfied that the three other accused US servicemen were acquitted for lack of evidence yet they watched and jeered as the crime was being committed.

It was an uphill battle from the start. This was not a mere case of an unknown woman filing rape charges against power wielding adversaries. This was a sovereignty issue as well. The four accused US servicemen were being protected by the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) which gives US personnel undue advantage: custody remains with the US and a one year period to finish the case is a requirement. Rape cases involving US servicemen during the presence of US military bases in the Philippines have reportedly reached a staggering 3,000 count . Not one of these cases ever reached court. The scene of the crime is a former US military base where prostitution is rampant so that the victim’s credibility was also in question. To top it all, majority of the public prosecutors, including the Secretary of the Department of Justice himself, was more interested in maintaining “good relations” with the US than in defending an abused Filipina.

But “Nicole” and her family sailed the storm. No amount of public insults hurled by supposed protectors from government changed their resolve. Offers of a sell-out were exposed by the victim’s mother herself. Competent and feminist private prosecutors together with an independent regional trial judge eventually led to the “guilty” verdict.

Task Force Subic Rape (TFSR)*, a loose network of 15 organizations including members of the World March of Women in the Philippines, was mainly responsible for various forms of support to this case some of which were:

1. Daily presence during the difficult period of trial, bodily shielding “Nicole” from media and curious on-lookers ;

2. Heightened public interest, broadened and sustained support for the case through the conduct of education and information campaign , holding of creative protest mass actions and pickets in various places ;

3. Watchdogs of public prosecutors’ moves to “sell” the case and called the attention of the Department of Justice and its government prosecutors’ apparent bias to side with the US servicemen instead of the victim;

4. Highlighted the gender issues of the case.

5. Created public interest and awareness about the one-sidedness and onerous provisions of VFA including those that undermine the sovereignty of the country;

6. Linked the rape issue to the VFA which allows U.S. troops to enter the country and exposes the women population to potential sexual and physical abuse;

7. Involved legal personalities in the struggle, namely: a former vice president, a former senator and foreign affairs secretary, former cabinet members, a former university president, present congress representatives, leading church leaders, university professors, academicians, religious nuns and priests, artists and NGO personalities.

The Subic Rape Case is a landmark case as it is the first case against US servicemen that prospered in court, because of its importance in challenging the implementation of the Anti-Rape Law in furtherance of Women’s rights and because it put to test the exercise of sovereignty in a crime that involved the VFA.

But the case is far from over. Smith has a pending appeal and he remains inside the premises of the US Embassy, technically, outside Philippine soil. And whatever happens to the legal aspect of the case, the fight against rape and other war-related violence against women is far from over.

 Major Setbacks for Women in Québec and Canada

National Coordinating Bodies Support the Women’s Movement’s Fight

In November 2006, the women’s movement in Québec and Canada issued an urgent solidarity call to the WMW, asking National Coordinating Bodies to write to Canada’s Prime Minister, Mr. Stephen Harper, to condemn several decisions of his government that undermine women’s rights. A lot of you answered our call! National Coordinating Bodies in 14 countries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East sent letters to Harper and the Canadian embassies located in their countries: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Denmark, France, Galicia, Haiti, Lebanon, Mali, Mexico, Netherlands, the Philippines and Portugal. Five women Nobel Prize laureates have also supported our struggle: Wangari Maathai, Kenya (1992 Nobel Prize); Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Ireland (1976); Shirin Ebadi, Iran (2003); Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Guatemala (1992); and Jody Williams, United States (1997). We were very moved by this show support!

You may recall that in September 2006, the Government of Canada transformed Status of Women Canada, a program that was initially supposed to be devoted to the advancement of women’s rights. The government took the word “equality” out of its mandate and changed the rules regarding the funding of women’s groups. Federal monies can no longer be used to fund activities to defend women’s rights and influence the government. The Canadian government has also cut Status of Women Canada’s operating budget by 40%. This cutback resulted in the closure of 12 out of 16 regional offices located across Canada. The ability of women’s groups to obtain services is now extremely limited, especially that of groups located in rural or remote areas. These decisions come on top of the decision to abolish the Court Challenge Program, a valuable program that enabled women’s groups to take legal action to uphold certain rights; the cancellation of agreements with the provinces to offer affordable childcare services everywhere in Canada; and the absence of the political will needed to enact proactive pay equity legislation. With these decisions, Canada has abandoned its commitment to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

These decisions mark a shift to the right in Canada and in Québec. They will likely have an extremely negative impact on women in Québec and throughout Canada. The very survival of certain women’s groups is in jeopardy! We worry that feminist organizations working for political and legal equality, conducting research and fighting for policies and programs to uphold Canada’s existing commitments for equality will soon find themselves in great difficulty. Women’s voices will be muffled. Yet it is essential that we continue to fight for our rights—even though women in Québec and Canada have achieved equality in law, we still have a long way to go before it is achieved in fact!

Women’s groups throughout Québec and Canada have continued to mobilize against the Harper government. On International Women’s Day (IWD, March 8) actions were held across Canada. In Québec, women’s groups marked IWD in the middle of an election campaign, so we highlighted the issues specific to Québec. When the election was over, the right had advanced considerably in the Québec parliament, and this doesn’t bode well for women’s rights. The pan-Canadian campaign will resume with the upcoming federal election campaign sometime in the next few months.
To conclude, we send you the warm wishes of women’s groups in Québec and Canada. Thank you for your support. We count on your solidarity right now, as we face a rising of the right.

 The Right to Choose: Referendum on Abortion in Portugal

The 11^th February 2007 was the day the Right to Chose was made legal to women in Portugal - Abortion is now legal and safe. This is a major victory for us women and feminist, but also a victory for Democracy and Justice and for Women that all over the world struggle every day for the right to chose – in Ireland, Poland, Argentina, Brazil and so many others. To these women and to the World March of Women that sent their solidarity messages and organizing actions in their countries… thank you!

The right to chose and the right to legal and safe abortion is one of the biggest feminist struggles in many countries all over the world. This is a right finally recognized in Portugal (after 30 years of struggle and after the referendum of 1998). The right to chose means as well the recognition and the respect for Women’s Dignity and Human Rights.

However, we cannot forget that this constitutes also a symbolic and material victory of great value over patriarchy, because, as we know so well, the control over women’s body and their capacity to bring babies to the world is, since ever, one of the most powerful ways of control women, and that opens way to many other violences and oppressions.

The result was of 59,25% voting “YES” to the Right to Chose and Depenalization (against 40,75% of “NO”), with an abstention of 56,39%. In 1998, the “YES” had 48,28% (and the “NO” 50,07%), with and abstention of 68,11%. This change in the vote expresses the changes in Portuguese society towards women, but also the refusal of the persecution and judgement in court of Women that had chosen to abort. And more and more we could count on men to be side-by-side with us to state all this (although parity and equality is still not the ones we wish, concrete steps have been given).

One can use all the arguments we wish, but, in the end, “women will never abdicate of their right to chose, even if they have to throw themselves down the stairs”. All women have conscience of their value and of their dignity and will stand for that. Here we call it Women Human Rights: sexual and reproductive rights, the right to chose when and how many children to have, the right to chose not to have children, the right to health assistance, the right nor to be persecuted or judged on moral basis, the right to make decisions regarding her future, the right to her body, the right to a secular state, the right to contraception, the right to sexual education.

If the Referendum is wan, the struggle and the work are far from over. Immediately after the results were announced, the “NO” – the conservative alliances and platforms – was already re-aligned and ready to question all over again, with irrelevant arguments, as usual. All the arguments could not be explained here, but two of them are the demand of forced counselling (not only information to a free and informed choice) to women that pretend to abort and the objection of conscience (chosen or imposed by pressure) of many health professionals. This possibility would give space to the “NO” to pressure women to delay / change their decision and /or to make the process so long that they would be out of the 10 weeks legal limit to abort.

The law (Decreto N.º 112/X) approved the 8^th March, states among other things the following: Abortion is not a crime when made by woman’s choice, up to 10 weeks of pregnancy; there is only one compulsory consultation to receive information on procedures and options; doctors only have to inform women (fulfilling a list of items to be approved by parliament), to state the weeks of pregnancy and are subject to professional secrecy; women shall reflect / wait for a maximum of 3 days; it is the responsibility of health professionals and establishments that the date limits are fulfilled.

On the other hand, reflection and evaluation still has to be done over the Referendum, including alliances, movements and arguments used all over the campaign for the “YES”. We have more challenges to overcome, like sexual education in schools, and therefore we need to keep dialogue and questioning inside so we can keep acting together. One of the issues to be addressed can be called the “degree of feminism” and the “place / visibility of feminists” during the whole Referendum. To moderate our feminist speeches (not too frighten to much the undecided and to assure a victory) was a hard choice to do (especially for us, feminists). One could not “put at risk the results of the Referendum so important for all the Women because of a more feminist speech”, they said.

All this – the victory of the “YES”, the re-organization of the “NO” and the social movements dynamics - brings to us challenges to our feminist movements and organizations. The first being the re-definition of our future struggles and priorities. Today in Portugal we have the Right to Choose, Violence against Women is a public crime, Quotas are imposed to promote women’s participation in politics. We need to accompany the implementation of all these rights and laws, but this is not enough, we need to enlarge our struggles and our basis. The second challenge is to reflect on the deepness and horizontality we can put on our alliances with other movements and how much we bring into them feminism – we don’t want only to be with them, we also want them to be with us.

We have to bring once again to the centre of the discussion that Women’s Right to Chose is a Right to be recognized and not given;

We have to demand to be co-protagonist of these movements and of these historical moments;

We have to refuse any kind of invisibility or of homogenization of our diversities.

 Against the G8 Summit: Everybody in Rostock!

From June 6^th-8^th 2007, the Summit of the 8 great world powers (the G8) will meet in Heiligendamm Germany, a small seaside resort by the shore of the Baltic Sea 20 kilometers from Rostock.

The Counter-Summit will take place from June 2^th to 8^th, after the “Marches against poverty, insecurity and discriminations” come from across the whole of Europe from mid May on to converge on Rostock on June 1. During its last meeting in October 2006 the European Coordination of the World March of Women decided to take part in these Marches.

Against an illegitimate G8

At this Summit, G8 countries say they want to discuss global warming and the reduction of poverty in Africa as priorities. Thus the countries that own more than half of the planet’s wealth, which pollute the most and control the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank, wish to look into the scourges their own system creates all over the world! It must be a joke! For sure all this farce will end up holding, as always, great declarations of intention followed by little effect. Or else they will address other issues, such as the world’s growing population, financial stability, free trade…

The G8 is the symbol of liberal, anti-social and irresponsible policies, especially from an ecologic and anti militarist point of view. In order to face it, tens of thousands of people from this region, Germany, Europe and all over the world will protest and highlight the alternatives to globalization. The Counter-Summit, just a few kilometers from the G8’s fortress – a 3m high and 15 kilometer barrier separates them from the rest of the world – will discuss its counter-proposals and call for action to explain that there are other orientations than those of the G8 for another possible and necessary world.

From all over Europe. Let’s march towards Heiligendamm against lives and jobs’ insecurity

The more wealth Europe produces the more insecurity there is. During more than three decades, mass long-term unemployment is part of the day-to-day life of tens of millions of men and women. In Lisbon in 2000 the European Union promised a paradise-like vision for 2010. In fact, not only has unemployment not been reduced but, on the contrary, precarious and underpaid jobs have increased; above all for young people, women, and immigrants. In addition to the “officially” unemployed, poor workers in cities and rural areas are increasingly numerous, from informal sectors, those who benefit from minimum social threshold (seuils mimima sociaux), young people who don’t have rights, homeless people (Sans domicile fixe - SDF) and increasingly pensioners. The general social security system (casse sociale généralisée) creates poverty and misery at the same time the profits of the actionists reach the summits. Social injustice has never been that strong.
Against lives and jobs’ insecurity, there is only one solution: equality of rights for everybody: the right to an income that allows us to live, the right to a job and education, the right to land, the right to housing, the right to healthy food, the right to free public health services of high quality, the right to circulation and installation, the right to full legal documentation, the right to culture, and public services to ensure these rights.

In order to express their demands effectively, the marches will start in mid-May from throughout Europe, and from Cologne, in Germany, on the weekend of May 26 and 27, 2007, to reach the “marches final push” of German groups and arrive in Rostock on June 1, for the great opening demonstration on June 2, and the Counter-Summit, when the Summit of precarious and other caravanes people will meet.

The European Coordination of the World March of Women, signing the call for the marches against insecurity, will do its best so that the most feminist militants possible take part and are able to, along each stage, explain how insecurity affects women especially, in their lives and jobs.

The Counter-Summit agenda
– from June 1 to 8: alternative camps will be held in the surroundings of Rostock;
– Saturday June 2: large demonstration in the afternoon in Rostock, followed by a concert;
– Sunday June 3: Day of agriculture and Summit of the precarious and excluded people;
– Tuesday June 5: day against militarism and permanent war;
– from Tuesday June 5 at 5pm to Thursday June 7 at 1pm: alternative summit parallel to the official summit addressing the following main issues: poverty, climate, finance and economical international architecture, democracy and migration;
– Wednesday June 6: blockage actions in the red district, preventing the G8 delegations from reaching Heiligendamm for the official summit opening;
– Thursday June 7: demonstration towards the red district and closing concert;
– Friday June 8: Day of climate change.

For further information:

http://anti-g8.effraie.org

http://dissentnetzwerk.org/node/49

www.heigendamm.de

WMW International Committee

Miriam Nobre (International
Secretary), Nana Aicha Cissé and
Wilhelmina Trout (Africa), Jing
Ynares and Saleha Athar (Asia),
Farida el Nakash (Middle East),
Rosa Guillén and Maria del
Rosário Quispe (Americas),
Celina dos Santos et Nadia de
Mond (Europe).

WMW International Secretary

Rua Ministro Costa e Silva, nº 36,
Pinheiros

São Paulo - SP - Brasil

Cep: 05417-080

Tel e fax: 55 11 3819-3876

e-mail: info marchemondiale.org

site : www.marchemondiale.org

Articles redaction:

Celina dos Santos, Diane Matte,
Jing Ynares, Michéle Asselin,
Miriam Nobre, Nelly Martin,
Guillén, Sandra Trottier
Translation and revision:
Alionka Skup, Elise Boyer, Gissy
Cedamanos, Graziela Schneider,
Magaly Skup, Márcia Macedo,
Michele Briand, Nicole Kennedy

Photos: Bárbara Legault, Nicolas
Sersiron, Archives World March
of Women

Ilustration: DISSENT NETWORK

Designed by: Luciana Nobre
São Paulo, May 2007

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Sarahuies Women Union Congress

Hemispheric Encounter against FTA and for People’s Integration
and others.