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Friday, March 10, 2006

In a city where's there often more talk about Uniting Nations than walk, one walker stands above the crowd in my eyes - who does in yours

She is Mary Robinson, ex president or Ireland now one of the ost networked human rights activists in womens world out of her organisation, ethical global

here is part of Q&A with Mary Robinson at OpenDemocracy

Q“The international human rights framework” means what?

Mary Robinson: I’m talking about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the six core human rights instruments:
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;
the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights;
the Convention on the Rights of the Child;
the Convention Against Torture;
the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,
and the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

Every country in the world has ratified at least one of these. Many have ratified more than three. Some have ratified all six. We see them as important tools for holding governments to account and we aim to be rigorous in our analysis of how this can be done.
But our aim is also to try and show young idealistic people who are frequently concerned with the environment, or poverty and inequality – to activists, if you will: “Look, you are interested in trying to make sure that governments keep a clean environment, have regard for the lifestyles of indigenous peoples, and work for fair trade rules. Well, it’s exactly the same for human rights – from non-discrimination to the basic rights to food, safe water, education and health care. We are talking rights not needs. There are standards that governments have signed up to – but nobody is holding them to account.”
Let me give you an example that stays with me from when I was UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In April 1999 the civil society groups in Brazil were fed up trying to get the government of Brazil to file its report under the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. So they compiled an alternative report on Brazil. They were a broad coalition of NGOs, churches, trade unions, black Brazilians, the landless, those working in child rights, and they came together and sent a small group to Geneva with their alternative report.
I met them as High Commissioner. We explained they could not have a formal hearing before the UN Committee which monitors implementation of the Covenant because only a government is entitled to that, but we commended them. As it happened, in May 1999 I was going to Brazil. I put the alternative report under my arm. When I got off the plane I met journalists and said, “Here is the alternative report, now where’s the government’s?”
The government was very embarrassed. They then told me they would bring out a report very quickly. But I said: “No, no, I don’t want that. I want to see the government working with the civil society groups to bring out a report that reflects reality.” And that is what happened. The result was more links between the civil society participants and the government representatives.
Shortly after, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro became minister of state for human rights. When I went back to Brazil two years later government and civil society groups were reporting on similar lines. The process had brought them closer together, not in comfortable dialogue but in real dialogue. So it’s a process that reinforces democracy.

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Worldwide, club of city supports collaboration and networkers: to pose serious questions, notably on future curves that seem to be trending down in many places and communities. How do all peoples and media 1 2 3 turnround such examples as:
  • Healthcare – ever increasing costs
  • Children – increased family strain, lost safety of community
  • Professionals- loss of Hippocratic oath, ever more bureaucratic
  • Water – Clean water is getting scarcer
  • Transport – getting slower
  • National Government – Increasingly powering over instead of facilitating what people need next Mass media – dumbing down, loss of social space and transparent debates
  • Food chain – cost of good for you food going up
  • Nations Cultures- love of each other’s diversity going down
  • Pensions (investment in sustainable growth) – going down
  • Adult confidence in making a difference with lifelong learning potentials – seems to be going down
  • Insurance – cost going up, learnings across biggest tragedies seem increasingly blocked
  • Underclass – compounding underclass- their loss of hope in life and mutual risks to all of us in a hi-connected world
  • NGOs/Charity – Global*Local infrastructure further removed from depth of grassroots needs in crisis or sustainability turnround challenges
    We are interested in any city network that either recognises any of these as a problem which it wants to question or has some answers they are happy to share with the world
    Chris Macrae, wcbn007@easynet.co.uk, London & DC, 30 years at origin of Entrepreneurial Revolution, 21 years @ Death of Distance transparency networking, valuetrue mapmaking 1