How to enforce ESC rights?

Amnesty International has described the Indian government’s decision to reject the bauxite mine project in Orissa’s Niyamgiri Hills as a landmark victory for the human rights of Indigenous communities.

1. Administrative Set up
2. Judicial Processes
3. Monitoring Administrative & Judicial Processes

The “Summer University on International Solidarity” will take place from 7 to 10 of July 2010 in Bordeaux (France). Terre des Hommes France co-organized a module on Human Rights and Dignity and a workshop on the right to food in the Philippines with the participation of its partner, Bernardo D. Larin from PhilRights.

In the context of the Peoples Summits, the Bi-regional network Europe-Latin America and the Caribbean Enlazando Alternativas, has organised two Tribunal Sessions in the framework of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) on “Neoliberal Policies and European Transnational Corporations (TNCs) in Latin America and the Caribbean”.

These sessions exposed the violations of human rights, labour rights and environmental standards committed by more than 25 multinational companies based in the European Union and their subsidiaries (including Repsol YPF, Unión Fenosa, Suez, Unilever, Ence, Botnia, Shell and European banks such as BBVA and ABN-AMRO) in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Last 18th and 19th February, the NGO ASSOAL’s premises provided the framework for this exercise.

More recently, the promotion and the protection of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESC Rights) in Cameroon were still on the agenda. According to the main recommendation of the Constitutive General Assembly (CGA) of this network, a meeting said to be of planning brought together for two days the actors of the civil society on the human rights theme.

Strasbourg, 17.03.2010 – Promoting and protecting human rights is a responsibility shared by all the tiers of governance but it is in regions and cities that human rights need to be nurtured, and local and regional authorities have a key role to play in their day-to-day application. They must set up structures and procedures to monitor and improve human rights situations, in particular in providing public services.

Amnesty International’s (((Demand Dignity))) campaign will initially focus on a few key areas and patterns of human rights abuse which show particularly sharply the interplay of deprivation, insecurity, exclusion and voices ignored. The overall goal is to end the human rights violations that keep people poor.