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	Development agenda must address inequity by UN Human Rights Office   30 October 2013   UN entities say post-2015 development agenda must address inequity in access to clean water, sanitation.   Member States must ensure that the post-2015 development agenda addresses inequalities that prevent millions of people from getting access to basic services, various United Nations entities today stressed.   In a joint statement, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Friends of Water, and the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, urged countries to frame the new development agenda around the principles of equality and non-discrimination.   The statement was issued ahead of a panel discussion at Headquarters on “Measuring inequalities in the Post-2015 development agenda: a new global tool for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for All (WASH) and beyond,” co-organized by the Permanent Mission of Finland and the Office of the Special Rapporteur.   “I today join those who are calling for the post-2015 development agenda to address inequality. We need to dismantle the multiple and systematic barriers that marginalize the most vulnerable members of society so that we can achieve a life of dignity for all,” said the Deputy Secretary-General, Jan Eliasson.   The statement emphasizes that future goals, targets and indicators should include an explicit focus on the most marginalized and disadvantaged groups and individuals, including through the use of disaggregated data, which will allow inequalities to be measured.   “Success” should be assessed in relation to the progress made in closing gaps or inequalities in access to sanitation, water and hygiene, and other sectors such as access to education and immunization.   “We must work to ensure that development priorities, in the coming years and beyond, focus on the millions of marginalized peoples who have remained hidden within aggregate statistics, and who continue to have no access to basic services,” the statement read.   It added that this was one of the most important lessons learned under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) framework, which put forward eight anti-poverty targets on poverty alleviation, education, gender equality, child and maternal health, environmental stability, HIV/AIDS reduction, and a global partnership for development.   “We all know that the framework of the MDGs has produced important gains for people around the world. But we are also aware that these improvements are generally measured [at the global, regional or national level] and do not adequately assess how the most vulnerable and marginalized are affected,” Mr. Eliasson said.   He noted that while the MDG target for providing access to improved water sources has largely been realized, there are still 768 million people who do not have access to safe drinking water. In addition, over 1 billion people still practice open defecation for lack of decent toilets.   “Not only do the poor lack access to clean water, they also frequently pay more for the limited access they have,” he said. “Across the developing world, people living in slums can be paying up to ten times more for their water than the residents of cities like New York or London.”   He highlighted the global Call to Action to accelerate work towards the MDG on sanitation and to eliminate the practice of open defecation by 2025, which aims to ensure that everyone, everywhere, has access to adequate sanitation.   Water cooperation at national and global levels is essential to achieve sustainable development and ensure millions of people have access to this precious resource.   “Not only is the world experiencing explosive growth in the demand for water resources, but water waste and pollution increasingly threaten the integrity of aquatic and agro ecosystems vital for life and food security,” the Associate Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Rebeca Grynspan, said at a High-Level International Conference on Water Cooperation.   “Climate change is not helping either, increasing variability in the water cycle, and exacerbating extreme events like floods and droughts complicating even further an already immense water management and water governance challenge. If these trends continue, by 2025, as many as 3 billion people could be living in areas facing water stress.”   Currently, at least 770 million people worldwide lack access to an improved water source and 2.5 billion lack access to basic sanitation. As part of its efforts to highlight these issues, the UN declared 2013 as the International Year of Water Cooperation, recognizing that cooperation is essential to strike a balance between the different needs and priorities and share the precious resource equitably, using water as an instrument of peace.   Ms. Grynspan stressed countries must collaborate to increase access to clean water and sanitation and improve water management for irrigation and productive uses, which has the potential of lifting millions out of poverty and hunger. The importance of this cooperation should feature prominently in the post-2015 development agenda, as well as in the formulation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).   “Water is at the heart of a daily crisis faced by millions of the most vulnerable people in the world,” she said, emphasizing that: “Effective and inclusive water cooperation at all levels – local, national, regional, and international – is essential to effective water governance and thus to achieving key water-related objectives and targets.”   “At the national level, community involvement, women’s voices and participation and private sector cooperation are essential, at the Regional level, dialogue, information sharing and cooperation on transboundary waters to advance peace, security, environmental protection, and regional economic development should be supported.   “And at global level, international standards, goals, and targets on water and related issues like climate change and cooperation mechanisms such as UN-Water, the Sanitation and Water for All initiative, and indeed, the International Year of Water Cooperation itself, are key.”   October 2013   Heed call of marginalized, end discrimination.   Urging greater support for people struggling to escape poverty and build better lives, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the United Nations marked the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty by calling on the world to “do more to listen to the voices that so often go unheard.”   “If we are to realize the future we want for all, we must hear and heed the calls of the marginalized,” Mr. Ban said in his message.   “The post-2015 agenda must have poverty eradication as its highest priority and sustainable development at its core. The only way to make poverty eradication irreversible is by putting the world on a sustainable development path.”   The UN chief stressed that the international community had much work to do: while poverty levels have declined, progress has been highly uneven. “Some impressive achievement in reducing poverty should not blind us to the fact that more than 1.2 billion people still live in extreme poverty worldwide”.   Stressing that too many, especially women and girls, continue to be denied access to adequate health care and sanitation, quality education and decent housing, he said that rising inequality in many countries – both rich and poor – is fuelling exclusion from economic, social and political spheres, and the impacts of climate change and loss of biodiversity hit the poorest the hardest.   “We need to do more to listen and act for those whose voices often go unheard – people living in poverty, and in particular among them indigenous people, the older persons and those living with disabilities, the unemployed, migrants and minorities,” he said, adding: “We need to support them in their struggle to escape poverty and build better lives for themselves and their families.”   Over the past year, the UN has been spearheading an unprecedented global conversation on the world people want, with more than a million people from over 190 countries taking part in global consultations on their priorities for the new development agenda.   “By listening and responding to these voices, UN Member States can chart new territory – generating the kind of public ownership which could turn the world’s aspirations, including to eradicate extreme poverty, into action through an agenda which is monitored and championed by the people to whom it matters most,” said Helen Clark, Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP).   She said that UNDP is workting with countries to confront discrimination by helping them realize their human rights commitments, formulate policies which approach poverty as both a cause and a consequence of discrimination, and by empowering and engaging poor people through its programmes.   To tackle poverty and inequality, countries must ensure their citizens have access to adequate employment and social protection, stressed the Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Guy Ryder.   People living in poverty are particularly subject to discrimination and the exclusion. It is timely to focus on the discrimination faced by many women and men living in situations of extreme poverty.   Working poverty has continued to decrease, but at a slower pace than before the crisis. There are still some 870 million workers living with their families on less than US$2 per person per day, of which nearly 400 million are living in extreme poverty. A further 660 million workers are living just above the poverty line and are at high risk of falling back.   Commonly, people living in poverty are particularly subject to discrimination and the exclusion that characterizes it because of their poverty. The injustice is magnified when multiple bases of discrimination, including gender, come into play.   People living in poverty show tremendous ingenuity in coping with their immediate situation; they know the changes and institutions that will best serve their own efforts to advance. Yet, more often than not, they are ignored when policies are devised. Effective policies for poverty reduction call for an engagement with those whom they are intended to benefit.   Sustainable development means tackling poverty and inequality agendas and recognizing their interconnections. Jobs are the fundamental link between people, their communities, their society and the economy, and the quality of work is instrumental in the trajectory of that relationship.   In this framework, the expansion of opportunities to work in conditions of freedom, security, equity and dignity is a critical goal and all the more urgent for people living in extreme poverty. Poverty reduction targets must be set within a development process that recognizes and gives effect to the central role of work in people’s lives and the role of decent work as the sustainable route out of poverty. How can this be done?   • Making opportunities for productive employment a direct policy goal, systematically operationalized, including through inclusive access to finance and employment-friendly macroeconomic policies and ensuring that such policies respond effectively to the situation of women and men living in extreme poverty;   • Rooting policies for employment creation in a foundation of respect for fundamental principles and rights at work;   • Recognizing the role of social dialogue and organization in contributing to building solidarity-based societies, in empowering people living in poverty and opening channels for their voices to be heard; and   • Establishing social protection floors that assure basic social protection for all in extreme poverty situations, helping to reduce their vulnerabilities and build capabilities.   We cannot be indifferent - change requires collective responsibility towards the poorest and most vulnerable. Let us draw on and amplify those experiences which show that a rights-based and inclusive approach to sustainable development centred on jobs is feasible. Indeed this is imperative if the goal of ensuring a life with dignity for all is to become a reality.   Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Achim Steiner, highlighted the link between poverty reduction and environment protection, as it is the poorest around the world that most depend on natural resources for their livelihoods.   He pointed to the UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI) as an example of how development programmes can help to deliver outcomes that both help the poor and the environment. Set up in 2005, the programme has been implemented in various countries including Malawi, Philippines, Uruguay and Rwanda.   The UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, Magdalena Sepúlveda, called on States to tackle the deep-rooted causes of gender inequality and women’s greater vulnerability to poverty.   Urging Governments to recognize and value unpaid care work, and ensure it is better supported and more equitably shared between women and men, she warned that the unequal distribution of unpaid care work, fuelled by damaging gender stereotypes, is a major human rights issue.   “It is unacceptable that, in the 21st century, unpaid care work such as cooking, childcare, looking after frail older relatives and fetching water and fuel, which heavily contributes to economic growth and social development, is not better valued, supported or shared,” said Ms. Sepúlveda.   She stressed that State policies must place care as a social and collective responsibility and ensure that the necessary public services and infrastructure – including childcare, healthcare, water and energy provision – are in place, especially in disadvantaged areas.   31 October 2013   Right to Development: Political will urgently needed to address rising inequalities   The Chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Working Group on the Right to Development speaking to diplomats in New York has warned about the dramatic increase of inequalities within and between countries during the unprecedented current global economic and financial crisis.   The surge in inequalities has brought “countless victims, violating their human rights, and threatening the ecosystem upon which life depends,” said Tamara Kunanayakam, who currently chairs the Working Group charged by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on the promotion and implementation of the right to development.   “We are lacking neither in the means nor in the resources to confront these historical challenges through international cooperation and solidarity. Problems of a global character can only be resolved through collective action,” Ms. Kunanayakam told the UN General Assembly during the presentation of the Working Group’s latest report. “The question is: Is there the political will to do so?”   If any progress is to be made in the realization of the right to development, then social justice and equality, as well as national and international justice, must be given the prominence they deserve in today’s development discourse.   Ms. Kunanayakam urged Governments worldwide to implement the Declaration on the Right to Development, calling it “an instrument that provides a framework for building a human society based on justice, equality, non-discrimination and solidarity.”   The Working Group was established in 1998 by the then Commission on Human Rights to monitor and review progress made in the promotion and implementation of the right to development in the world.   For the millions of men, women and children living in the least developed countries (LDCs), development is one of the most urgent of human rights imperatives. Development is a human right for all individuals and peoples. The formulation of development as a right is based on the idea that it is not merely an equivalent to economic growth.   The Declaration on the Right to Development describes development as “a comprehensive economic, social, cultural and political process, which aims at the constant improvement of the wellbeing of the entire population and of all individuals on the basis of their active, free and meaningful participation in development and in the fair distribution of benefits….”   http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13927&LangID=E http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Food/Pages/FoodIndex.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/SRExtremePovertyIndex.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/WaterAndSanitation/SRWater/Pages/SRWaterIndex.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/Pages/HousingIndex.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/IEInternationalorderIndex.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Health/Pages/SRRightHealthIndex.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Business/Pages/WGHRandtransnationalcorporationsandotherbusiness.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/AnnualReports.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Development/Pages/DevelopmentIndex.aspx Visit the related web page
	Recognizing the work of human rights defenders by Navi Pillay UN High Commissioner for Human Rights   14 October 2013   Igor Kalyapin founded the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) in order to investigate reported human rights abuses in the Chechen Republic (Russian Federation). On 8 October 2013, Kalyapin, in his capacity as Founder and President, received the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders on behalf of the group.   The Geneva-based Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders is granted annually to a person or organization with an exceptional record of fighting against human rights violations. Named after the late British human rights activist who became the first head of Amnesty International, the award is intended to further work in the field of human rights.   “Through its investigations, the JMG has become one of the sources of information on alleged human rights abuses in the Chechen Republic (Russian Federation), revealing enforced disappearances, torture in custody, and extra-judicial executions, and thereby pressuring the authorities to address them,” said UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay in her speech during the awards ceremony.   Working with a team of volunteer human rights lawyers, the Joint Mobile Group travels to the Chechen Republic (Russian Federation) on brief rotating shifts to investigate alleged abduction, torture, disappearances and killings. JMG, whose founder is the head of the NGO Committee Against Torture (CAT) in Nizhny Novgorod, uses this information to raise urgent human rights concerns with the authorities.   In his acceptance speech, Kalyapin paid tribute to the defenders from Egypt and Haiti, and thanked the victims of torture and the relatives of those who have disappeared. “I would like to thank the heroes: they took risks, they resisted, they did not let go, and they continued trusting us,” he said. “As long as they continue to trust us, we will continue to work in Chechnya whatever the price we have to pay.”   In June 2012, according to the reports, the Head of the Chechen Republic, Russian Federation, Ramzan Kadyrov, reportedly threatened three JMG lawyers and there have been several attempts by the authorities to open criminal proceedings against Kalyapin into alleged disclosure of secret information.   “The 2013 Martin Ennals Award and prizes for Human Rights Defenders is a key event that shows the world’s solidarity, admiration and support for the defence and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms,” Pillay said. “We applaud these women and men for their courage and dedication that so often puts at risk their very own physical safety and that of their loved ones.”   Award nominees also included Egyptian human rights activist Mona Seif, co-founder of No to Military Trials for Civilians Group, a grassroots initiative that is tirelessly working on putting an end to military trials for civilians. “With her creative use of social media to communicate and document violations of human rights, she represents a new generation of human rights defenders,” Pillay said.   Another nominee, Haitian human rights lawyer Mario Joseph has led the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in Port-au-Prince since 1996. He is known for his work on prominent human rights cases including the Raboteau Massacre trial and Duvalier trial. Mario works with a number of grassroots groups and international organizations inside and outside Haiti by providing legal support. “And his legacy, the BAI’s legal training programme, is developing a whole new generation of skilled, motivated human rights lawyers,” Pillay said.   Pillay acknowledged the nominees exceptional work in defending human rights in Egypt, Haiti, and the Russian Federation and the challenges and risks they take in their work. “You are bold, you are brave and your achievements are an inspiration to all of us,” she said.   http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/MartinEnnalsAward.aspx http://www.martinennalsaward.org/ Visit the related web page
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