Welcome to the blog of the:
Human Dignity and Human Rights Caucus
                                                                    Promoting Human Rights in the WSF

Global Seminars                     Workshops & Activities                         Follow-up

Human rights have featured simply as a collection of events at the first World Social Forum (WSF) in 2001. Since then, human rights have become a significant entity of thematic architecture of WSF. This is thanks to the concerted efforts of the Human Dignity and Human Rights Caucus, established in 2002 as an open-ended transnational group, to ensure planning, communication, organizing and mobilizing around human rights.

The Caucus, for WSF 2007, has mobilized over 80 international, national and local organizations and groups. They will convene and contribute a set of global seminars on human rights struggles of people in a globalizing world. The local host of the Cuacus is the Kenya Human Rights Network (K-Hurinet).

Three eminent human rights defenders will address the opening seminar on "Human Rights: Measures of a just world." They are Mary Robinson (Ireland) -- former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Nora de Cortinas (Argentina) -- Enter title. The rest of the Global Seminars include: Several well-know human rights experts, such as Shirin Ebadi (Iran) -- Nobel Peace Laureate in 2003, Millon Kothari (India) UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Prof. Maxine Molyneau (UK) and Prof. Bas de Gaay Fortman (Netherlands) will address the seminars.

The Caucus members will also conduct around eighty thematic and cultural events. The thematic events are workshops related to the Global Seminars. The cultural events will include exhibitions, films, performances and the Haki Night -- a human rights vigil, dedicated to men and women from Kenya and around the world who have contributed to the protection of human dignity, rights and fundamental freedoms.

A closing seminar is devoted to synthesize the deliberations of the seminars. The outcomes will provide the direction to the human rights constituency in WSF to formulate the objectives for action leading to WSF 2009. The Caucus will facilitate a special session for this purpose on the last day.

Organisations working with the HDHRC during the Nairobi WSF

International and regional organisations:

African Woman and Child Feature Service (AWCFS), African Women’s Economic Policy Network (AWEPON), Building Eastern Africa Community Network (BEACON), Center for Research on Multinational Corporations, Center for Victims of Torture, Dignity International, EACOR, Ecumenical Platform, Ecumenical Water Network, Equalinrights, Gender Equity Coalition, Housing and Land Rights Network—Habitat International Coalition (HIC-HLRN), Human Rights Nights, IPC human right working group, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), International Women’s Tribune Centre, PDHRE, Peoples’ Movement for Human Rights Learning, Peaceline, PeaceWomen Across the Globe, IPC (International Planning Committee), Pax Christi International, OECD Watch, Settlement Information Network Africa (SINA), Social Alert International, Voices of African Mothers (VAM), WGNRR and Women’s Self-Promotion Movement (WSPM).

Development agencies:

APRODEV, Aprodev Rights and Development Group, Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, FIAN-International, Bread for the World-Germany, Church of Sweden, EED, Interchurch Organisation for Development Cooperation (ICCO), LWF, Misereor and Research and Information Center for Development (CRID)

National, grass roots organization and local initiatives:

Academy for Peace and Development (APD), L’Association Citoyenne de Défense des Intérêts Collectifs (ACDIC), Association des Organisations Professionnelles Paysannes (AOPP), Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía (APDHA), Association des Femmes pour les initiatives du Paix de Mali, Banadir Peace Forum, Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo (CCAJAR), Confédération Paysanne (France), COPA, Consult for Women and Land Rights (CWLR), Empowerment and Participatory Development Agency-EPADA, Entishar Charitable society (Sudan), Ekta Parishad (India), Feminist Caucus of the American Humanist Association, FIAN-Ghana, Frères des Hommes (France), Germanwatch, G8 Activities Coordination, Gospel Vision Group (GVG), Humanist Committee on Human Rights (HOM), ISHA Human rights, Jagori, Kaalo Relief and Development, Somalia Peace and Development Organization – SPDO, Kenyan Human Rights Commission, KPA (Indonesia), Mazingira Institute, Miss Koch Initiative, MST (Brazil), Land Research Centre, Legal Resources Center, Ebony Youth, Occupied Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights Advoacy Initiative, Orphans Support Initiative Kenya, Peuples Solidaires, Peace and Human Rights Network, Rozaria Memorial Foundation, Samburu Women Advocacy Network (SWAN), Somaliland National Disability Forum NAGAAD, Somali Agro-action Community – SAACOM, Sons land association for human rights (slahr), Soroti Basic Education Support Program, UNIFEM and Voice of Somaliland Women Minority Organization.

Global Seminars 

Opening session
Human Dignity and Human Rights: Measures of a just world
Conveners: HDHRC

The opening session will elaborate the role of human rights in everyday struggles of people for dignity, freedom, justice, peace, equality, diversity and their entitlement to a social and international order in which such universal values can be fully realized.

Human rights and struggles for social and economic justice
Conveners: Dignity International, Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC),
Equalinrights and Building Eastern Africa Community Network (BEACON).

On the right to development:  the UN General Assembly established in 1986 that the right to development is an inalienable human right that implies full respect and realization of all human rights, while ensuring that States have full sovereignty over their natural wealth and resources, through the cooperation of all, and in particular of developed countries, in order to achieve a new international economic order. However, far from progressing in this direction, the disparity between the North and the South, between rich and poor, continues to increase. Transnational corporations very often dictate public policies, the free-market model asserts itself as the model for « growth », services are liberalized, including those services that are essential for the general well-being, and regulations are adopted to favor businesses, very often in contradiction with States' obligations to protect the environment as well as economic, social and cultural rights.

How to prevent impunity for the grave and persistent violations of economic, social and cultural rights of the majority of the world's population? How to fight against and overcome impunity for environmental crimes committed daily, for the ethnocide to which many indigenous communities are doomed? How to ensure that the natural wealth and resources of the peoples are not expropriated by elites or for the interests of transnationals?

Human rights and struggles for gender equity

Convener: Interchurch Organization for development Cooperation (ICCO), Eastern African Coalition on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (EACOR) and Equalinrights.

A multimedia thematic seminar that will apply the concept of structural violence to define key challenges to achieving gender equity and provide a framework for analyzing and confronting them.

This thematic seminar will define key challenges to achieving gender equity and provide a framework for analyzing and confronting them. It is conceptualized as a multimedia tribunal-type event that will run approximately three hours. Rather than judges, a panel of experts will hear two cases of structural violence against women: one focused on social and economic exclusion and the other on sexual gender-based violence. Rather than judgments, a panel of three experts will offer legal, political, institutional, economic, social, cultural and grassroots perspectives on the violations and strategies for confronting them. Seminar participants will be invited share their experiences as well.

Rather than a legalistic, courtroom feel that other mock tribunals have cultivated, this seminar will have a colorful and interactive atmosphere. Participants, particularly those presenting the two cases, will be encouraged to use theatre or role-play, music, video and other visuals in making their presentations. This lively atmosphere will attract a more diverse audience than would normally attend a major gender-focused event.

Human rights and struggles over habitat, land and environment
Conveners: Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network (HIC-HLRN), Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN) and
Settlement Information Network Africa (SINA)

Despite the clarity of international human rights law and the Millennium Development Goal No. 7, official structures and ideologies of deprivation remain largely in tact, where violent forced evictions are rampant and unsupported rural communities cannot survive on their lands. Women everywhere remain institutionally excluded from land and housing tenure, urban migration is overburdening cities, foreign occupation dispossesses entire peoples, and large-scale “development” projects deprive and displace millions, while economic and spatial apartheid increasingly is becoming the norm.

Through testimonies and performances, this seminar explores contentious issues, competing interests, common values, human rights dilemmas and problem-solving strategies of diverse social movements struggling to find solutions and redress for local and global causes of poverty-deepening policies and the squalid living conditions that result. Their strategies involve opposing evictions, claiming needed lands for livelihood, asserting gender equality, mounting legal defense, engaging in “social production of habitat,” resisting foreign occupation, and asserting the “human right to land” for the survival of rural, pastoral, tribal and indigenous people(s).

Human rights, mobility and citizenship gap
Conveners: Mazingira Institute and Lutheran World Federation

The seminar will convene individuals and groups concerned with the emergent twin challenge of protection of human rights and amelioration of citizenship gap, in the age of migration and globalization of mobility of people.

The emergent threats to human rights from transnational migration create a problematic situation, that involves a multitude of migrant workers – legal and illegal aliens, within and across regions of the world. The correlation between their citizenship rights and social exclusion has become a source of conflict. In this respect, joining the ranks of migrant workers, are the multitudes of refugees and internally displaced persons who suffer the same fate. The problematic situation also includes people in occupied territories or emergency zones, and indigenous peoples striving for self-governance, citizenship and collective rights within the states in which they live.

”In many aspects of law and politics, there is a growing tension between global human rights and the social rights of national citizenship. For example, many first-nation peoples, migrant communities and gay and lesbian couples struggle to realize their cultural rights under human rights legislation, because their social rights cannot be adequately realized within the framework of citizenship. These social changes represent a major challenge to the traditional framework of citizenship rights.” (Bryan Turner: New Keywords, 2005, Blackwell Publishing)

The seminar will promote ways to strengthen transnational human rights activism on threats to human rights from mobility of people and citizenship gap.

Human rights and conflict, militarization and culture of impunity

Conveners: Entishar Charitable Society (Sudan) and
Fédération Internationale de Droit de l’Homme (FIDH)

The end of the Cold War did not meant progress towards world peace, although it brought an end to many dictatorships. New conflicts -ethnic, religious, nationalist or geostrategic- have led to genocidal practices, crimes of lese-humanity, infringements of minimal norms of international humanitarian law and violations of the most basic principles of the UN Charter, all of which caused millions of victims. The struggle against terrorism is moving ahead in such a way that its consequences are inversely proportional to the expected results. However, at the same time, there has been progress in the fight against impunity; the UN International Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia have been established, leading to the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) already ratified by one hundred countries. There has also been progress in terms of universal jurisdiction, which concretely means that all the Pinochets, the Taylors, the Habrés now know very well that they can no longer be sure to enjoy their immunity for the crimes they have committed. Such steps forward can boost changes at local level in terms of repression, reparation and deterrence. But are the breakthroughs in the fight against impunity definite, or can there be setbacks ? What lessons can we draw from these experiences? To answer these questions and reinforce our struggles, the Human Rights Caucus of the WSF encourages you to join efforts within this perspective.

Human rights and faith and cultural diversity
Conveners: HDHRC and Ecumenical Platform