Farmer women and Batak women are the victims who suffer the most in tenure conflicts in North Sumatra due to plantation projects. However, the women continued to struggle to defend their ancestral lands.
Full movie available soon.
For the Dayak people, the forest is a symbol of women’s dignity. However, the indigenous people on the island of Borneo have to face land grabbing which has an impact on their lives.
This documentary by Aksi! for gender, social and ecological justice and New Age Cinema is the result of collaboration with the Mamut Menteng Women’s Solidarity. The full movie will be available soon.
The Asia Days of Action for Tax Justice were held last 23-24 September to amplify peoples’ demands from countries across Asia and the Global South for urgent tax justice towards ending inequalities and building genuine Peoples’ Recovery and resilience in the face of multiple crises.
Virtual side event to the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Communities Discriminated on Work & Descent People’s Assembly builds on the in-person CDWD People’s Assembly (and its outcome declaration) which took place in June, and July’s CDWD UN strategy workshop.
The Global Forum of Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent (GFoD) organised this side event during the Global People’s Assembly in which NCDHR spoke about the Global Advocacy Plans of the global forum.
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On 15 September 2022, the Tax and Fiscal Justice Asia (TAFJA) network held the press conference “Tax Justice Now, For People’s Recovery” to amplify civil society calls for tax justice, especially addressing governments and the international community as the 77th UN General Assembly meets on 13-27 September 2022.
Tax justice campaigns aim to uphold peoples’ needs and rights amid deepening multiple crises. Today, the scale of the crises has most dramatically worn the face of the peoples of Asia. Tens of thousands of people have fled large parts of Pakistan badly hit by climate emergency-induced flooding. The people of Sri Lanka are suffering hunger and deprivations of basic necessities because of bankruptcy and runaway inflation resulting from “ill-conceived economic reforms like tax cuts and servicing debt payments.”
Other peoples in Asia are equally vulnerable to the impacts of crises but governments ignore peoples’ situation or, worst, resort to intimidation and repression to silence critical voices.
During the press conference, speakers discussed the flaws of tax systems that dominate the region; and the requirements of genuine people’s recovery that are severely hampered by continuing tax abuses and illicit financial flows by the elite and multinational corporations.
Speakers:
● Farooq Tariq, Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee
● Vidya Dinker, Indian Social Action Forum
● Luke Espiritu, Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (Solidarity of Filipino Workers)
● Sudhir Shrestha, South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication
● Ah Maftuchan, The Prakarsa (Welfare Initiative for Better Societies)
● Tony Salvador, Third World Network
● Dereje Alemayehu, Global Alliance for Tax Justice
● Jeannie Manipon, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development
Organised by APMDD, the webinar was co-hosted by the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP), and the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies. Leaders and members of grassroots organizations from various sectors introduced the concept of, and rationale for, a wealth tax as a domestic resource mobilization mechanism for social and economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as for climate change adaptation.
Caste-based prejudice has been normalised to such an extent that the plight of manual scavengers does not get the attention that it deserves.
Side event to the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, the webinar was organised by the Global Forum of Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent (GFoD) and Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP). The event focused on the discussion on “Building forward better” around four interlinked themes – vaccines, hunger, debt and social protection, and livelihood while discussing it in context of the achievement of the SDGs, especially SDG 5 using the gender lens.
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Side event to the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (UN HLPF), this Communities Discriminated on Work & Descent (CDWD) People’s Assembly was facilitated by the Global Forum of Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent, with NCDHR’s leadership.
Participants discussed achievements and obstacles regarding the rights of communities discriminated by work and descent. The forum brought together 39 CDWD rights experts, activists, and other country representatives, and had four aims:
1) to recognise the numerical strength and geographical spread of CDWD communities and the gravity of the discrimination they face;
2) to assess the level of response from individual and collective States Parties in eradicating such discrimination and violence;
3) to explore how the CDWD communities can be formally brought within the ambit of the UN Charter Bodies; and
4) to explore ways and means of generating support from the Foreign Missions
Watch the video of the meeting
Currently, a third of the world’s countries are not at the table when global tax rules get decided. It’s time for the United Nations to take the lead, so all countries can participate on an equal footing.
Click here to learn more about the proposal for a UN Tax Convention.