2008/12/08

Rights is the Answer-- Social Watch Report 2008

Center of Concern

The unusual combination of financial crisis, food crisis, energy and climate crisis requires a new approach based on human rights, argues the international Social Watch coalition in its 2008 report, launched today here during the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development. Next December 10, as the report remembers the 60th Anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be commemorated and the title of the Social Watch Report 2008 is, precisely, “Rights is the Answer”.

The report documents how governments are falling short in their commitment to eradicate poverty and achieve gender equity through the testimony of civil society groups in 59 countries. Its main message is that the multiple crises currently affecting the world require a “rights-based approach” and provides examples on how the current financial architecture has ignored or openly violated those rights and triggered spiralling inequity all around the world.

This annual report is published since 1996 by Social Watch, an international NGO watchdog network monitoring government compliance with their international commitments.

The growing income inequalities both within and between countries spurred by capital flight, tax evasion, and privatization have slowed down the progress on key social indicators to a near halt over the last two decades. According to the Social Watch calculations, universal compliance with the Millennium Development Goals is now an impossible feat, if the world governments maintain a “business as usual” attitude.

http://www.coc.org/node/6273