Linked with Alarmed at rising violence in Sri Lanka, and with Hina Jilani – Pakistan.

AGHS Legal Aid Cell is a relatively small but important NGO in Pakistan. It was set up in 1980 for providing free legal aid to women. Over the years, the mandate of AGHS has expanded to respond to the needs of a growing civil society and the demands made by various groups for legal recourse. AGHS is a professional organization headed by two Supreme Court Lawyers, Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani. AGHS is quite unique in the country in term of its legal research, review of existing laws and lobbying new laws. It has strong links with the Bar Associations, police, political parties and the press. It also works closely with other groups of civil society nationally as well as internationally. With Regional Focus on Middle East or Asia, and with Country Focus on Pakistan. (Read more on International Rule of Law Directory).

AGHS Legal Aid Cell (ALAC) was set up in February 1980 in Lahore. Initially lawyers working for AGHS Law Associates supported the activities of ALAC. The activities were confined to providing legal aid to women. Gradually, however, these activities increased. Now legal awareness, education, protection from exploitation, legal research, counseling and providing legal assistance is all part of legal aid.

Objectives:
– To disseminate information on Family law and laws for the protection of the target group (women, children, elderly, disadvantaged etc.);
– Provision of legal aid to target group;
– Training of paralegal to involve more women in the mainstream movement for women rights;
– Campaign for child, women prisoners and crimes against women.

Activities in cooperation with Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation: AGHS provides legal assistance to women prisoners in Lahore and Multan along with monitoring situation of women prisoners in Punjab province. Besides that AGHS prepares and prints legal literacy material focused on women and human rights.

See AGHS also on the Human Rights Databank of hri.ca. And e-mail.

Linked with Arvind Kejriwal – India, and with KABIR.org – India.

Parivartan fights for people’s right to information. Parivartan, initially started up to help people get their work done in government departments without having to pay bribes, continues its crusade to educate and help people assert their right to information

Parivartan, a voluntary organisation active in Delhi, started out as a people’s movement in June 2000, to provide relief to taxpayers from extortionist corruption in the income tax department. “The idea was to help people get their income tax refunds without paying bribes,” says Manish Sisodia Parivartan’s founder. Taxpayers in Delhi were instructed not to pay bribes but to approach Parivartan with their grievances. The organisation has so far resolved about 700 grievances and helped some 2,500 customers in the Delhi Vidyut Board (DVB).

Parivartan soon realised that although its role as troubleshooter provided immediate relief to people, it neither empowered citizens to resolve their grievances directly, nor helped bring about permanent systemic changes. The organisation began to use the Delhi Right to Information Act 2001 to resolve public grievances.

Continuer la lecture de « PARIVARTAN, Fighting Corruption – India »

Linked with Tiere sind weder Menschen noch Waren, and with Othmar Keel – Switzerland.

The DBS has several publications:

• The series ORBIS BIBLICUS ET ORIENTALIS (OBO and OBO.SA), including new and forthcoming titles.
  You can also browse the complete list of back volumes still available, with ordering facilities.
• The series NOVUM TESTAMENTUM ET ORBIS ANTIQUUS (NTOA and NTOA.SA), including new and forthcoming titles.
  You can also browse the complete list of back volumes still available, with ordering facilities.
• The publications of the project BIBLE+ORIENT MUSEUM.

For other recent publications by members of the department, please refer to Fribourg University’s Futura database or the profiles of our researchers.

Ancien Testament, Groupe Lefebvre – Comment la recherche biblique peut-elle croiser d’autres disciplines, et d’abord des disciplines théologiques ? Comment rendre utilisables les conclusions de l’histoire du texte biblique au théologien, au philosophe, au littéraire ? Un groupe se constitue, réunissant quelques biblistes du Département d’Études Bibliques (premiers membres : Ph. Hugo, Y. Goldman, Ph. Lefebvre) : les membres de ce groupe travaillent d’abord un passage précis de la Bible, puis ils présentent de manière simple quelques conclusions sur les plans de la critique et de l’histoire du texte, de la philologie, de l’exégèse ; enfin ils questionnent, à partir de ce matériau mis en forme, des représentants d’autres disciplines. Il ne s’agit donc pas pour chacun de développer un discours spécifique qui ne trouve dans le texte biblique que ce qui peut consonner avec sa propre démarche ; il s’agit au contraire de tenter une véritable rencontre, un croisement, entre un texte qui définit des potentialités de sens, à la fois multiples et précises (ce que le travail biblique aura permis de dégager) et diverses disciplines.

Continuer la lecture de « Departement of Biblical Studies, Univ. Fribourg (CH) »

Linked with Sandra Jiménez Loza – Mexico.

UNICEF – Global Movement for Children: Add your voice and Say Yes to the 10 critical actions needed to improve the lives of children and adolescents everywhere. People of all ages are joining together as part of a new Global Movement for Children, determined to build a better world for children and for all of us. Their message is straightforward: the citizens of the world care about children and expect governments to keep the promises they make to them. Add your voice and say Yes to the 10 critical actions needed to improve the lives of children and adolescents everywhere. More than 94 million people have said Yes In a ceremony at UN headquarters on 7 May 2002, 12-year-old Barron Hanson presented the ‘Say Yes for Children’ pledge tally to Mr. Nelson Mandela and Mrs. Graça Machel, inspirational leaders of the Global Movement for Children. (Read more about this historic event on this UNICEF page).

Say Yes now!

The following are GMC founding partners:

• NetAid
• Save The Children
• Unicef
• World Vision International
• Plan International
• Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC)

Continuer la lecture de « UNICEF Global Movement for Children »

Regarding Darfur, linked with PBS.org, and with Understanding Sudan – The Darfur conflict, and with .

Workers World has united Black, Latino, Native, Asian, Arab and white in the struggle against racism. It has brought together women and men, lesbian, gay, bi, trans and straight, youth and seniors, workers and the unemployed, native-born and immigrants to fight for better conditions for all. Members of WWP have worked hard and long to build many of the most important progressive actions of the last three decades.

But you can’t just patch up this racist, sexist society. Capitalism rests on the exploitation of the many by the few. The monopoly of economic and political power by a small ruling class becomes more concentrated every day with mega-billion-dollar mergers and mass layoffs. That’s why capitalist democracy produces nothing but hot air. The power of the workers and the oppressed is in the streets, not in Washington.

Workers World fights for a socialist society—where the wealth is socially owned and production is planned to satisfy human need.

That’s also what workers around the world, from Cuba to China, have been struggling for. The U.S. rulers have spent trillions of our tax dollars trying to stop them in a global class struggle. WWP promotes international working-class solidarity, the right of every nation to sovereignty and self-determination, and militant resistance at home to imperialist interventions and wars.

Contact: National Office Workers World Party, 55 W. 17 St., New York, NY 10011, Tel. 212-627-2994, Fax 212-675-7869, E-mail, Web.

See Workers World about Sudan’s Darfur Situation: Oil is behind struggle in Darfur.

Linked with Christine Ntahe – Burundi.

PEACE X PEACE (pronounced “peace by peace”) – connecting women for peace – empowers women as the most effective means to enrich lives locally and promote peace globally. We connect women’s groups (“Circles”) in the United States with women’s Circles everywhere in the world—directly via the Internet—for the exchange of information and personal experiences that typically result in mutually supportive actions.

MISSION: PEACE X PEACE is an international movement that empowers women to help build sustainable peace locally and globally through online communication, the exchange of ideas and mutually supportive actions. Founded upon the belief that achieving sustainable peace requires women to come into their full potential as leaders alongside men, it is dedicated to creating a world where women are powerful and effective decision-makers in building peace for all. A central initiative designed to achieve the mission of building peace is the PEACE X PEACE Global Network. Via the Internet, the Global Network connects and empowers groups of women (or “circles”) in the U.S. in one-on-one, supported communication with women’s circles outside the U.S. and thereby fosters understanding and constructive actions that help create peace. Today, more than 250 women’s Circles from 37 nations are actively involved with the PEACE X PEACE Global Network.

VISION: PEACE X PEACE is dedicated to creating a world where women are no longer those most tragically affected by conflict and strife, but are the core power building substantive, sustainable peace for all.

CONTACT: Carol Fleming, PEACE X PEACE, e-mail

Resources

Linked with Christine Ntahe – Burundi.

Founded in 1982, Search for Common Ground works to transform the way the world deals with conflict – away from adversarial approaches and towards collaborative problem solving. We work with local partners to find culturally appropriate means to strengthen societies’ capacity to deal with conflicts constructively: to understand the differences and act on the commonalities.

In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and in response to ongoing instability in the Great Lakes Region, Search for Common Ground (SFCG) opened its first office in Africa in 1995 in Burundi’s capital Bujumbura. With satellite offices in Ngozi and Makamba, SFCG in Burundi operates a national programme that uses a variety of mutually enhancing methods targeting multiple sectors of society. Through community peace-building and media work, SFCG in Burundi informs and educates the public about pertinent issues, builds the capacity of journalists and civic leaders, and strengthens the potential for inclusive participation in local communities. SFCG in Burundi consists of the radio-production facility Studio Ijambo, the Community Outreach Team, and the Victims of Torture Project.

Throughout the 1990s, a civil war fought mainly along ethnic lines raged in Burundi and ultimately claimed the lives of nearly 300,000 people. The signing of the Arusha Peace Agreement in August of 2000 laid the foundation for a stabilising domestic security situation in most of the country and, in August 2005, former Hutu rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza was elected president becoming the nation’s first democratically elected president since 1993.

Continuer la lecture de « Search for Common Ground Burundi »

Concerning the Darfur Conflict, linked with Workers World, and with Understanding Sudan – The Darfur conflict.

PBS programs and education services enrich the lives of all Americans. PBS, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, is a non–profit media enterprise owned and operated by the nation’s 348 public television stations. A trusted community resource, PBS uses the power of noncommercial television, the Internet and other media to enrich the lives of all Americans through quality programs and education services that inform, inspire and delight. Available to 99 percent of American homes with televisions and to an increasing number of digital multimedia households, PBS serves nearly 90 million people each week.Learn more about PBS through the links on this PBS-page.

See PBS’s report on SUDAN, the Darfur Situation.

Last modified 2006-06-02 – Welcome to http://openplans.org/, a free wiki-based community organizing and project management tool.

OpenPlans, a site dedicated to helping communities organize virtually to effect real world change, is currently running a beta testing version of the software here at www.openplans.org.  The site will continue to evolve as we roll out bug fixes, new features, and enhanced functionality.

OpenPlans is wiki-based. This means that most pages are editable by members of the site. Membership is free and it takes just seconds to register. Once you log in, you may start your own project or contribute to an existing one. We hope you use OpenPlans to share information, coordinate tasks, and build momentum around your project.

OpenPlans is the work of The Open Planning Project (TOPP), a New York City-based non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing citizen and public interest group participation in community planning processes through technology. TOPP imagines OpenPlans as a free, hosted, and shared suite of community organizing tools, and we look forward to providing you with an ever-increasing toolkit for getting things done.

We will soon be adding a user’s guide. In the meantime, logged in users can visit our Sandbox project to experiment with using the system.  Once in the sandbox, click the « edit » tab to change the text and layout of the page.  You can link to existing pages in the project by enclosing the page title in double parenthesis.  You can also create new pages this way; if you enclose text that does not match an existing page title in double parenthesis, this text will become an « add link », which will create the new page when followed.

Let us know what you think using our contact form; we love and need your feedback and suggestions for improvement.

The BDS Forum is a database and discussion forum on different BDS strategies. We do not support « the only one BDS approach » – monopoly but complementary business development strategies proved in practice like the moderate BDS approach including commercial BDS providers as well as NGOs, local city administrations, public providers and self-help organisations. Your contributions are welcome!

BDS Media:

• BDS Internet Portals
• BDS email based Newsletter
• Business Information Handbooks
• BDS Reader
• BDS Library (download)

Strategies and Trainings:

• BDS Toolkit
• BDS Trainings
• BDS Success Stories
• BDS Lessons learnt
• Capacity Building and Networking
• Monitoring and Evaluation

Business Information Services:

• Start your Business
• Business Registration
• Business Planning
• Bookkeeping and Cost Calculation
• Marketing Strategies
• Import-Export and Trade Fairs
• BDS with Business Associations
• Taxation
• Supply Markets
• Laws and Regulations
• Standards and Quality

Business Development Services (BDS) comprise a wide range of non-financial services provided by private suppliers (BDS providers) to entrepreneurs who use them to efficiently operate and make their businesses grow. The types of services in a functioning BDS system are determined by the demand articulated on the part of the businesses.

New for download!

How to develop sustainable BDS without Radicalism?

Library

To find Consulting Firms active in development cooperation, go to the coresponding directory on weitzenegger.de:

List of Companies in Industrialized Countries not Members of the EU;

List of Companies with Headquarters in the European Union;

African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states signatories of the Cotonou Agreement;

etc., see the rest on this weitzenegger index.

One exemple of a consulting firm: The Centre for Socio-Eco-Nomic Development (CSEND) is an independent, project-financed, non-profit foundation, registered with the Geneva Chamber of Commerce (Switzerland). Specialising in organisational reform and institutional development worldwide, CSEND works to strengthen public administrations and public-sector enterprises through the use of an inter-disciplinary and socio-economic approach. Mandated primarily by governments and international organisations, CSEND designs and implements comprehensive institution development and capacity-building projects leading to the adoption of best managerial practices in the public sector. (See all on CSEND ff).

Linked with Vera Vohlidalova – Czech Republic.

Das Portal des Deutsch-Tschechischen Forums der Frauen versteht sich als Anlaufstelle für alle, die sich für Tschechien und das deutsch-tschechische Verhältnis interessieren. Zwei zentrale Ideen prägen diesen Ort:

Informationsbündelung – Dieses Internetportal will ein Ort sein, wo man die wichtigsten Informationen zum jeweiligen Nachbarland und zur deutsch-tschechischen Zusammenarbeit gebündelt findet. Es will helfen, sich im Dschungel der unzähligen Initiativen und Informationen zurecht zu finden.

Mitwirkung – Damit dies ein wirklich spannender und informativer Ort wird, sind Sie herzlich zur Mitarbeit eingeladen: Wir verstehen uns als offene und neutrale Plattform für alle, die sich im deutsch-tschechischen Bereich engagieren. Auf Ihrer Mitwirkung, Ihr Engagement und Ihre Informationen kommt es an. Sie sind herzlich zur Mitarbeit eingeladen!

Frauen im Versöhnungsprozess;

Linked with Vera Vohlidalova – Czech, and with Deutsch-Tschechisches Forum der Frauen.

Bibliothek-Library in Liberec, Building of Peace and Reconciliation, under the patronage of the presidents of Czech Republic and Germany.

This project links the library and the synagogue of Liberec in perfect harmony and will give each its own building for the first time in more than 50 years. It is both the first public library with a collection of this size and breadth to be built in the country in 70 years and the first new synagogue to be built in the Czech Republic (former Czechoslovakia) since World War Two. This new building project will present a library as an institution which not only takes care of various documents but also provides information of all kinds including among other things access to both historical and current information on many cultures, lands and peoples.

This new House of Prayer is to be not only a place of meeting for the Jews of the region but also both a symbol of human understanding and an act of symbolic compensation. The Library and House of Prayer will serve as a reminder that people of various beliefs, colour and cultures have lived, do and will always live in and among us. Thanks to moral and financial support from many sides it is a symbol of joining and of shaking hands over mutually lived history to a shared future.

Universal services – available to everyone. The library serves especially:

Continuer la lecture de « Knihovna – Liberec in Czech Republic »

Linked with Arvind Kejriwal – India, and with PARIVARTAN, Fighting Corruption – India.

The Right to Information movement has grown and matured at a phenomenal pace with 9 states granting their citizens the right to access information from their respective state governments. With the passage of the Central Right to Information Act which is a very progressive Act India is working towards a more transparent, accountable and participatory system of governance. The Right to Information in India has been popularised by several significant initiatives of various citizen groups, individuals, grassroots movements and non-government organisation working in their own areas towards strengthening the Right to Information to change the face of Indian governance. These experiences are critical to influence and bring about a change in the relationship between the governed and those who govern, however, in order to influence change it is important that every citizen must participate in the process that facilitates and brings about the change. Kabir is a non-government organisation committed to the promotion and advancement of the Right to Information movement in India. Kabir intends to advocate the use of Right to Information by drawing on experiences from all over the country. By acting as a catalyst Kabir intends to promote the Right to Information through the medium of print, audio-visual media and personal communication.

Continuer la lecture de « KABIR.org – India »

Linked with Annie Lacroix-Riz – France, and with Giulietto Chiesa – Italy, and with … Radio France Culture de Février 2004, and with Le Sciocchezze di Sofri e Rampoldi, and with Vichy, Argent et zyklon B en 1940-44. Also with Axis for Peace of February 1, 2006.

Dans une contribution magistrale, présentée à la conférence Axis for Peace 2005, le professeur James Petras analyse les contradictions du système impérialiste états-unien. Il souligne la manipulation de l’ONU et du droit international par les grandes puissances. Il décrit la fuite en avant des militaristes civils, néoconservateurs et sionistes. Loin de sombrer dans le pessimisme, le célèbre intellectuel états-unien trace les perspectives d’une résistance populaire internationale.

For World-Peace, by Voltairenet.org / Colloque pour la paix dans le monde par Réseau Voltaire -Listen to different Google-Videos, in their original language, no traduction, by the links hereafter / Ecoutez les différents intervenants de la session par Google-Vidéo dans leur langue originale (pas de traductions):

November 17, 2005, opening of the conference; and roundtables.

November 18, 2005, Plenary Session; and closure of the conference.

link: see all Debaters (also Annie Lacroix-Riz, France, and Giulietto Chiesa, Italy).