Month: May 2019

After several years of collaborative work, RACI and the Thomson Reuters Foundation signed an alliance that will strengthen the synergies created so far and promote the linkage between organizations and services of both networks.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation established the TrustLaw program which provides free legal advice to NGOs and social enterprises through its network of lawyers – who work in legal studies and companies in 175 countries – so that they can resolve consultations and carry out legal investigations that are useful to fulfil the social mission of the organizations.

Who can receive free legal assistance? Non-profit organizations and social enterprises working for social, environmental or humanitarian purposes, legally constituted and registered, that have an impact-generating action plan. The full requirements are in the FAQ section of their website.

How does it work? Through a free membership. To access it is necessary to complete the membership form. Once the application has been approved, the NGO will receive a username and password to be able to upload their consultations/legal orders. Once you have uploaded your order, you will receive a call from a TrustLaw advocate in order to know your case and to manage the necessary legal assistance.

In which topics can it help the organization?

– Daily operation: Beneficiary organizations may request the Thomson Reuters Foundation to resolve legal consultations such as: review/assembly of contracts of all kinds; tax exemptions; agreements with other organizations and donors, legal structures and reporting compliance; among many others. In your Legal check you will find the most common legal questions.

– Investigate specific legal issues: Beneficiary organizations may also request assistance for specialized lawyers to conduct a legal investigation of their interest. For example, they have conducted research on the right to decent housing; social impact bonds; refugees; protection of victims in criminal rights; defamation and freedom of expression; crowdfunding; and the rights of persons with disabilities; among many others.

As a member of CIVICUS, RACI join the Civil Society Week, which took place in Serbia. At this event, representatives from different Civil Society Organizations from all over the world gathered to discuss dialogue, exchange experiences and generate ties.

This year’s topic was “The power of togetherness”, and the main axis of work was to explore new ways of collective work between individuals and between organizations around the world. As part of RACI’s team, Guillermo Correa (Executive Director) and Juliana Catania (Deputy Director) participated in this event and attended talks on transparency and accountability, networking and reduction of civic space, among others. In addition, they both participated in a “Freedom Run” that took place in the streets of Belgrade.

RACI had also an active participation in the event. Juliana lead a workshop on “diversity and inclusion in networks” and also presented the results of the Civil Society Week Local Event of Argentina, which RACI organized with members and representatives of the Argentinean Civil Society.

On the other hand, Guillermo was present in the meetings of AGNA and CIVICUS, where the representatives work on the future of the networks. Likewise, Guillermo was again elected as part of the CIVICUS Executive Committee, which is a space that allows RACI to link and learn about the work of other organizations around the world.

In conclusion, the presence of RACI in spaces like CIVICUS allows us not only to participate in workshops and discussions that enrich our daily work, but it is also a space where we can generate links and learn about the work, the problems and the solutions that other networks and organizations are facing.

The European Union (EU) and the United Nations launched the Spotlight Initiative, which seeks to eradicate violence against women at global level. Through this project, large-scale specific investments will be made in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, the Caribbean and Latin America. In Latin America, it will be implemented in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

The initiative has a total fund of 6 million Dollars, of which 10% will be allocated to a fund of competitive resources for projects driven by civil society organizations. The main contributor will be the European Union but a multi-stakeholder fund of the United Nations will also be employed.

This project arises from a context where women and girls today suffer one of the most persistent and devastating outrages in the world. The rights of thousands of women worldwide are being violated, affecting all nationalities, generations, communities regardless of age or ethnicity. The name of the initiative is precisely due to the fact that violence takes place in the dark. To face this, gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls are essential elements of Agenda 2030 for sustainable development and are crucial for their achievement.

In Argentina, the initiative seeks to end the most extreme manifestation of this problem: Femicides. The implementation of this initiative will work at national and provincial level. Until December 2020 it will take place in Buenos Aires, Salta and Jujuy. These cities are selected for their high rate of femicides and the commitment of their provincial governments.

The choice of Argentina as a country to implement this project is based on the recognition of the commitment of the National State to the subject, mainly from the start-up of the first action plan for the prevention, assistance and eradication of the violence against women, as well as the fact that they have ratified international human rights treaties. However, the choice is also because violence is a very serious problem in the country. According to the data of the Ministry of Security, a woman is killed every 32 hours.

Source: https://www.un.org/es/spotlight-initiative/

The C20 Affinity Group held its summit in Japan and RACI went there with the aim of continuing to contribute to the agenda proposed in Argentina last year.

During the week of the event, different discussion forums, panels and exhibitions were held with the aim of delineating the recommendations that would be raised to the leaders of the state and will be included in the communiqué of the G20.

In addition to the coordination of the Local2Global Group, in charge of analyzing the context in which civil society organizations operate today and promoting recommendations aimed at protecting the qualified social groups, RACI moderated several meetings of the agenda such as the session “Financial and Security Restrictions for CSOS”.

The panel that was developed during the first day was conducted in the framework of the “Tokyo Democracy Forum”, whose motto was: to promote peace, human rights and democratic governance through SDG 16: to improve the conditions and civic spaces for CSOS facing global challenges. The objective was to discuss the impact that financial and legal regulations have on non-profit organizations; from its registration and operation to its access to resources, as well as the risk bank. These state-led overcompliance regulations and practices severely restrict the free functioning of CSOS, reducing civic space and limiting individuals to join to legally establish and operate CSOS freely.

On the second day of the summit, issues related to the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration for the fulfilment of the Sustainable Development Goals (ODS) were discussed and the need for the G20 to be inclusive and to place individuals in the center.

The third day of the event highlighted the need for effective and continuous dialogue with the G20 working groups and focused on the importance of engaging civil society in the process of public policy development. In this regard, C20 was able to maintain a dialogue with representatives of all affinity groups (L20, B20, S20, T20, U20, W20, Y20) who shared the main messages and recommendations made to G20 leaders in their areas of work.

From the presentation made in Argentina of the Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism (ICIM), RACI interviewed Eduardo Arraiza, Operation Mr Specialist to tell us about the strategies for the relationship with Civil Society.

1. In the framework of the IDB’s efforts to work with different sectors of society, what are the strategies that are currently being implemented in the region to achieve these synergies?

Within its normative framework, the IDB has built different country strategies through which it collaborates and promotes multi-sectoral development. Specifically, in the field of Civil Society, last year a strategy was adopted to envisages five instances aimed at strengthening ties with those who compose it. The first is an instance of information that promotes the opening of all projects executed by the IDB; the second refers to the dialogue. In this case, the call aims to promote the participation of Civil Society in spaces to exchange experiences, opinions and collaborative work. The third initiative has to do with different channels of consultations offered by the IDB, the fourth with collaborative spaces and the fifth has to do with alliances. In this last space, the link between Civil Society Organizations is strengthened through pilot projects to reward or promote concrete actions of different institutions.

2. What are the programs or actions that would highlight success and sustainability recently in relation to the synergies mentioned above?

Within the framework of the new strategy, the WICONNECT3 platform is an instrument designed to improve the relationship with Civil Society that is used to register all CSOs in each IDB member country and the platform will serve as input for the five applications above mentioned: information, dialogue, consultations, collaboration, and alliances. The platform is very clear: requests a registration to provide the name of the organization, the sectors where it works and the scope or regional level in which it develops. Access is free and the consultations can be filtered by country or thematic area in order to know what NGO is working on what matters or geographic region. The idea of the platform is to work as an input for all of the Bank’s project teams that at the moment are preparing operations and can consult which are the organizations that can be found working in the area where perhaps these operations will have some effect.

3. What areas of relation do you consider most relevant?

The action we believe has created the greatest relationship between Civil Society Organizations of regional countries is the Forum of the Civil society where every year we promote a different thematic topic. The topic that will be convened this year is “the future of work”. In this space, the representatives of Civil Society of all the bank’s country offices meet. Participation is also open to all those organizations that want to participate with the objective to build a regional vision on the subject defined and to strengthen ties.

4. In Argentina, what are the channels or pathways of communication that CSOS have in order to link with the IDB?

First, our website contains all open documents and is available for anyone to access. On the other hand, each office has a civil society liaison that is the one who attends the consultations and who organizes the actions that are done together. Additionally, the IDB has other mechanisms such as the independent consultation and Research mechanism (ICIM), for which an explanatory workshop was held in Argentina with the support of RACI. The objective of the event was to increase the visibility of the channel among CSOs, but also that CSOs could disseminate the possibilities that the tool provides of generating consultations or requesting a research on certain aspects of the projects of the IDB which, according to the criterion of civil society, are causing damage or inconvenience. To learn more about this channel, we invite you to visit the web page: https://www.iadb.org/es/mici/mici-mecanismo-independiente-de-consulta-e-investigacion.

UN Women has published the paper “Gender equality as an accelerator for achieving sustainable Development Goals”, which aims to demonstrate how gender equality and investment in this issue can contribute to the development of all SDGs.

The report mentions what kind of policy interventions related to gender equality need to be accelerated for the implementation of Agenda 2030. This paper argues that achieving equality in real terms involves four main interrelated elements: ensuring equal rights, capability and access to resources and opportunities for both women and men; strengthening the agency or ability of women to make decisions and take decisions and act on them; eliminating gender-based violence and discrimination and transforming power relations at all levels of society, from individuals and households to institutions and structures.

In terms of benefits, the positive influence that exists in the following areas is highlighted by gender equality: economic development, poverty reduction, education and health, recognition, reduction and redistribution of unremunerated work (domestic work, child care, etc.), food security, climate change, and disaster management and natural resources, political participation and elimination of all established gender violence.

Finally, to accelerate the progress towards the implementation of the Agenda 2030 and achieving results, the public politics must be re-evaluated and re-designed using a gender-sensitive approach. This implies taking into account the different roles, responsibilities and socially determined capacities of women and men, together with the power relations and the cultural environments in which the activities of women and men are developed, at the same time responding to their diverse needs and interests. This approach brings with it the need to contextualize funding under a thematic-sensitive approach to ensure appropriate investments aimed at implementing national policies towards gender equality and the empowerment of Women.

To read the full report, visit the website of SDG Philanthropy

Source: GENDER EQUALITY AS AN ACCELERATOR FOR ACHIEVING THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (UN Women).