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Letter to accompany Petition is attached. Send Petition Endorsement to PWESCR:
Consider
Gender Dimensions of Right to Livelihood.
PETITION FOR UNITED NATIONS ON RIGHT TO LIVELIHOOD
There is a critical gap in the human rights system around issues of livelihood. The right to livelihood is a key right to the realization of all other rights. Livelihoods for people are a means to live a life with dignity. International human rights system recognizes the right to adequate standard of living, including right to food and housing, the right to work, the right to social security and the right to health. However, issues connected with livelihood security are not sufficiently addressed and there are obvious protection gaps.
Neo-liberal paradigm has reformed economies globally. State economic growth rates, in some cases, are like never before. Yet, poverty, hunger and lack of basic resources still remain a major issue for a large majority across the world. Traditional means of livelihood are vanishing, increasingly becoming unfeasible or are simply being snatched away. Work is moving from the formal to the informal sector. People everywhere in the world increasingly work in hazardous and precarious conditions, for longer hours. Yet they have incomes that are barely enough to meet their survival needs let alone enable them to cope with any contingencies. The traditional social support systems are fast vanishing with nothing new being created to replace it. Every individual works not only to be able to survive but also to be able to maintain an adequate standard of living and lead a dignified and secure life. But what we have today is a situation where people work hard and for long hours and are yet able to make enough only to just barely survive. As a result, people, especially women including women from marginalized communities such as Dalits, indigenous, are daily pushed away from self-reliant sources of livelihood to welfare dependency and poverty.
PWESCR has initiated this petition to the United Nations Human Rights Council to take note of right to livelihood not being addressed sufficiently within the human rights system and to take steps to elaborate this right. We also suggest the Council to explore mechanisms to address livelihood as a human right. The petition is attached to this email.
We seek your endorsement. You can endorse as an individual or as an organization. Send us the following:
Send your endorsements to pwescr@pwescr.org by September 30th,
2007. PWESCR will send the petition to the President of the Council and
copies of it to the Human Rights Commissioner and all Special Rapporteurs by
October first week. Do also let us know if you will be attending the Human
Rights Council meeting in
Priti Darooka, Executive Director
PWESCR (Programme on Women's Economic, Social and Cultural Rights)
Phone:
+91 (0)11-40536091/92
Fax:
+91 (0)11-40536095
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