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NEWS BRIEFS
Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur at the UN
Vol. 7, No. 6

(Cliquez ici pour la traduction française)
March 2010
by Sr. Joan F. Burke SNDdeN

Editor’s note: thank you to those who commented on the content- focus of News Briefs. At the meeting of the SNDatUN Advisory Group last month the priority topics selected were: 1) Follow up on the Financial – Economic Crisis; Poverty Eradication as the main theme of the coming year’s UN Commission for Social Development. The third topic in the immediate future will be the UN Review of the MDGs in September 2010, and then the UN Commission on the Status of Women consideration of Violence and Discrimination against the Girl-Child. Occasional topics will be Climate Crisis, Human Trafficking and Migration jfb

(Click on the panels below to read more about each of the topics.)

Follow-up on Copenhagen Accord on Climate Change

United Nations has set-up a High-Level Panel to implement a key component of the Copenhagen Accord to promote climate mitigation and adaptation financing in developing countries. The Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing must design a mechanism to channel cash from developed nations to projects aimed at protecting agriculture and infrastructure from rising seas and weather extremes. The group will also propose strategies for boosting renewable energy and clean technology investments in poor nations in an effort to move stalled international negotiations forward. Two prime ministers -- Great Britain's Gordon Brown and Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi -- will lead the panel, whose representation will be divided equally between developed and developing nations' governments.

World Day for Social Justice Highlights Need for Economic Justice

At the UN observance of the International Day for Social Justice the 20th February, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated, “Social justice must be based on the values of fairness, equality and respect for diversity as more important than ever amid a global financial and economic crisis that has significantly increased unemployment and poverty and is straining social integration. . . The world's major economies are beginning to emerge from this global downturn, we must ensure that the world's people do so too."

He called for a major push this year to put countries back on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, which seek to slash a host of social ills, from extreme poverty and hunger to maternal and infant mortality, to lack of access to education and health care, all by 2015, calling them one of the United Nation's key means of bringing social justice and development together to benefit the poorest and most vulnerable.

Forum for Catholic-inspired NGOs

Mary Jo (Coesfeld-SND) and Joan attended the second Forum for Catholic-inspired NGOs (C-NGOs), partly sponsored by the Vatican Secretariat of State the 11th -14th February 2010. Unlike the first Forum held in November 2007, this time around there was a wider range of NGOs among the 150 participants, including a better representation of religious congregations.

The stated aim of the Forum is to “improve impact of C-NGOs in inter-governmental bodies, all the while recognising great diversity of organisational identities, and widely different focus of advocacy; as well as the different operational styles and ways of interfacing with NGOs in the various inter-governmental bodies.”

The announced hope for the second gathering was to focus on a selection of themes and generate a list of common goals of the participants. The themes were based on an earlier written questionnaire. Small groups addressed: human rights and integral human development, and women & children, and the environment; education; social issues and the family; health; migration. Joan was part of the core group as a facilitator for the first mentioned theme. The hope is that the Forum become an effective network (of networks) working together to enhance the impact of the Catholic voice in the many intergovernmental debates.

Mary Jo and Joan both appreciated the opportunity to meet with a broad spectrum of NGOs, but observed that two tensions are still evident:

1) A preference by some for a strong centralisation (Vatican would determine NGO agenda) vs a loose network of collaboration among NGOs working on different issues
2) NGOs operating out of the broad spectrum of the Catholic Social teachings vs many ‘right to life groups’ more narrowly focussed on single issues such as abortion and the narrow definition of a family

They are of the mind that it is important to stay in the conversation and continue to show willingness to work with the process as long as it is possible, but are not yet ready to make a full commitment without seeing how the above tensions will resolve themselves and impact the Forum.

Millennium Development Goals

Sister Joan F. Burke represents the congregation as an accredited non-governmental organisation at the United Nations. She works primarily in the area of poverty eradication, development issues, social development and how to finance development.