Like many, I went to Rio full of expectations. I had been feeding off of the hype around Rio for months:
“This UN conference will be a seminal moment in history!”
“The outcomes from Rio +20 will set the agenda for a new development paradigm reaching beyond 2015!”
“Leaders from around the world will make sure the world is a better place for youth, women, indigenous populations and generations to come!”
I could go on. But if you’ve seen any of the news on Rio +20, you know it has not lived up to the hype. Ask anyone from any sector – oceans, food security, education, energy – and they will all express disappointment. But for those of us advancing the sexual and reproductive rights of women, Rio+20 has been particularly disappointing.
Not only is the Rio +20 outcome document, “The Future We Want,” silent on sexual and reproductive rights, but during the negotiations many of the EU and G77 countries who have been progressive on these issues in the past were completely silent. Despite encouragement from the U.S. and a handful of other countries to protect and support women’s rights, these “allies” said nothing and did nothing as the Holy See, Malta, Poland, Algeria, and other conservative countries rolled back the clock on women’s rights. With friends like these, you have to ask, who needs enemies.
Ironically, on the very day the Rio+20 outcome document was finalized, the Guttmacher Institute and UNFPA released a study showing that little progress has been made in meeting women’s need for contraception. In the 69 poorest countries, the need actually increased from 153 to 162 million women between 2008 and 2012.
This weekend, heads of state will return home patting themselves on the back for arriving at such a quick consensus and for all of the speeches and handshakes and photo-ops throughout the week. But when they return home, what will they have to say to the millions of women whose basic sexual and reproductive rights these leaders did too little to protect or support? The stakes are too high for the answer to be “nothing.”
We need to let them know that their silence is unacceptable.
Elisha Dunn-Georgiou is Vice President of Advocacy at Population Action International.
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Words from another friend…..
Ioannes Paulus PP. II
Karol Wojtyla
16.X.1978
“The unforgiveable sins this earth must confront and overcome are Nationalism, capitalism, and hoarding. The idea of every nation should be forgot, price should be struck from the commons, and princes should be seen for the devils they are. The sins include our church, secret societies, and other religions which make of the spirit of God a divide.”
The Holy Father’s last rites declaration – 2nd April 2005
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The Rio + 20 was a total waste of time, money, and fossil fuel.
The world economy is based upon endlessly increasing world population coupled with endlessly increasing personal consumption. This is, of course, totally unsustainable, but world “leaders” don’t care. All that matters is short-term bottom line.
I am not at all surprised that no mention of population growth, or womens reproductive rights, were made. To take these issues seriously would be an affront to the dominant mindset of our capitalist culture.
What we know about evolution would lead sensible people to conclude that there is nothing or precious little that can be done to change the human ‘trajectory’. So powerful is the force of evolution that we will “do what comes naturally” by continuing to overpopulate the planet and await the next phase of the evolutionary process. Even so, still hope resides within that somehow humankind will make use of its singular intelligence and other unique attributes so as to escape the fate that appears ‘as if through a glass darkly’ in the offing, the seemingly certain fate evolution appears to have in store for us. Come what may. In the face of all that we can see now and here, I continue to believe and to hope that we find adequate ways of consciously, deliberately and effectively doing the right things, according the lights and knowledge we possess, the things which serve to confront and overcome the ‘evolutionary trend’ which seems so irresistible.
A breath-taking analysis…
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2012/07/what-am-i-watching.html#tp
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
established 2001
Chapel Hill, NC
http://www.panearth.org/