Against poverty, for justice.

The Global Call to Action against Poverty is a call for women, men and youth to mobilize against poverty and to unite their actions and messages to bring about real and urgent change. It is a call for people all over the world to demand that their leaders fulfill their promises.

The Global Call is also a worldwide alliance. It is not a formal institution but the coming together of hundreds of organizations from all over the world--including women's groups, trade unions, faith-based organizations, human rights organizations, grassroots civil society organizations and non-governmental development organizations--to transform national and international policies to eliminate poverty and exceed the UN Millennium Development Goals.

With this call, we strengthen our worldwide efforts to demand accountability.

How You Can Respond to This Global Call to Action

Become Involved in your National Campaign: The Global Call to Action against Poverty is comprised of national campaigns that are being built by existing networks. To find out more about what is happening in your country or other regions of the world, complete the information request form at www.whiteband.org/actnow/ wborgjoin.

Wear a White Band:Wear a white band on the international "white band days," on national days of action, and in conjunction with other protests and events being planned by groups around the world. The white band has been chosen as the international symbol of the idea that it is time for our governments to end poverty. On three important dates this year, people around the world will wear white bands while taking part in events and protests:

July 1, 2005, in conjunction with the G-8 Summit being held at Glen Eagles, Scotland;

September 10, 2005, in conjunction with the UN Millennium Summit taking place in New York; and,

December 10, 2005, in conjunction with the Sixth World Trade Organization Ministerial Meeting, occurring. in Hong Kong (date to be confirmed

Incorporate the White Band symbolism into the anti-poverty, women's rights and social justice events you are planning.

Add your organization's name to the Global Call: To join, write to info@ whiteband.org.

What Do the Policy Demands of the Global Call for Action Against Poverty Mean from a Women's Rights Perspective?

The Global Call demands systemic changes to end poverty. These include critical demands for fair trade, debt cancellation, increased aid to poor nations, and accountable and transparent policy processes. These are women's human rights and gender equality issues as current international policies rob women of livelihoods, health care and other economic rights while feeding fundamentalist backlash and militarism that deprive women of personal autonomy and choices.

Trade Justice: Trade expansion--both within and across borders--has been dependent on poor women's labor. Trade justice therefore implies not only more equitable terms of trade and national economic sovereignty, but also guaranteeing land rights, women's labor rights and decent jobs, protecting women's agricultural activities, maintaining food security, livelihoods and traditional knowledge, ensuring essential public services for all, and developing policies so that the benefits of trade will advance development objectives and reach the most marginalized members of society, particularly poor women.

Debt Cancellation: Much of developing countries' debt is being paid by poor women. Currently women are providing health care, education, child and elder care, and other services which support families, societies and economies as part of their unpaid labor. To eradicate poverty and advance human rights, debt must be cancelled, resources shared equitably to meet the needs of the poor, especially women, and essential services must be provided by the State.

Better and More Aid. The volume of development assistance given by rich countries must be increased to the 0.7% of GNP goal to help poor countries lift themselves out of poverty. This aid should prioritize empowering women and achieving gender equality to eradicate poverty.

National Policy Processes are Democratic, Transparent, Participatory and Accountable to Citizens: National strategies to eliminate poverty need to empower women through education, health care and HIV/AIDS treatments, reproductive rights, strategies to end violence against women, full political participation, equal citizenship, inheritance and property rights, and access to essential services including affordable housing. Moreover, processes must be developed that facilitate the participation of all--especially women, youth, migrants and indigenous peoples--in policy development, implementation and monitoring with mechanisms for information sharing, input and redress.

Why Are So Many Women Demanding Justice?

This year, heads of state from around the world convened to assess their progress towards gender equality in March and will meet again to look at progress towards eliminating global poverty in September. They will debate and discuss international and national policies to change the lives of more than a billion people living in abject poverty. However, the fact that poverty, privilege and discrimination are interrelated is not yet receiving sufficient attention in these negotiations.

Gender inequality makes most women poorer. Women face more obstacles than men in labor markets, receive lower wages for the same work, dominate the informal economy and have less access to credit, land, time, education and other productive resources. In most parts of the world, poor women do the caring--particularly in this era of HIV/AIDS--feeding and cleaning for the family, caring for the sick and dying, as well as earning small amounts of cash through labor-intensive activities. As farmers, workers, heads of households and community leaders, they make productive and essential contributions to their community and country. As such, poverty eradication strategies must see women as active agents and not intrinsically vulnerable. If women are vulnerable, it is only because they have been made vulnerable--legally, economically, culturally, sexually, structurally--for centuries.

The fight against poverty therefore requires equality and justice for women. Sufficient income is necessary to lower poverty, but getting communities out of poverty will depend on women's leadership, access to education, time, land, health care and credit, enjoyment of their reproductive and sexual rights, freedom from violence and equal rights in the family and in society.

Similarly, the fight against poverty is also a fight against the unequal distribution of wealth. It is a fight against the neoliberal economic framework, which favors corporations and powerful domestic lobbies in North America and Europe and does not contribute to the eradication of poverty or the achievement of human rights and development goals. It is a fight for a system of global governance that supports equality and social justice.

Just Keep the Promises

Governments of the world committed themselves to advance gender equality and women's rights, to seek peace and development, and to eradicate poverty in a series of UN conferences in the 1990s. Women's rights have also been guaranteed in a number of regional and international human rights treaties. Furthermore, many elements of these commitments were incorporated into the Millennium Declaration adopted by United Nations Member States in 2000. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which emerged from that Declaration, identified gender equality and women's empowerment as goals in their own right and as essential to achieving the other goals. Let us hold all our governments to account for their commitments.

Is This a Campaign about the Millennium Development Goals?

It is much more than that. It is the largest-ever mobilization in the fight against poverty. It will use key international and national political events and policy processes in 2005 to unite our collective voices and demand justice, equality, an end to poverty and accountability for promises unfulfilled.

Many feminists and women's rights advocates are critical of the omission of gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive rights from among the indicators for the MDGs. Moreover, the MDGs tend to consider women in relation to education, maternal mortality and HIV/AIDS but not poverty eradication. Achievement of the MDGs therefore would represent only a partial improvement for women. Organizations responding to the Global Call demand that governments meet and far exceed the MDGs and fulfill the other promises that they have made through the UN Conferences of the 1990s and in regional and international human rights treaties.

* Source: Association of Women in Development (AWID) Website, http://www.awid. org/go.php?pg=gcap