News Archive (2008 - 2005)

Marie-Claude Julsaint, World YWCA Programme Director for the America’s and Caribbean will attend the Latin America and Caribbean Faith-based Organisations Forum: ‘Strengthening Partnerships to Reduce Maternal Mortality, Stop Violence against Women and Address Migration’. The Forum, hosted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Conference of Religions for Peace, will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on September 16-17.

Women around the world are one step closer to the establishment of a new UN agency for women. Member states at the 62nd session of the UN General Assembly on September 15 adopted a resolution to move the Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) process forward.

Just 14 months ago, a new World Board was elected to lead the global YWCA movement. With the support and encouragement of many wonderful women throughout the YWCA, the new team has advanced our global priorities on HIV, violence against women, economic justice and peace. We are consistently calling for adequate resources to respond to the feminisation of the HIV pandemic; making the links between HIV, poverty and violence; demanding women’s equal participation in the resolution of conflict and the peace building process.

The annual joint Week of Prayer and World Fellowship will be held from November 9 - 15, 2008 by member associations of the World YWCA and the World Alliance of YMCAs across the world.

The International Day of Peace, September 21, will be celebrated and commemorated by women and young women throughout the world, 25 years after the first Peace day was established.The United Nations initiative was created to encourage worldwide peace; a vision YWCAs around the world have long been dreaming of. World peace with justice is one of the main priority areas of the world YWCA with associations in over 44 countries actively engaging in peace building advocacy and programmes.

“We can begin to look at a way forward. We can’t continue to allow Africa to be regarded as the ‘Dark Continent’ or ‘hopeless Africa’,” stressed Hon. Prof. Maria Nzomo, Kenyan Ambassador to Switzerland who was a panellist at a lunch discussion on Zimbabwe advocacy and solidarity organised by the World YWCA and the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF).

Jessica Neuwirth, in her discerning commentary “UN Secretary General—Time for a Woman”, notes that no woman has served as secretary general in the 61 years since the United Nations was founded, and, to date, none has emerged as a leading candidate.

More than a decade after the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing called for “mechanisms to nominate women candidates for appointment to senior posts in the United Nations,” no such mechanism is in place for the most senior post and only 16 percent of undersecretaries general are women.

At the recently held XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico (AIDS 2008), the World YWCA was re-elected as one of the two additional civil society organisations to sit on the Conference Coordinating Committee (CCC) of AIDS 2010. The Caribbean Vulnerable Communities has been added to the CCC.

World leaders gathered in New York on September 25, 2008 for a high-level event convened by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon and the President of the UN General Assembly to renew commitments to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 and to set out concrete plans and practical steps for action.

La Semana de Acción sobre el Comercio por parte de las iglesias se realizará del 12 al 19 de octubre de 2008. ¡Únete a personas de todo el mundo para exigir justicia en el comercio mundial!