Me. A cynic?

Maybe I am when it comes to small scale demonstrations at conferences. So often I have walked past the group of people and thought, whatever they are hoping to achieve, this is surely not the way to go about it. Well my experiences from this week have shown that small peaceful demonstrations, can be a very effective form of advocacy. For example, the media interest created by the abortion demo on Tuesday generated a lot of column inches and discussion about the issue in the local and national press.

A further example was at a small demonstration we carried out this morning (actually, it's still going on). Due to the lack of a transparent and democratic process and hearing that the Government Forum had been instructed to disregard the NGO recommendations, we stood quietly outside the entrance to the Governments Forum with messages urging governments to think again. The messages are below:

Before the demonstration, I honestly thought, what can this do? What difference can it make? Surely security will not let this happen. Well, I had to eat my words a couple of hours later. Many of the government delegates read the messages on the way in to the meeting, security left us alone and other delegates who had already entered the meeting came out to read the messages. It turns out that many governments were just as fed up about a lack of transparency and democracy in the process and the demonstration showed that they were not the only ones thinking this. Therefore, when the meeting started, the European, African and North and South American delegates all refused to continue the meeting without the opportunity to read the NGO declaration and discuss and democratically vote on the language in the Government Declaration. They also asked us to stay where we were and keep protesting!

Therefore, people are still there, the TV crews turned up and the closing ceremony for the Government Forum has been shifted from 11:30am to 5pm to give time for the discussions to take place.

What's going to happen? I have no idea and will not know the outcome for the next few days as I have to get on a plane in a couple of hours. I will write more about it as soon as I know.

Quote of the day: (In a session on youth participation from one of the youth NGO Delegates) "I was an observer in the Governments Forum yesterday and one of the Government representatives asked me about the process that had been used to decide the NGO declaration. I told him and he was surprised and said "wow, your process was much more transparent and democratic than ours is, we should learn something from you!"

Marching for young people's rights

Here are some pictures from the march on Wednesday.
"The World March of youth" - we started at the city's central arch and marched towards the conference centre.

The IPPF presence in the march - Healthy, Happy and Hot

As you can see, there was a lot of media interest and made the front page of all of the local and some of the national newspapers.

5 tips on how NOT to organise a Government Forum

As I have mentioned before, the whole World Youth Conference has been at best a little chaotic and at worst completely shambolic. Here are 5 lessons to learn about how NOT to organise a Government Forum:

1. Hospitality: Invite the Minister of Education for Brazil to speak at the opening ceremony and then don’t call on him to give his presentation. Yes this really happened! As a result Brazil withdrew from being the vice chair of the meeting.
2. Communication: Nominate countries to be part of the drafting committee without telling them, or letting anyone know why they were picked. The list of countries who would be part of the board were read out and a number of them complained saying “I had no idea that I would be doing this and therefore have not prepared – how was I chosen?” The decision was quickly made to let governments meet in regional groupings to choose their own representatives.
3. Transparency: Say that you would like to take comments on the draft Declaration from the various government delegations but these will be included or excluded on the decision (whim?) of the Chair (i.e. the Mexican Government). An interesting take on a democratic decision making process.
4. Accountability: Close the Declaration drafting process to observers – but still let the World Youth Council and the Holy See be involved whilst barring anyone who is apparently too progressive, such as UNFPA who had been helping to facilitate the drafting working groups.
5. Participation: Hold a two day NGO meeting made up of youth representatives and then completely disregard their declaration as it seemed to be too progressive. The board were told explicitly by a Mexican government representative "There is no need to take into account the NGO declaration, that is not why you are here. This will be included as an annex which will be sufficient." An interesting take on meaningfully involving youth!

As a result of the above, the outcome of the conference is currently very much in jeopardy. It is uncertain whether there will be an agreed upon Declaration as a number of the government delegates are getting very frustrated at the lack of transparency and chaotic organisation of the meeting. However, many others feel that any Declaration is better than no Declaration and will vote on whatever text is put before them.

Currently the best possible outcome is for the Conference is for there to be no Government Declaration but for the Governments Forum to formally recognise the NGO declaration. As I mentioned before, the NGO declaration is by no means perfect, but is a darn sight better than the draft Government Declaration!

All will be made clear tomorrow!

The plot thickens

A lot has happened today and I don't have much time to write this as we've got a planning meeting to discuss the events of today shortly. Therefore, I will simply share some text from an email that was recently sent around from the organisers of the Social Forum Organising Committee regarding the NGO statement which was agreed upon at the end of the NGO forum late on Tuesday evening:

Although many UN entities and Governments are very happy about the NGO
statement it is too controversial for our hosts, meaning that we are
experiencing trouble distributing it (the support to go to the Legislators
Forum [taking place in Mexico City] to present it has for example been
withdrawn).

We are also experiencing that delegates to the Government meeting (Mexican delegates - and they had TEN seats) are distributing alternative documents presented as the statement and so on. It is important for us to get this document, which is the true one, out there, so please share it on websites, send it to your member organisations and governments etc. We do have many supporters amongst governments pushing for the inclusion of paragraphs and points from the declaration in the Governments declaration - but the more recognition world-wide the better.

Clearly none of us are 100 per cent happy with the content - but we are organisations with democratic traditions and respect that this is the final outcome. We need to mass mobilize a bit now, and we in the Social Forum Organizing Committee trust in
your support :-)

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, the text is weak in places. However, it is one heck of a lot better than the "alternative" versions which have been circulated as official copies. As soon as I have a link to the document - I will add it as mentioned in the email.

I need to run to my meeting - more later!!

Phase II

We’re now halfway through the conference. The NGO forum of youth delegates finally finished their negotiations over the recommendations to be presented to the Government forum at 11:30pm last night. Whilst it was touch and go for some of yesterday evening about how strong the recommendations were going to be, the negotiations were a success and the final recommendations do include language around safe abortion, LGBT rights, comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) and the right to comprehensive health services for young people living with HIV.

This morning, the recommendations were presented to the Government Forum by 10 of the NGO delegates (one of which was our very own Katie Chau). The Forum is made up of the 100+ government delegations whose job it is to finalise the high-level World Youth Conference Declaration by Friday.

In the Global Interactive forum, the themes for today were Education, Sustainable Development and Culture. A UNESCO organised session on comprehensive sexuality education and we were concerned there would be a lot of disruption in the session. Whilst a lot of people turned up who were against teaching school children about sex, they listened respectfully to the presentations and there was a lively debate afterwards. Progress!!

The other key event for today was a march for youth rights. Many of the groups were arguing for sexual rights (like IPPF!), LGBT rights and the right to a safe abortion. The organisers were very worried about security during the march and had received guarantees from the police that we would be protected. This was the case and about 200 people marched through the streets of Leon. However – due to the sensitive nature of the topics we were shouting about in this conservative town – the march had not been widely promoted and therefore there was hardly anyone watching, apart from the local media (which included at least two Mexican TV crews and a number of newspaper reporters/photographers!).

Unfortunately, I cannot currently post any pictures from the march. Whilst I took loads, I used the IPPF-WHR camera which I gave back. I’ll try and post the photo’s tomorrow if I can download them...

"Take your rosary off our ovaries" - pictures

So my title makes a little more sense from yesterday's post - here are some pictures of the demonstration which I failed to upload yesterday (dodgy internet connection!). Look carefully at the bottom picture (second sign from the left)

I'll have more news later...

"Keep your rosary off our ovaries"

It’s been a really busy day. As I mentioned earlier the themes of today were health and gender, and all the IPPF sessions were this morning. At the same time frantic negotiations at the NGO forum have been taking place to ensure the final youth recommendation are rights based and progressive.

Here is a flavour about what has been happening today:

Showcasing the Love, Life and HIV DVD: the video was shown this morning on the main stage of the Global Interactive Forum followed by some short interviews with three of the participants from the videos. The showing of the DVD video, only being partially in Spanish, didn’t have a huge audience (40 people or so) given that 85% of the people currently in the Global Interactive Forum are from Latin America. However, as soon as we began the interviews, we gathered a crowd of 150 people or so. The interviews were great as they clearly touched on some of the key issues faced by young people living with HIV such as:

“In Mexico people are not very friendly to people living with HIV – the stigma and discrimination is very strong. Please here do not know how to treat you and make you feel like you are a bad person because of your status.”
“Being an adolescent living with HIV was very difficult. At school, people didn’t want to talk to me or have anything to do with me. I just wanted to be a normal teenager
like they were. It was very difficult for me.”
“I have been living with HIV for four years and have decided that if I want, I can live a completely normal life. Living with HIV is not much different to living with any other illness.”

Legal Abortion Flash-mob: similar to yesterday we organised a short protest to turn some heads. This time the topic was on the right of women to a legal safe abortion. Whilst the idea was very simple (35 people walking through the conference centre in silence holding placards with various messages and statistics about unsafe abortion), it was an effective demonstration and landed up with a lot of media interest. By this I mean a bit of a scrum around the organiser Oriana (see picture to the left!). It will be interesting what the papers say tomorrow.

UNAIDS outcome framework: this afternoon I attended a session introducing the UNAIDS outcome framework 2009 – 2011. Whilst I was aware of this document, I hadn’t clocked its importance in terms of working with young people given that one of the 10 priority areas is “We can empower young people to protect themselves from HIV”. This is certainly something I’m going to be reading a bit more about over the next few weeks. To read more about it see http://data.unaids.org/pub/BaseDocument/2010/jc1713_joint_action_en.pdf

This is all the information at the moment as negotiations are still ongoing at the NGO forum and I don’t have the latest. I’ll write about this further tomorrow!

Turning some heads

In order to help you understand a little bit more about why we are at the World Youth Conference let me explain a little bit more about how the conference is set up and what the outcome of the conference will be.

What is the World Youth Conference? The conference is the second, and largest, Inter-governmental Conference to be held solely on youth issues. It is taking place across three different fora:

1. Governments forum: From Wednesday (25th) to Friday (27th), 47 ministers of youth and education from around the world and 103 government delegations will meet to discuss a high-level declaration around the 11 themes of the conference (see below). The final declaration will be presented for countries to sign at the next UN General Assembly.


2. NGO forum: To ensure youth participation in the process, 400 young people (two per country) have been selected to meet for two days to drafting recommendations for what should be included in the declaration. This meeting takes place on Monday (23rd) and Tuesday (24th). There are a number of IPPF youth representatives from across the Federation who are a part of this.


3. Global Interactive Forum: This is open to the general public and includes 270 parallel sessions (round tables, youth dialogues, lectures and workshops) on the 11 themes of the conference as well as an exhibition hall and cultural activities.

What are the 11 themes of the conference? They are as follows:
1. Poverty
2. Education
3. Health
4. Employment
5. Gender equality
6. Technology and innovation
7. Culture
8. Access to justice and security
9. Participation
10. Sustainable development
11. International Migration

What stage is the Declaration at? A draft of the Government Declaration has already been prepared by the Mexican Government and has been reviewed by the UN. Even though it is still in a draft state, it has already been subject to a lot of lobbying and change. For example, in one of the latest rounds of changes, a key paragraph on young people’s right to access sexual and reproductive health services was recently removed. Text on sexuality education is still in the draft but is one area that is being strongly objected to. Therefore, the negotiations and advocacy work over the next few days are important!

What has happened so far: Each day of the Conference has a theme. Monday’s theme was “poverty and international migration”. However, given the poor state of organisation for the conference so far, no programme for these sessions currently exists (though one did finally go up online after lunch!). And for those involved in activities at the Global Interactive Forum, most of the morning was spent registering! However, the teething problems seem to be being ironed out!

Turning some heads: In order to create a bit more noise in the chaos that is the Global Interactive Forum and to raise the issue of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), we organised a short flash mob demonstration at lunchtime, spelling out the initials “CSE” and “ESI” (Spanish for CSE!) with our bodies whilst some statements about how important it is were read out in English and Spanish to the groups who gathered around us. Apart from it drawing the obvious crowd, a lot of people started asking questions about CSE which is no bad thing!!

Looking ahead: Today is the health day and IPPF have four sessions scheduled including:

• “Love life and HIV” screening: young people living with HIV sharing their experiences, dreams and desires for the future. This will be followed by three of those featured in the video talking about their own experiences and taking questions from the audience.
• Exclaim: Youth perspectives on sexual rights. This youth dialogue will bring together young people from various regions to discuss what sexual rights mean to young people and how to translate these rights into concrete actions.
• A training workshop on sexual rights, HIV and advocacy for young people by young people.
• Young People: autonomy and confidentiality in health services

This is the day that will focus most of the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people. I’m looking forward to it!

Lines in the sand

Leon is a small city in the state of Guanajuato, located in the geographical centre of Mexico. It is best known for its shoe making and leather tanning but it is also one of the most conservative cities in the whole of Mexico. An interesting place to hold the World Youth Conference!

What do I mean when I say conservative? Let me give you an example:

In the state of Guanajuato, access to a safe abortion is illegal as in the rest of Mexico. However, in Guanajuato, the penalty is particularly harsh, 25+ years imprisonment is standard and 73 women have already been arrested in the state this year for allegedly having an abortion. I say allegedly as a recent review of the women who are currently serving time in jail for having an abortion has highlighted that at least 6 women have been imprisoned for simply having a miscarriage! There has been a lot of advocacy by human rights groups over the past year on this issue but these have met with a lot of opposition, some of which has been violent. Why do I mention this here?

The main issues that have been discussed in the Mexican newspapers in the run up to the World Youth Conference have concerned the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people. A large number of people in the ‘Conservative’ camp have therefore come to Leon to attend the conference and today an estimated 3000 of them marched through the streets for the ‘protection of family values’. Amongst other things they argue that condoms promote promiscuity, emergency contraception is abortion, homosexuality is a clinical/mental disorder. In other words, they are clearly against the rights of women, LGBT and young people.

All the progressive Mexicans we have spoken to have warned that the numbers of conservative people are going to far outweigh the numbers of progressive young people at the Conference. However, all is not lost. The progressive youth met together this weekend to carefully strategise for the week ahead as there are going to be a lot of people at the Conference who have not yet made their minds up as to where they stand on these issues. What is going to win, conservative rhetoric or evidence-based human-rights?

The lines in the sand have been drawn. Let the Conference commence.

Off to the World Youth Conference

I’m off to Leon, Mexico to attend the World Youth Conference with a number of other IPPF delegates. The conference will be held from 23-27th August and this blog will chart IPPF's presence there. Here's a little bit of background...

What’s the Conference All about? 2010 marks the 25th anniversary of International Youth Year and is also the 10 year review of Millennium Development Goals. In line with this, the Mexican government is hosting the World Youth Conference The conference aims to recognize young people as essential partners for achieving the MDGs and to set priorities related to young people for international and domestic policy.

Why are we going? The main goal of IPPF’s participation at the WYC is to ensure that governments, parliamentarians, youth leaders and NGOs recognize young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights as critical priorities for development.

The conference will have considerable impact and influence. As such, IPPF believes it is important for a large number of progressive young people to participate at the conference to ensure the outcomes reflect rights-based perspectives on young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender and sexuality.

For more information about the conference visit http://www.youth2010.org/ (the website is in English, Spanish and French)

Over the weekend I'll let you know what we've got planned for the week ahead...