We would like to inform you that KARAT Coalition will launch soon new webiste. We do not update anymore this webiste as all new, materials, information will be posted on the new one. We apologise for this inconvinience.
If you have any question concerning the content of webiste please contact Ewa Pintera: ewa.pintera@karat.org.pl
The September issue of KARAT News is available here in English and here in Russian. Thank you for your contribution and have a nice reading!
Many previous issues of KARAT News have been translated into Russian. You can find them here.
The summer (July/August) issue of KARAT News is available here. Thank you for your contribution and have a nice reading!
The summer issue will be soon available also in Russian. Many previous issues of KARAT News have been already translated. You can find them here.
KARAT Coalition together with One World Action seek a short-term consultant to research the extent to which the EU commitment on women’s empowerment and gender equality has informed Polish development cooperation policies, programmes and processes. Research findings will support awareness-raising and capacity-building within Poland and at the European and Member States levels. This project is part of a joint One World Action and KARAT initiative: Connect! East/South/West Women for development which aims at supporting CSOs in engaging with policy-makers and the public for gender sensitive development cooperation.
Terms of references to the research is available HERE
Interested applicants are requested to e-mail their CV and cover letter to Marta Gontarska, project coordinator, KARAT Secretariat: marta.gontarska@karat.org.pl
Deadline for applications: 26th June, 2011.
On 19th May, 2011 the flagship AidWatch CONCORD Report "Challenging self-interest: Getting EU aid fit for the fight against poverty" was launched in Brussels.
The most alarming conclusion of the report is that aid is becoming increasingly dictated by domestic political agendas and tied to security, immigration and commercial objectives rather than poverty reduction.
Full press release is available HERE
The April issue of KARAT News is available here. Thank you for your contribution and have a nice reading!
The April issue is also available in Russian here. Many previous issues of KARAT News have been already translated. You can find them here
KARAT Secretariat has finalized the regional survey within the wider initiative: Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness Thematic Consultation on CSOs working in Gender Equality and Women’s Rights. 41 organizations from 17 countries of Eastern Europe, Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia contributed to the survey through the electronic questionnaire and a few face to face interviews.
KARAT thanks all the organizations taking part in the survey for their valuable input.
As soon as the final report is ready we will inform about it in KARAT News, meantime for more information please contact Joanna at joanna.szabunko@karat.org.pl
The March issue of KARAT News is available here. Thank you for your contribution and have a nice reading!
The March issue is also available in Russian here. Many previous issues of KARAT News have been already translated. You can find them here
Within the global initiative of Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness, KARAT is coordinating the thematic consultations on CSOs working in Gender Equality and Women’s Rights in the Central and Eastern Europe and CIS Region. The consultations rely on an e-mail survey.
We will greatly appreciate if you complete the survey and return it to KARAT Secretariat by the end of 16th March.
The February issue of KARAT News is available here. Thank you for your contribution and have a nice reading!
The February issue will be also available in Russian. Many previous issues of KARAT News have been already translated. You can find them here
As a part of CONNECT! South, East, West Women for development project Gender Education Research and Technologies (Bulgaria), ‘AUR’ - A.N.S.R.U (Romania), KARAT Coalition and One World Action (UK) would like to invite you on the National Dialogues. The first event will be held on 7th, February in the Red House Center for Culture and Debate in Sofia, Bulgaria and the second event will be held on 9th, February in House of Parliament in Bucharest, Romania.
To find out more please contact Marta: marta.gontarska@karat.org.pl
The January issue of KARAT News is available here. Thank you for your contribution and have a nice reading!
The January issue will be soon available in Russian. Many previous issues of KARAT News have been already translated. You can find them here
The December issue of KARAT News is available here. Thank you for your contribution!
Have a nice reading!
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KARAT Coalition joined ZAGRANICA Group, Polish association of non-governmental organizations working abroad in cooperation with and for the benefit of foreign partners and national platform of CONCORD. We would like to promote gender equality in development issues in Poland. More information: marta.gontarska@karat.org.pl or www.zagranica.org.pl
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On 19-20 October a regional dialogue of young feminist activists from the Region organized by Association For Women’s Rights In Development (AWID) took place in Tbilisi, Georgia. A diverse group of young women gathered to discuss the challenges and problems in relation to young women’s rights in their countries and Region, as well as the multigenerational cooperation and tensions in the movement that derive, among others, from different approaches to gender, activism and identities.The meeting was attended by 5 representatives of KARAT Members organizations and a delegate from KARAT Secretariat.
To learn more about Young Women’s Dialogue check out Young Feminist Wire
The October-November issue of KARAT News is available here. Thank you for your contribution!
Have a nice reading!
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KARAT Coalition has launched the new 3-months project "Her Story - Women and development. Strengthening public awareness about socio-economic problems of women in the developing countries” which is co-financed by the Polish aid programme 2010 of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.
KARAT as a member of Clean Clothes Poland (CCP) took part in the Art and Fashion Festival, annual event gathering hundreds of participants involved in fashion industry. We have conducted a workshop: „Ethical, sustainable or responsible fashion?” within the Open University of AFF. The participants had a chance to become familiar with the other side of the fashion industry: working conditions of mainly women workers of garment industry, social responsibility of the companies and the consumers.
More information:
- Art & Fashion Festival
- Clean Clothes Campaign.
If you wish to know more about KARAT's involvement in this area write to Joanna at: joanna.szabunko@karat.org.pl
The September issue of KARAT News is available here. Thank you for your contribution!
Have a nice reading!
The report was prepared by Women's Independent Democratic Movement of Belarus. It contains a lot of information about the problems faced by Belarusian women.
The full report is available here
"I want a fair and green phone" is an action directed at mobile network operators. Millions of mobile phones are being sold every year. Unfortunately, the production of these phones often doesn’t respect social and environmental standards. As the main retailers of mobile phones, network operators have to take some responsibility.
Send a digital postcard to your mobile network operator.
Together we will make IT fair!
The summer issue of KARAT News is available here
Have a nice reading!
KARAT Coalition is taking part in the work of the Coalition for Equal Chances - an unofficial platform of a number of Polish well-known NGOs promoting human rights and equality. It has been created in response to the fact that Polish government’s work on the project of equality law is of substandard quality, disappointing and not always transparent.
The Coalition is coordinated by Polish Society of Anti-Discrimination Law. It monitors the preparation of the project of equality law. It also tries to initiate a substantial dialogue with the government.
More information (in Polish only)
KARAT has now a Facebook profile which can be used for exchange of information and ideas relevant to our Coalition in a less formal and more interactive manner than offered by KARAT’s webpage. Therefore we would like to encourage those of you who have Facebook profiles to become fans of KARAT on Facebook. For more information write to Anita (anita.seibert@karat.org.pl); Marta (marta.gontarska@karat.org.pl) or Ewa Kaminska (ewa.kaminska@karat.org.pl).
The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) is convening a regional meeting for young women from the SEE/CEE/CIS region on the topic of resource mobilization and movement building for women’s rights organizations.
The meeting will take place on October 19th – 20th in Tbilisi, Georgia.
A group of representatives from the Albanian women’s rights NGOs has participated in the 46th Session of the Committee of CEDAW. The delegation presented the recommendations based on the shadow reports on the periodical report of the Albanian government. One of the shadow reports has been initiated by the Gender Alliance for Development Centre (member of KARAT Coalition).
As unemployment and informal work constitute a huge problem in Albania, the Albanian NGOs delegation has underlined that economic empowerment of women is a very important step towards the elimination of discrimination and violence.
More information
The photo exhibition „Through Their Eyes, Through Ours” has been presented during the WIDE Annual Conference “Migration in the context of globalization. Women‟s human rights at risk” and also during the General Assembly of KARAT Coalition in Bucharest, Romania. The events took place between the 3rd and the 7th of June.
On 1-3 July, European Consultation on the implementation of CEDAW Concluding Observations (COs) organized by IWRAW Asia Pacific in cooperation with KARAT and WIDE took place in Warsaw, Poland. During this 3-day strategic meeting, women’s rights advocates from EU member states, CEE countries and Central Asia shared strategies on how to use COs to keep the governments accountable for complying with the obligation to fully implement CEDAW Convention at national level. The report from the meeting is coming soon. It will be available on KARAT’s website by mid August.
For more information contact Aleksandra Solik at aleksandra.solik@karat.org.pl or Magda Pochec at magda.pochec@karat.org.pl
KARAT has a pleasure to announce its new Project within its Women’s Human Rights Program. The Project is related to the CEDAW reporting process in Poland as the government is due to be reviewed in 2012. The Project includes production of the Shadow Report in coalition with national women’s rights organizations and advocacy for the priority critical women’s rights issues in Poland (e.g. adoption of parity and anti-discrimination act, reproductive rights). The Project also aims at assessing women’s access to justice and eliminating existing barriers that hamper litigation of rights.
The Project is funded by Open Society Institute - Budapest.
For more information contact Magda Pochec at magda.pochec@karat.org.pl
*Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
Enjoy your reading and have a nice summertime!
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KARAT Coalition, One World Action and Polish Humanitarian Action would like to invite you for the debate "East and South. Through their eyes, through ours." accompanied by two exhibitions presenting situation of women in refugees camps in Tanzania and socio-economic situation of women in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The event will take place on Thursday, May 13, 2010, between 6:30pm - 8:30pm in Nowy Wspaniały Świat in Warsaw (Nowy Świat 63)..jpg)
“The Festiwal of Adventure Mandragon: Asia and Ocenia between sunrise and sunset” will take a place on 23-25 of April in Łowicka Center (ul. Łowicka 21) in Warsaw. The program of the festival include: movie and slide shows, concerts, presentation of martial arts, dance shows, tasting of oriental cuisines, photoexhibitions and also panel discussions with travelers, authors of reportages (i.e. Jacek Hugo-Bader, Max Cegielski and Piotr Balcerowicz).
KARAT, as a representative of Clean Clothes Polska, is involved in Gender Working Group in CCC. Recently developed CCC Gender Policy Statement is available here
The monograph The European Feminist Forum. A herstory (2004-2008) was written by six European Feminists of different backgrounds, cultures, countries or who tried to construct a feminist vision for a social, economic and political justice in Europe. The main conclusion from the EFF experience is that there is no one European feminism but a plurivocality of European women’s voices that are taking up feminism in different themes and activities.KARAT was actively involved in EFF since its beginning and contributed to writing its herstory.
The publication is available HERE
The 18th December 2009 marks the 30th anniversary of Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). In relation to this the special issue of KARAT News has been published.
As a consequence now there is an online article about “Through Their Eyes, Through Ours” project in French.
After the collapse of centrally controlled economic systems in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), most of the world’s biggest electronics companies started to invest in the region.
The data gathering tours which were part of “Through Their Eyes, Through Ours project” have been conducted.Soon reports on the tours will be available on KARAT’s website, but if you want to find out more now write to Ewa Pintera at ewa.pintera@karat.org.pl.
You can become a fan of “Through Their Eyes, Through Ours” on Facebook.
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Clean Clothes Poland – the coalition for the ethical fashion - is being launched on the 9th of December. CCP was established by KARAT Coalition, Polish Humanitarian Organization, Polish Green Network and Grupa eFTe Warszawa. It represents Polish organizations on the international platform of Clean Clothes Campaign which work to help ensure that the fundamental rights of garment workers are respected.
The worldwide anti-sweatshop Clean Clothes Campaign marks 20 years this year!
To mark the anniversary, a book on the movement "Clean Clothes" by Liesbeth Sluiter was launched on November 2009.
KARAT has been collaborating with CCC for about 7 years.
More information
New issue of KARAT News is now available HERE
Our photography exhibition “Through Their Eyes” has been presented at the side event of the UN-ECE Beijing + 15 Regional Review Meeting in Geneva. The exhibition was shown in Palais des Nations and was combined with the reception hosted by Jan Kubis, Executive Secretary of UN ECE.
More information
To find out more about KARAT in Geneva write to Kinga at: kinga.lohmann@karat.org.pl
KARAT Coalition and One World Action (UK) invite you to participate in the one-day training on gender perspective in the international cooperation for development. Women’s rights and development NGOs are particularly encouraged to apply.
Would you like to know more? Learn about the women’s activities in the countries of Global South? Go through the most important regulations in the development policies? Link gender / development issues into your work? Join us on Tuesday, November 24th in Warsaw
KARAT Coalition would like to invite you for the participation in the data gathering tours.
Those tours are the part of the project co-financed by European Commission, titled “Through Their Eyes through Ours, Raising the public’s awareness about development problems faced by women from developing countries in the EU Eastern Neighbourhood, Balkans and Central Asia".
The chosen applicants will go for 7 days to Caucasia and Balkans in order to collect data and create awareness raising tools like movies, photos, articles etc.
The call is directed to young women from Central European New Member States (NMS): Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia.
THE DEADLINE FOR THE APPLICATIONS HAS BEEN EXTENDED TILL 15TH, NOVEMBER, 2009.
More information and application you will find HERE.
Nokia is asked to become the trailblazer in developing more ethical mobile phones by the Finnish makeITfair campaign. KARAT as the partner of makeITfair campaign supports the Finnish petition.
The petition has over 5,000 signatures already, but there is still time to add yours before it is handed over to Nokia on 13 November.
Act now and help us get our voices heard: www.makeitfair.fi/petition
We are happy to announce that e- toolkit on OP CEDAW in English language is already available at www.karat.org/op_cedaw.This is a preliminary version: toolkit will be successfully developed and supplemented. Russian version will be published soon.
All suggestions and commentaries are mostly welcomed.
Toolkit was prepared by KARAT Coalition thanks to support of OXFAM Novib.
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makeITfair asked mobile network operators questions about sales, recycling efforts and supply chain responsibility efforts. Fifteen questionnaires were sent out to the national branches of mobile network operators in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. Three of them declined to answer makeITfair, showing poor transparency.
KARAT Coalition would like to present you the YouTube clip which has been done thanks to your involvement!
The movie has been created as a part of project “Economic rights of women are human rights” which is carried out jointly with Minority Rights Group.
Please watch the clip that you find HERE and feel free to comment.
WOMNET would like to invite you to the photoexhibition “Through Their Eyes” which is available since 25th September at Public Library in Bonn, Germany.
The event is the part of the large project “Through Their Eyes through Ours, Raising the public’s awareness about development problems faced by women from developing countries in the EU Eastern Neighbourhood, Balkans and Central Asia”. The photos presented at the exhibition are taken by the women from the Region and selected on the base of competition.
The honoured guest of the exhibition opening was Mariam Amurvelashvili - the first prize winner.
Exhibition has been presented so far in Warsaw, Poznań, Bratislava, Berlin and now you can visit it in Bonn.
KARAT Coalition would like to invite you for the participation in the data gathering tours.
Those tours are the part of the project co-financed by European Commission, titled “Through Their Eyes through Ours, Raising the public’s awareness about development problems faced by women from developing countries in the EU Eastern Neighbourhood, Balkans and Central Asia".
The chosen applicants will go for 7 days to Caucasia and Balkans in order to collect data and create awareness raising tools like movies, photos, articles etc.
The call is directed to young women from Central European New Member States (NMS): Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia.
More information and application you will find HERE.
In response to great interest we present two reports prepared within the project: “Labour Rights Protection from Gender Perspective in Super/Hypermarkets in Poland”, which are now available in English.
These are: Research report "Situation of female employees in super- and hypermarkets" (Warsaw 2008) and an abridged version of the report “Work conditions and respecting of employees’ rights in supermarkets in Poland from the gender equality perspective” (Warsaw, December 2008)
We want to speak your voice about the economic situation of women in our Region!
“Workers producing computer parts are still working long hours for low wages and have no possibility to organize themselves to demand improved conditions.”, says Esther de Haan from the Center for Research on Multionational Corporations (SOMO), coordinator of makeITfair.WOMNET would like to invite you to the international conference „EU gender politics in an international context. Gender perspectives and gender indicators.” which will be held from 2nd to 3rd July, 2009 in European Academy Berlin, Germany.
Program of the conference is available HERE
At a time of financial crisis the millions of women, who are employed in factories and workshops and make the clothes on sale in supermarkets, are paying for the profits of the gigantic global retailers such as Carrefour, Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, and Walmart.
This is the conclusion from the Clean Clothes Campaign report “Cashing In: Giant retailers, purchasing practices, and working conditions in the garment industry”. KARAT Coalition has prepared the Polish version of the report. It is now available both in electronic and in printed format.
Slovak Center For Communication and Development and Project Partners
The new report titled “Out of control. E-waste trade flows from the EU to developing countries” was published by SwedWatch as a part of the makeITfair Campaign.
KARAT Coalition, together with project partners,invites applications for participation in the training on the Optional Protocol to CEDAW convention which will take place in Warsaw, Poland, on 15-18 September 2009.
"Improving Labour Standards in the Global Electronics Industry - Defining Strategies that Work"
May 7-8, 2009, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
makeITfair's new report Playing with Labour Rights tells that hiring workers through labour agencies is increasingly common in the electronics industry. This report is the first study ever on working conditions in the production of game consoles and portable music players, products used mainly by young consumers in developed countries.
Recommendations are prepared by the experts cooperating with KARAT within the activities aiming at improvement of the working conditions in super/hypermarkets in Poland and more efficient employees’ rights protection system from gender perspective.
In our opinion, Three-Sided Comission, while working over new solutions regarding labour law, should take under consideration the needs of the most vulnarable groups, to which for sure belong women. It is also especially important to avoid the situation that, in times of global economic crisis, the regres in the field of the employees’ rights will take place.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, ngo Consola Foundation SPOT. together with KARAT Coalition will present the photography exhibition „Through Their Eyes” in the city Poznań from 5th till 15th March, 2009.
The exhibition consist of the photographs taken by women from developing countries of Eastern Europe, Central Asia. The photographs show women in the economic context. The photographs on the one hand undermine stereotypes decipting women determined, full of energy, facing problems on the other show reality: poverty and other problems in this region.
The opening of the exhibition „Through Their Eyes” took place on the 23rd of January 2009 in the Library of Warsaw University (main hall). The jury members of the competition have selected 3 winners of the photocompetition.
MakeITfair Campaign invites forcapacity building training, taking place on 17th of February in Budapest, Hungary.
Jenny Chan and Charles Ho from the chinese organisation Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehaviour report about labour rights violations and the consequences of the financial crisis on December 19, 2008 in Warsaw at Kępa Café, Finlandzka 12A, at 6pm.
On 10th of December 2008, at the 60 anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first national report of the Polish Social Watch Coalition (PSWC) has been launched in the Polish Parliament. During the press conference, the report has been handed over to the chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee of Justice and Human Rights, Ryszard Kalisz. Irena Rzeplińska, expert in the field of human right also took part in the launch.
IWRAW Asia Pacific resource guide on OP CEDAW 'Our rights are not optional'already available in RussianThe Next Board Meeting will be held in January 2009.
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