AN INVITATION TO COME AND PARTICIPATE IN THE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S ALLIANCE (IWA-2GA)
COME AND JOIN…
We are pleased to invite you to the International Women’s Alliance Second General Assembly which will be held on 11 November 2015 at Casa Pura Hall, Casa Pura Hotel in Quezon City, Philippines with the theme, “Women building peace resisting militarization, fascism and economic plunder.”
The world’s economic, political, social and environmental crises has further intensified and we, women, should heighten our militancy to join hands with the peoples of the world to end to wars of aggression and put a stop to the economic and political domination of the neo-liberal system. Women should continue to stand up for the advances and the victories in the struggle for the liberation of women.
Neo-colonialism and the monopoly and control of the economy, politics and culture of many countries by imperialism continue to exploit, oppress and destroy the lives of women. Women live under slave-like conditions while the multinational businesses rake up high profits. Women workers receive much lower wages under inhumane working conditions, without any benefit nor job security. Workers are locked up in workplaces, in the case of Kentex fire in Manila to prevent theft and to rake in more profits safety measures are ignored as in the case of Bangladesh, making factories virtual death traps. Thousands of women workers perished in factory fires in Asia. Meanwhile, the intensification of land conversion and land and resource grabbing for business including large-scale mining and logging concessions have left entire communities of peasant and indigenous women landless, foodless and the environment destroyed making life more disastrous for women and children. Natural calamities have devastating effects due to climate change. Imperialist plunder and monopoly have also led the US military pivot to Asia and the Pacific. The worsening poverty has also heightened women’s vulnerability to all forms violence and increased rotational presence of US forces with the new and bigger basing rights under the Pivot to Asia and the Transpacific Partnership Agreement will increase women and children victims of sexual violence, sex trafficking and prostitution. And it remains that child and health care have become the sole responsibility of women with the privatization of social services and amid increasing food prices and massive food insecurity.
Increasing number of migrants from Asia, Americas and Africa, many of whom are women and children, find their way to Europe. Many drown in death ships, the latest just a few days ago, as they try to escape from their countries in the hopes of a better life. And when in Europe, they face uncertainty, discrimination, racism and xenophobia due to financial crises.
In Northern Syria, in the Kurdish region, about 40 villages have been forcibly taken by ISIS and more than a hundred other villages and hundred of thousands of people were forced to evacuate to the centre of Kobanê and to the border of Turkey due to bombarding. The US and its allies have launched airstrikes that spelled civilian death. Women in the region calls to end the war for peace to reign.
Majority of the women in the Americas, a region of contrasts as home to the world’s number one imperialist superpower and its cohort Canada, as well as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and other countries that are striving to break out of the dominant capitalist mold, are fighting austerity measures, privatisation and the attacks on social services. They are joining their sisters across the Americas in the resistance to the unbridled extraction by mining and oil transnationals that is transforming the face of the earth, and poisoning the environment. From Mexico to Guatemala, to the mountains of Ecuador, Chile and Argentina, as well as Canada and the US, mega-projects to extract fossil fuels, often on indigenous land, and pipelines to ship them across continents are sparking unprecedented waves of resistance and new alliances. Indigenous and peasant women are in the midst of many of these struggles to defend the earth. Women across communities in the US have stood at the forefront of collective actions to demand justice for Black lives, insisting that the lives of Black Americans matter and calling for a stop to systemic racism as tensions escalate due to state violence.
The Second International Assembly will be a venue to:
Share women’s campaigns for equality and emancipation, for genuine land reform and national industrialization or against neoliberal policies and against militarization, imperialist war and plunder.
Meet and strengthen ties with other women representatives of member organizations and individual friends, working for women’s emancipation.
Contribute to the sharpening of the campaigns of our organization, regionally and globally, continue building and strengthening the international movement of women.