NGO WORK

African women unite on the frontlines of the Climate Crisis

Published

4 years ago

October 3, 2022

“Building the voices of rural women in climate action will make sure that there are real solutions to climate change. With the climate crisis, rural women are doubly victimised. She suffers from the lack of land and from the negative effects of the climate crisis, so we must act!” – Josiane Boyo Yebi – Côte d’Ivoire

The West and Central African Women’s Climate Assembly will be held in the Niger Delta between 17-20 October 2022. The event is co-hosted by leading women’s movements and local community organisations including Nous Sommes Les Solutions, Khelkom Women Fishers Association, Les Femmes s’engagent, L’Association de défense des droits des aides ménagères et domestiques, Réseau des Femmes Braves and Femmes Riveraines de Campo. NGO allies supporting the platform include Kebetkache Women Development & Resource Centre , WoMin African Alliance, Green Development Advocates, and Lumiere Synergie pour le Developpement.

The assembly brings together women from Guinea Conakry, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Nigeria who daily experience the costs of the rapidly growing climate crisis. Participants include women resisting mining and oil and gas extraction; industrial agriculture, fishing, and forestry; and mega energy and infrastructure projects.

Sub-Saharan Africa is carrying the extreme costs of a climate crisis not of its making. Africa has contributed less than 3% of all carbon emissions since 1880 but is warming faster than any other region in the world. While the world’s climate has warmed by a global average of 1.1 degrees celsius, the average for Africa sits at around 1.5 degrees. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and cyclones, as well as locust plagues, flooding and rising sea levels affecting coastal communities are commonplace. By 2050, as many as 86 million Africans will be forced to migrate within their own countries due to climate change.

African women face the brunt of climate impacts given a division of labour which assigns them primary responsibility for household food production and preparation, water and energy harvesting, and care for the elderly, the young and the sick. This critical gathering of the world’s most impacted people will foreground the gendered impacts and costs of a rapidly warming climate and offer women a space to share their experiences and organising strategies, learn from each other, deepen their knowledge and build solidarity.

The assembly aims to strengthen and unify women-led struggles against destructive large-scale projects and false solutions to the climate crisis and offer a powerful platform for women to propose and shine a light on the REAL development solutions that African women and their communities need to survive now and into the future. This represents the start of a permanent assembly of African women for climate and development justice.

Women and their communities in the Niger Delta have, for decades, carried the costs of ill-health, violence, hunger, and displacement, so that the world’s most powerful corporations, the wealthy and middle classes in the global North could enjoy unlimited energy supplies and development possibilities. It is apt that the Assembly is held here.

“Our food, our soil is very rich, but it’s been defiled by the oil and gas. Companies are not compensating us. Our office is our land. Before [the oil companies] we were working and contributing something…now there’s nothing for women to trade and feed their children” – Ngozi Azumah – Nigeria

Ahead of the upcoming COP27 in Egypt, billed as the ‘African COP’, the voices of African women must be at the forefront for they carry the greatest costs, but they also hold the real solutions that our continent, its peoples, nature and the world desperately need. Women say NO to the powerful multinational corporations who wield great power over northern government delegations. They demand that their governments stand with their people first. And they insist that corporations and elites in the global North acknowledge responsibility for the climate crisis and pay their dues to the peoples and the women of Africa! The time for climate justice is NOW!

Source: womin.africa

NGO WORK

EU: IPI welcomes action against 14 states over Anti-SLAPP Directive delays

Published

3 days ago

July 27, 2026

witnessradio.org

EU states must introduce robust measures to protect journalists and media from vexatious litigation

The International Press Institute (IPI) today welcomes the infringement proceedings initiated by the European Commission against 14 EU Member States over their inaction or delays in transposing the Anti-SLAPP Directive.

The countries included are Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.

The EU infringement proceedings were initiated on 15 July, with letters of formal notice sent to these Member States for failing to notify about progress made in implementing the Directive. States now have two months to respond and update about measures taken or could eventually face legal action at the European Court of Justice.

The Anti-SLAPP Directive introduced EU-wide rules which protect journalists and civil society actors from manifestly unfounded or abusive civil proceedings with cross-border implications, including early dismissal tools and remedies for targets of SLAPPs. It was adopted in April 2024 and the transposition deadline was 7 May 2026.

Monitoring by IPI shows that while in some of the countries identified, such as Greece and Spain, steps have been taken to prepare for the transposition and bills are actively in development and reportedly close to being presented to or adopted by parliament.

In others such as Bulgaria and Portugal, initial work done to develop legislation has been delayed by institutional changes, changes in governments or political instability, though transposition work remains ongoing.

In other states, such as Italy and Hungary, little to no measurable progress has yet been made on transposition. However, with the new Tisza government in Hungary driving forward media freedom reforms, there is hope the new administration will introduce initial anti-SLAPP measures in the next legislative package identified for the autumn.

While Ireland has been actively working to tackle SLAPPs through legal reforms, and passed the Defamation Bill in 2024, further legislation is required to fully transpose the Anti-SLAPP Directive during its Presidency of the Council of the EU.

Although these 14 countries have been identified in the EU action, monitoring and analyses show that the overall picture for implementation of the Directive across the EU remains fragmented and uneven.

According to the European Anti-SLAPP Monitor, almost all EU Member States missed the May 2026 transposition deadline, with only a handful fully implementing on time.

IPI notes that even in those Member States where the Directive was implemented, such as Malta, these reforms only included minimum standards protecting against cross-border cases, and failed to include measures to safeguard against domestic SLAPPs.

In the wake of the EU’s opening of initial infringement action, IPI renews our call – made previously with Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) partners – for Member States to demonstrate their commitment to media freedom by accelerating their legislative processes in protecting against SLAPPs. This includes the 14 countries identified by the EU Commission and those in which reforms have been presented but not yet adopted.

Crucially, legislative reforms should both fully reflect both the letter and the spirit of the Anti-SLAPP Directive and introduce the substantive and procedural safeguards set out in the EU and Council of Europe Recommendation on SLAPPs.

A model here should be Poland, where last month the President approved a law which covers both domestic and cross-border SLAPPs, ensuring implementation of both EU Directive and Council of Europe Recommendation.

Member States which continue to delay or fail to transpose the directive should face legal action from the Commission, which must use all tools at its disposal to help safeguard media freedom across the bloc.

IPI, which has advocated at the EU and national level for measures to protect journalists and media from SLAPPs, will continue to monitor implementation in collaboration with European partners, including through MFRR media freedom missions.

Source: ipi.media/

NGO WORK

No Heritage Without its People: Why Ngorongoro Cannot be a World Heritage Site and an Eviction Zone

Published

1 week ago

July 20, 2026

witnessradio.org

The Tanzanian government, under the guise of “conservation,” restricts Maasai livelihoods and denies access to essential services forcing Indigenous residents away from their ancestral lands and turning their heritage into a playground for safari tourists.

As the 48th Session of the World Heritage Committee begins July 19, UNESCO continues to legitimize the continued forced displacement of the Maasai from Ngorongoro. If UNESCO cannot ensure that the World Heritage designation protects the rights of its Indigenous custodians, then the Committee must remove the Ngorongoro Conservation Area from the World Heritage List.

Increased international pressure is imperative to hold UNESCO accountable and protect the lives and rights of the Maasai!

Read our Open Letter to the World Heritage Committee.

Source: oaklandinstitute.org

NGO WORK

Rush: Global Scramble for Minerals Wages War on People and Planet

Published

2 weeks ago

July 15, 2026

witnessradio.org

As governments and corporations scramble to secure critical minerals, a new Oakland Institute report exposes the forces fueling today’s unprecedented mining boom. RUSH: Global Scramble for Minerals Wages War on People and Planet dismantles the dominant narrative that massive amounts of minerals are needed for the energy transition, revealing instead a potent convergence of political, military, and corporate interests racing to control the resources that underpin modern warfare and artificial intelligence.

“Securing access to critical minerals is reshaping international relations and foreign aid as competition between the US and China becomes a new geopolitical battleground,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. “The costs are being borne by communities around the world as this global race drives wars and violence, results in land grabs, forced displacement, devastating pollution, and the irreversible destruction of lands and livelihoods,” Mittal continued.

With the Pentagon shifting towards an “AI-first” warfighting stance, the US military-industrial complex is rapidly integrating tech and AI firms with a mutual interest in locking down critical mineral supplies. The report exposes key players positioned to profit from a resource boom already drawing trillions in investment. These include ventures tied to the Trump family, billionaire-backed outfits such as KoBold Metals, an AI-driven mining firm supported by Bill Gates, and defense-tech companies like Palantir and Anduril, among others.

To justify a massive scale up of mineral extraction, governments, corporations, and international financial institutions like the World Bank, frame critical minerals as indispensable to the green transition and as a pathway to prosperity for the Global South. However, RUSH documents that more than 70 percent of critical mineral demand today comes from industries unrelated to the energy transition, including the automotive, aerospace, military, communications, and technology sectors. Rapid growth in artificial intelligence, data centers, surveillance technologies, and military spending is expected to increase this demand massively.

“Renewable energy deployment, such as wind and solar, requires only a fraction of the minerals that corporations plan to extract in the coming decades,” said Andy Currier, Oakland Institute Policy Analyst and report co-author. “But growing military demand and stockpiling of materials like copper, lithium, nickel, and cobalt will undermine the energy transition, diverting critical resources away from urgently needed climate solutions,” Currier continued.

RUSH warns that the acceleration of resource extraction poses a catastrophic threat to both ecosystems and human survival. In response, Indigenous groups and frontline communities are leading a vital, global resistance to defend their territories. It is, however, undermined by a dangerous myth that expanding extraction is necessary to fix the climate crisis.

“The report issues a resounding call to challenge this false narrative to stop the untenable rush for minerals before it becomes an irreversible global catastrophe,” warned Oakland Institute Policy Director and report co-author, Frederic Mousseau. “The stakes could not be higher. If left unchecked, the global mining rush will trigger hundreds of new mines in a short period. The resulting human and planetary devastation will be at a scale never seen before – livelihoods will be destroyed, millions will be displaced, and environmental destruction will become irreversible,” concluded Mousseau.

Read the report

Source: oaklandinstitute.org