Social Watch

PRESS RELEASE – For immediate publication

9th December, 2011

Civil society urges Rio+20 to create the Ombudsperson for Future Generations

Social Watch Report 2012: The right to a future

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) to be held next year in Rio de Janeiro gives the opportunity to create institutions to defend the rights of the future generations, according to representatives of civil society from all over the world who contributted to the Social Watch Report 2012, launched in New York on Friday 9.

“The ‘right to a future’ is the most urgent task of the present,” wrote in the overview of the Report Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch and editor-in-chief of the study. “It is about nature, yes, but it is also about our grandchildren, and about our own dignity, the expectations of the 99% of the world’s 7 billion men and women, girls and boys that were promised sustainability two decades ago and have found instead their hopes and aspirations being melted into betting chips of a global financial casino beyond their control.”

“We support the recommendation to establish the institution of an Ombudsperson for intergenerational justice/future generations,” stated the Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development Perspectives, comprised of members of Social Watch, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, terre des hommes, Third World Network, Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, DAWN and the Global Policy Forum, in a preliminary statement included in the Social Watch Report 2012.

The lengthy study, based on the contribution of citizens’ organizations in 66 countries from all over the world that produced their national reports, concludes that “growing inequalities and unregulated finances are expropiating people everywhere from their fair share in the benefits of global prosperity”. “Our children will inherit the burden of deforestation, desertification, erosion of biodiversity and climate change. To revert this trend, the promise of universal dignity brought by human rights has to be enforced and the rights of future generations need to be recognized and properly defended,” concludes this 16th edition of the Social Watch Report.

On the eve of the Rio+20 conference, the large group of men and women that took part in this exhaustive work focused their analysis on the performance of the governments regarding sustainable development, a principle approved by the chiefs of State and Government at the Earth Summit held in 1992, also in Rio de Janeiro.

The book includes thematic chapters written by members of relevant social and academic organizations, such as the Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development, Third World Network, Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND), Social Development Network (SODNET, Kenia), Eurostep, Feminist Alliance For International Action (FAFIA, Canadá), Global Policy Forum and terre des hommes.

It also contains the data of the most recent measurement of the Basic Capabilities Index (BCI), indicator that combines infant mortality rates, the number of births attended by trained personnel and enrolment rates in primary school. This year Japan is in the top position and Chad at the bottom. The global BCI shows progresses between 1990 and 2011, although in general the progress slowed down between the previous decade and the next one. Since 2000, the BCI moved up just 3 points (100 is the maximum value), while world CO2 emissions, that had fallen in the last decade of the 20th century, moved up from 4.1 tons per capita to 4.6 tons. World trade and per capita income also grew faster than the social indicators.

This edition includes the Gender Equity Index (GEI) and the new Social and Economic Rights Fulfillment Index (SERF Index), that determines the extent to which countries are meeting their obligations to fulfill five human rights enumerated in the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: the right to food, the right to adequate shelter, the right to healthcare, the right to education, and the right to decent work. 

More information:

Social Watch Report 2012 website: http://bit.ly/skL4l4
Material for the press: http://bit.ly/uzF8yD
Overview of the Report, by Roberto Bissio: http://bit.ly/rBcSMO
Social Watch Report 2012 (full version in pdf format): http://bit.ly/rQvk2u
Social Watch Report 2012 website (in Spanish): http://bit.ly/sEpkxf

For aditional information, contact:
Roberto Bissio
Social Watch Coordinator
Mobile: +1 917 741 8666
E-mail: socwatch@socialwatch.org

Hard Facts

USA: The country is home to 5% of the world’s population, yet it consumes 25% of the world’s energy and is responsible for 22 percent of the world’s industrial carbon dioxide emissions.

MALAYSIA: Annual deforestation rate jumped nearly 86% between 1990 and 2005, with a total loss of forest coverage of 140,200 hectares per year since 2000.

HOUSING: 1.6 billion people are currently living in sub-standard housing, 100 million are homeless, and around a quarter of the world’s population is estimated to be landless.

VIETNAM: Average temperature rose by about 0.5 - 0.7°C between 1958 and 2007 while the sea level rose by 20 cm.

THAILAND: Nearly 74,640 hectares of mangrove forest have been used for aquaculture fishery, in particular shrimp farms.

TANZANIA: In order for the district of Chamwino can satisfy its basic needs 63,501,000 kg of food are required, while the realized production for 2008/09 was only 12,178,000 kg.

SLOVENIA: 25% of young people not in the formal education system are unemployed.

PANAMA: In 1970 70% of the country was under forest cover but by 2011 this had been reduced to around 35%.

NIGERIA: Almost 350,000 hectares of arable land are being lost annually to the advancing desert.

ITALIA: Currently at risk are 68% of its terrestrial vertebrates, 66% of its birds, 64% of its mammals and 88% of its freshwater fish.

HONDURAS: The murder rate in 2010 was 77.5 per 100,000 inhabitants.

GUATEMALA: The deforestation rate is around 82,000 ha per year. If exploitation continues at this level, all the country’s native forests will have been wiped out by 2040.

ERITREA: All adults, male and female, up to the age of 45 are subject to what amounts to slavery.

ECUADOR: The exploitation of copper deposits at Mirador will generate at least 326 million tons of waste, which is equivalent to four hills like El Panecillo in Quito or the volume of all the rubbish collected in Guayaquil for the next 405 years.

CANADA: One in three Aboriginal and racialized people in Canada live in poverty. One in four people with disabilities, immigrants, and female single-parents in Canada live in poverty.

CAMBODIA: 64% of mothers and girls are reducing their food intake in order to leave more to the other members of the family.

BURMA: During the construction of the Yadana gas pipeline, Government soldiers and proxy military groups providing security forced civilians to cut down trees, serve as porters, and build military infrastructure. Those who refused were beaten, raped, tortured and killed.

AZERBAIJAN: In many cases the Soviet era oil industry created huge petroleum lakes which literally destroyed all of the biomass around them.

ARGENTINA: In the period 1998 to 2006 around 250,000 hectares per year disappeared, which is a rate of one hectare every two minutes.

BCI: With carbon dioxide emissions at three tons per capita a year, Costa Rica and Uruguay have managed to lower their infant mortality to the same level of a country that emits twenty tons a year: the United States.

GENDER: Feminist economics has shown that over 50% of all work hours is unpaid.