Lawyers and local advocacy organisations will gain access to an important tool needed to identify gender bias within legal decisions made in Pacific Island Countries (PICs). The International Centre for Advocates Against Discrimination (ICAAD) released a handbook detailing its methodology in examining sentencing patterns with a view […]
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ICAAD in partnership with The Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM) organised the first ever train the trainers workshop to raise awareness on combating sexual harassment in the workplace. The training targeted key stakeholders and agencies to strengthen implementation of laws and policies. The 3-day training workshop was […]
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Dear friend of ICAAD, This season, we are grateful that ICAAD has grown to be a vibrant community of people who are committed to the promotion of human rights, peace, and equality. We are excited to spotlight three of our tenacious supporters, Gail & Allen Dougherty and Laura […]
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In December 2016, Nazdeek and ICAAD launched the SMS for Justice program in Delhi to track access to vital services for women and impoverished people in in two communities, Rajiv Ratan Awas Yojana (RRAY) in Baprola and Bhim Nagar in Nangloi. In its first three months of data […]
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The Global Pro Bono Report shows the breadth and depth of ICAAD’s ability to leverage multidisciplinary partnerships to catalyze social impact; helping women, girls, and minorities to achieve equality. Inside the report you’ll find informative comments from our partners, experts in their fields, on our ambitious work […]
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Vision: As societies build walls of separation between communities, ICAAD works to remove each brick to illuminate our common humanity. Mission: The International Center for Advocates Against Discrimination (ICAAD) is an nonprofit organization founded for the charitable purpose of eradicating structural discrimination globally, and to promote human […]
Read more →This Civil Rights and Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we’d like to challenge you to reflect on how fear may have influenced your opinions, especially of others, and to take a step towards the courage to overcome those fears. Why the focus on fear you might ask?
Famed marketer and author Simon Sinek in his book “Start with Why” outlines six typical manipulations used in sales and marketing, one of which is the use of fear. On fear, Sinek says, “When fear is being employed, facts are incidental. Deeply seated in our biological drive to survive, that emotion cannot be quickly wiped away with facts and figures.”
In the current political atmosphere, in the U.S. and around the globe, fear is often used by politicians and campaigners to polarize debates and to demonize marginalized communities, using them as scapegoats for the real economic, social, and political challenges that societies face.
Martin Luther King, Jr. understood how important fear is, so much so that he gave a sermon on it named “Antidotes for Fear.” It’s worth reading in its entirety, especially because it recognizes the importance, necessity, and creativity of fear (kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/draft-chapter-xiv-mastery-fear-or-antidotes-fear). However, particularly pertinent section was highlighted by King’s wife Coretta Scott King in her book “My life with Martin Luther King, Jr”:
“First Martin spoke of the many kinds of fear that troubled men and women in this period of change and "calamitous uncertainty"— fear of illness or economic disaster, fear of personal inadequacy in our highly competitive society. More terrible was the fear of death, even racial annihilation, in this atomic age, when the whole world teetered on "a balance of terror . . . fearful lest some diplomatic faux pas ignite a frightful holocaust."
"Some fears are normal and necessary," he said, like the fear of snakes in a jungle, but when they become neurotic and unchecked, they paralyze the will and reduce a man to apathy or despair. He quoted Emerson, who wrote, "He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear."
How, then, to overcome fear? First, Martin said, "We must un-flinchingly face our fears . . . this confrontation will, to some measure, grant us power. . . . "Second, we can master fear through one of the supreme virtues known to man— courage . . . courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.”"
MLK Coretta Scott King Simon Sinek
"While the definition of internally displaced persons under the UN Guiding Principles and the Kampala Convention (a regional treaty based on the Guiding Principles applicable to Africa) is wider and covers those who are fleeing situations of generalized violence and natural or human-made disasters, there is currently no legal framework governing “climate refugees.” Given the projected numbers of people who may be displaced due to climate change, this legal lacuna is quite worrying."
“Climate Refugees” and the Role of International Law
oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk
Despite huge numbers of people being forced to leave their homes a result of climate change, the governance of climate refugees represents a gaping hole in international law.Thanks to our newest Advisor, Priya Chand, for getting the publication of our Handbook on gender-based violence in the Pacific Islands recognized in the Fiji Times.
Handbook puts gender bias on the spot
fijitimes.com
Nalini Singh, Executive Director; Artika Singh; and Menka Goundan of Fiji Women’s Rights Movement with Hansdeep Singh, Co-Founder, ICAAD. Picture: SUPPLIED"The total Arctic loss at present is 447 billion tons of ice per year — which Box calculated is about 14,000 tons of water per second. That’s for the period between 2005 and 2015. Between 1986 and 2005, the loss is calculated at around 5,000 tons per second — therefore, the rate has almost tripled.
Separate research has recently found that the Antarctic’s loss rate has also tripled in just a decade, reaching 219 billion tons per year from 2012 to 2017.
Assuming these numbers are correct and summing them together, the world’s polar regions are losing about 666 billion tons of ice to the ocean each year — amounting to a little bit less than two millimeters of sea-level rise annually."
Melting Arctic ice is now pouring 14,000 tons of water per second into the ocean, scientists find
washingtonpost.com
A new survey finds that the region has contributed almost one inch to rising seas since 1971.An overwhelming number of majority States, 181, voted in favor of adopting the compact.
“In this world of ours, which often turns it back to people in need, that has shamefully politicized even the pain of exile, that has demonized and continues to demonize refugees and migrants and sometimes even just foreigners, this compact, in synergy with the other compact, the compact on migration, can really represent tangibly, a new commitment to international cooperation,” said UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Chief, Filippo Grandi.
UN affirms ‘historic’ global compact to support world’s refugees
news.un.org
The United Nations General Assembly affirmed a non-legally binding Global Compact on Refugees on Monday, marking the latest move by Member States to support the rights of 258 million people on the move worldwide.