Young Christian Workers Raise their Voice, Not Only On Women’s Day!

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109 years ago, the Second International Conference of Women was held in Copenhagen, the demand for universal suffrage for all women was reiterated and, at the proposal of Clara Zetkin, 8 March was proclaimed International Women's Day. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the labour movement maintained a traditional patriarchal position on women's equality and demands. It was in the middle of the nineteenth century when the women's movements became stronger, with the struggle for women's suffrage, the demand for equality, the denunciation of social, family and labour oppression.

I am a young Nicaraguan, I am 28 years old. I have no children and I live in my parents' house. “I’m currently employed at the Hansae export-processing zone in Nicaragua in a garment factory. I have been working there as a machine operator for 1 year. My work schedule is from 7 am to 5 pm, with a 30-minute break to have lunch.

In Nicaragua, gender violence is a daily reality. The number of femicide cases is increasing. “We are being killed" in our homes. We are educated to assume a role of domestic, we assume responsibilities that society imposes on us culturally for being women: "cooking, washing, raising children, cleaning, and so on.” Every day, when I commute from home to work, I am subjected to sexual harassment in the street. Society sees this practice as normal and harmless, though it is a form of gender-based violence, and I really feel I’m harassed when walking in public.

International YCW Statement Regarding the Political Situation in Venezuela

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The International Young Christian Workers (IYCW), a young workers’ movement of education through action, present in over 40 countries around the world, has released the following statement regarding the difficult social, political and economic situation of our brotherly people of Venezuela, in particular the working class.

1. We want to express our full support and solidarity for all social movements in Venezuela that are calling for a strengthened dialogue, the only mechanism to solve the internal problems within the limits of the democratic powers under the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the international law, to make people’s living and working conditions more dignified.

2. We reject the international interference, the unilateral sanctions and the freezing of assets abroad imposed outside the framework of international law against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. They are affecting the Venezuelan population and undermining the social protection policies established for young people and for the society as a whole.

3. Under the constitutional democratic principles, in order to prevent a further deterioration of the difficult situation and to avoid jeopardizing the national sovereignty, we reject any military action that any nation might carry out in Venezuelan territory.

Salt for Dignity through Solidarity - YCW Haiti’s action presented

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The Caritas in Veritate Foundation recently presented their tenth working paper. Recent decades have witnessed the consolidation of a global economic system strongly characterised by exclusion and inequality as a result of a largely excessive and misplaced trust in the omnipotence of the markets. Today, the distortions and dysfunctions of the free market economy tend to adversely affect the lives of individuals and communities more than ever before. Consequently, work itself, together with its dignity, is increasingly at risk of losing its value as a “good” for the human person and becoming merely a means of exchange within asymmetrical social relations. This calls us to rethink and reconsider what labour is and what it means for the economy, society, policy.

IYCW, MIJARC and FIMARC Setting a Course of Action Together

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The IYCW hosted an Asian Youth Seminar in the Philippines last September 24-28, 2018. Twenty-six delegates from various organizations, partners in the Philippines and national movements in Asia participated in the meeting. The three international organizations, MIJARC, FIMARC and the IYCW developed a program with the support of Entraide and Fraternité-Belgium. It is a three-year partnership program deepening on the topic of (1) youth (2) food sovereignty and (3) gender.

Before the youth seminar itself, a two-day exchange program was held in Valenzuela City, Philippines to see the reality of the young contractual factory workers and of informal workers working in the street.

The IYCW in a symposium on global digitization in Germany

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Actively shaping digitization - worldwide!

In cooperation with KAB (National Movement of WMCW-MMTC), the World Emergency Office and KönzgenHaus, a two-day symposium entitled "Global digitization: risks and opportunities of work in the future" was held in Cologne/Haltern, last December 2018. Can global digitization - in the world of work and in daily life - really put an end to extreme poverty, inequality and injustice and also initiate an ecological trend reversal?

Digitalisation eats up resources - an ecological time bomb

"Digitalisation does not reduce our ecological footprint; on the contrary, the introduction of autonomous driving alone would increase the energy demand extraordinarily due to the extreme growth of data streams," emphasised Sven Hilbig, world trade officer at the development agency Brot für die Welt. “The battery of an electric car contains 10,000 times as much lithium as a cell phone battery. The resulting increase in demand for raw materials from Africa and South America is a serious problem for social and ecological sustainability in the global South. Digital trade, as here with raw materials, also threatens to restrict the scope for developing and emerging countries; above all the digital supply chains increase the added value of globally operating corporations and platforms.”