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Several members of the International Team at the regional level were elected at the virtual International Council held in September 2021. Since then, the International Team has started the integration process to ensure that the tasks and responsibilities of the movement can be transferred properly, and the work can be followed up.
The integration process lasted until February 2022 when Sarah Prenger, the international president, and Orlando Machado, the secretary-general, completed their respective mandates that began in 2016. At the regional level, Nanang Ibrahim (ASPAC) and Luis Vargas (JOCA) also completed their mandates.
All those whose mandates ended had worked hard for 5 years to develop the movement and organize concrete actions at the national and international levels.
As a worker movement, the IYCW expresses its full gratitude to leaders who have completed their mandates after giving their best for the YCW.
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The International Workers’ Day is a day to commemorate the historic values and achievements of generations of workers. But even as we celebrate the successes and triumphs of workers’ solidarity, we know that the challenges faced by people across the world require collective strength and commitment to carry forward the fight for rights, freedoms, peace, equality and justice.
The economy all over the world has not recovered from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. This has made more evident the persistent, systemic inequalities that are rooted in and shaped by economic, political, social, and cultural structures. This has also unmasked how the health system of every country is weak and the budget too low for an equal access to social protection. In addition, the climate crisis continues to worsen, the terrible situation of the working people and the poor continues to deteriorate as imperialist nations and regional powers pursue their own geopolitical interests with continuous war drives at the cost of the lives of ordinary masses who are confronted with the food crisis and other hardships. The severe economic recession around the world has pushed a drastic number of people into poverty, joblessness and social insecurity. Even those with jobs are suffering from precarity and reduced income.
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We see all over the world that the reality of women in the workplace and in society is worrying. Young women are a majority in workplaces, for example factory workers, domestic workers, migrant workers, informal workers, mall workers, service sector workers and others.
“I applied for many jobs in different factories but in vain. I ended up deciding to work as a domestic worker for a housing society. Getting a job as a domestic worker is easy compared to factory jobs. But domestic workers are not paid well.” - Pakistan
Women are victims of the world of work and low wages, victims of discrimination in terms of the salary and benefits they receive compared to their male counterparts. They did not escape the wave of work flexibilization, such as the contract system, piece rates, per quota, per day and others. The exploitation of women’s time and labor has become an unchanging reality in the workplace.
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Demonstrators display a banner in the colours of the Ukrainian flag reading "Stop [Russian President] Putin, Stop war" during a protest at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate on January 30, 2022. - Demonstrators criticised Putin's massing of troops near the Ukrainian border and called on Germany to play a more active role in defending Ukraine's interests. John MACDOUGALL-AFP
It is a crucial moment for all of us who believe in democracy to defend it in our society today. Putin’s invasion is not just an attack on Ukraine. It is an attack on freedom. An attack on democracy. An attack on truth.
“Today, I have contacted Martha, the delegate of the IYCW International Council 2016. Her family and herself are fine and have left Lviv to move to Ivano-Frankivsk, while Ana, the former leader of YCW Ukraine fled to Poland but her family is in the Chernigov region where the war is taking place,” said Leizyl, the IYCW international treasurer in Brussels.
Leizyl said that she keeps trying to contact Ana by phone, hoping she will read her message.
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The Australian Cardijn Institute launched the Joseph Cardijn Digital Library (JCDL) (www.josephcardijn.com) in August 2020. The site already hosts more than 500 original documents written by Cardijn in French from every period of his life from 1907 until shortly before his death in 1967. Over 100 of these articles have been translated into English.
The site also hosts a wide variety of other biographical resources on Cardijn’s life, including photos and videos. So far, the JCDL has received nearly 16,000 unique visitors, averaging 40 people per day over the course of this year (2021) with nearly 106,000 document views.
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“The US is providing lots of vaccine doses to other countries right now, including the Philippines, as a gift. But they also do so because they have too many doses which will expire.” (Male, Philippines)
Access to vaccines differs tremendously from one country to another. While restrictions are lifted thanks to rising percentages of people being vaccinated in some nations, others are confronted with rising cases and deaths. By mid-June 2021, less than 1% of the African continent’s population had been vaccinated.[1]
This inequality in access to vaccines just adds to the overall increase in inequalities the pandemic has been showing since it began: inequalities based on age, gender, nationality and wealth. Ironically, this inequality in access to vaccines leads to an even bigger inequality: apart from health risks for those with far fewer vaccines, the virus continues affecting their society and economy.
Seeing this reality, we remember political statements from 2021 promising a different scenario. One of them was a promise from the EU Commission’s head who spoke about a vaccine against Covid-19 as “our universal, common good”[2]. She expressed that announcing a “Coronavirus global response”. COVAX was established based on that principle of global solidarity and common global humankind, aiming at an equal distribution of vaccines starting with 20% of each country’s population to be vaccinated first. However, that obviously did not work, due to Covax lacking money and even more to countries making their own contracts with pharmaceutical companies.[3]
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Since April 28, 2021, the world has witnessed the new social outbreak in the sister republic of Colombia. We have seen and heard the clamor of youth, women, workers, peasants and indigenous people mobilized throughout the country. We have also observed the disproportionately violent, brutal and criminal actions of the military and police forces such as the Mobile Riot Squadron (ESMAD) against the people protesting in the streets. We have little or no access to this news, and even less is known about the causes of this situation.
Colombia is one of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that has had a succession of neoliberal governments, which for decades have been implementing a series of anti-people reforms and laws in the areas of health, education, social security and labor, supported by a strong military and police system prepared for the context of war that the country is experiencing, and all of this against a backdrop of constant violations of peace treaties by the state.
The government's latest attempt at fiscal reform, the cynicism of the ultra-right, represented by one of the most infamous figures in the history of the Americas - Álvaro Uribe Vélez - and his puppet Iván Duque, the current President of the Republic, have, by imposing their neoliberal measures, unleashed a massive popular rebellion, highlighting the structural crisis that the country is going through and the failure of this model on the continent. The government's response to this energetic demonstration of the disagreement of the majorities has been more than distressing: armed repression, violation of the demonstrators’ human rights, disappearances of social leaders, sexual abuses and real urban massacres in different regions of the country.
