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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.
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“Digitalisation is the way I can keep contact with my friends during the pandemic. But digitalisation is also the reason why people cannot keep their free time and their working time apart. It is the reason why I feel pressured to not only answer every little message, but to answer it within a few minutes. Digitalisation is a complex issue which demands a complex discussion.”
The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a worsening of the social problems faced by the working class at the international level. The pandemic has affected almost all areas of the world of work, with the risk of transmission of the virus in the workplace, and it has affected the daily life of society on a global scale.
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Since 1997, every year on the 15th March, activists from various parts of the world call for protests and direct action against police repression or brutality. At the moment, it is difficult to gather together because of the pandemic but this does not mean that we will remain silent. Violence of authorities destroys local communities and creates a situation where any initiative is punishable not only by fines and days of imprisonment, but also by beatings and torture! While violence against political activists has to some extent fallen compared to the 20th century, today, violence against ordinary people is only increasing. This may be due to indifference, lack of solidarity or discrimination based on age or ethnical group.
On the International Day against Police Repression, the International Young Christian Workers is joining the working class, the civil society and social movements to condemn police violence and state repression.
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There is nothing very different in celebrating International Women's Day this year, except that the situation is even more precarious today and impacts a lot of young workers. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, young women workers were already suffering. With the conditions in their workplaces, many rights were neglected and not respected. Under the COVID-19 pandemic, young women workers in particular are being more affected, not only in terms of health risks, but also in terms of economic impact.
