More than 1000 participants signed the Congolese Women’s Declaration at the AWID Forum, Cape Town, 15 November 2008.
“We ask all nations across the globe to take note of the holocaust of the millennium which is happening right now in the DRC, with total indifference and lack of concern from the international community. Six million of deaths, two millions internally displaced, thousands of raped women and girls”, the Declaration says.
On November 23, 2008, human rights activist Ms. Negin Shaykh Al-Aslami was released on bail after being arrested for unknown reasons in Tehran. DI extends its sincere thanks to DI member organisations, DI Defenders, subscribers, supporters and friends for sending letters or otherwise supporting the campaign.
Defend International voices growing concern over the desperate state of a group of 194 Iranian Kurds, including a large number of children, who are living in a camp in No Man’s Land on the Iraqi-Jordanian border for the past three and a half years without access to adequate food, nutrition medical or proper hygiene.
Over 100 states have decided to probibit the use, development, production, stockpiling and transfer of inaccurate and unrelibale cluster munitions. The signing of the Convention on Cluster Munitions took place in Oslo from 2-4 December 2008. Cluster Munition Coalition, Defend International and civil society organisations around the world called on high-level representatives to personally sign the treaty in Oslo.
