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August Issue of Stop Trafficking! August 11th, 2014
Read the latest issue of Stop Trafficking!, the anti-human trafficking newsletter of a broad coalition of national and international congregations of women religious and their partners.
The August 2014 issue (Vo. 12, no. 8) highlights the plight of children in the US and those seeking asylum because of violence and sexual exploitation.
Catholic Sisters Release “Earth as our Home” Booklet August 11th, 2014
Too often when we hear the word ‘house’ we only think of a physical building and its rooms. But what if we began to think of Earth as our house – with various rooms – what would we need to do to make this ‘house’ a true ‘home?’ The Catholic Sisters for a Healthy Earth have prepared a reflection booklet on the various rooms of a house, placing each room and its activities into the broader context of our Earth-home.
Catholic Sisters for a Healthy Earth is made up of representatives from congregations of women religious from the upper Mississippi Valley in eastern Iowa and southwestern Wisconsin. The group’s coordinator, Joy Peterson, PBVM explains, “Our intention is to take a new look at how everything we do, no matter where we are, is interconnected and tied to the well-being of all living things.” The booklet includes suggestions of simple actions for families to take in order to live more sustainably and walk more gently on Earth.
You can get a free download of the booklet at the Sisters of St. Francis website.
FACT Launches Podcast Series August 11th, 2014
New Program to Examine Issues, Promote Work of Partners
Looking to more widely broadcast its message, the FACT (Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency) Coalition, of which the Oblate JPIC Office is a member, is launching a podcast series to focus on its core issues of corporate tax avoidance, transparency in corporate ownership, and combatting money laundering.
The FACT Podcast will be released initially on a monthly basis, and more frequently as policy developments and the news of the day as events warrant.
The first podcast, Who We Are, What We Do, and Why It Matters, is available on the FACT website, provides an introduction to the FACT Coalition and the work that it does on corporate tax avoidance, more transparency in corporate ownership, and combating money laundering. Upcoming podcasts will examine these issues individually and in more detail. Later podcasts will feature interviews with subject-matter experts and highlight the work that their organizations are doing.
“This is an exciting new addition to the FACT arsenal of information on these vital issues,” said Nicole Tichon, Executive Director of FACT. “The FACT podcast provides a new way to reach even more people and that’s a good thing.”
As mentioned above, the podcast is available on the FACT website. Users can also receive it via an RSS feed.
Human Rights Mentioned in Proposed UN Sustainable Development Goals July 23rd, 2014
Used under Creative Commons license; courtesy of Steve Cadman
Civil society welcomes human rights language in the open Working Group (OWG) outcome, while continuing to call for a rights-based approach towards development justice.
The Mining Working Group at the UN has reported through VIVAT that they congratulate the members and co-chairs of the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the completion of their work and their adoption by consensus of an outcome that includes seventeen proposed goals and an introductory chapeau. The group said: “In particular, we celebrate the mention of the human right to water in paragraph 7 of the chapeau, as an essential entry point for further work on ensuring a rights-based approach to development. With the Blue Planet Project and more than 300 civil society partners, we advocated long and hard for those two small words – “and water” – to be added to the text, and we applaud this achievement on the part of the governments that championed this language: Palau, Nauru, Papua New Guinea; Italy and Spain; Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador; and Uruguay.” Please see the OWG Press Release MWG
For more information on the Mining Working Group please visit miningwg.com
California Death Penalty Ruled Unconstitutional July 20th, 2014
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind…
On July 16, a federal judge in California ruled that the state’s death penalty is unconstitutional, based on the lengthy delays involved in executions. The Judge ruled that the “arbitrariness” and “unpredictability” with which the death penalty is carried out violates the constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment.
Faith groups and Organizations supporting abolition of death penalty are now starting to assess all the implications of this ruling. The decision is not likely to lead to immediate changes regarding the death penalty in California, as there have been no executions there since 2006. If the State appeals though, the question of whether, and when, problems with a state’s death penalty system can render it unconstitutional will then be decided by a federal appeals court in San Francisco. A ruling from that court (the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals) in favor of this recent opinion would affect the death penalty in states throughout the west.
The OMI JPIC office will share with you the legal implications arising from this ruling on the death penalty in California, as well as action alerts from the California Catholic Bishops Conference.
The Bishops in California were strong supporters of Proposition 34 to end the use of the death penalty in California. Proposition 34 was defeated as a ballot initiative in 2012.
More information here: California Death Penalty Unconstitutional
