NGO Representatives Urge Salvadoran Government to Guarantee Equal Rights for All LWF Facilitates Civil Society Involvement in UN Treaty Body Processes
GENEVA, 27 March 2006 (LWI) - Nicaraguan Flor de Maria Mendoza has worked as a salesperson in a small-scale business in Santa Rosa de Lima, El Salvador, for ten years. She is a migrant worker, who has herself on several occasions been a witness to and victim of open discrimination against migrant populations in El Salvador.
Mendoza has contributed to promoting equal recognition of migrant workers' rights in El Salvador and has joined like-minded individuals and organizations speaking out for other marginalized groups including indigenous people. In this process she has collaborated with the Central America regional office of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for World Service (DWS) that began in mid 2004 to mobilize local support to present the issue at the international level.
LWF/DWS El Salvador assisted the civil society representatives in drafting a comprehensive 'shadow report' on racial discrimination in the country, which Mendoza and two other non-governmental organization (NGO) delegates presented to the 68th session of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), 20 February-10 March 2006 in Geneva.
Presenting the shadow report to CERD on behalf of ten civil society organizations, the three-person delegation emphasized that the Government of El Salvador was ignoring the marginalization of indigenous people and the migrant population. Mendoza said she was happy to speak before the Committee and explain to the UN the problems that communities like hers face. But more than that, she hoped the Salvadoran government, which had presented to the CERD its official report on the human rights situation in El Salvador, could openly acknowledge that indigenous people and migrant communities in the country faced open discrimination. She wants concrete steps to guarantee equal rights for migrant workers and overall protection of their human rights in the country.
The LWF-supported NGO delegates were the only civil society representatives addressing the Committee on El Salvador's human rights' situation. "Without their input, the quality of the Committee's recommendations could have been a lot less substantial," commented Ms Gitte Dyrhagen of the LWF Office for International Affairs and Human Rights (OIAHR), which aims to involve the LWF member churches, field programs and their partners more directly in the UN treaty body processes. The Committee posed some critical questions to the state delegation, including several concerns that were raised in the shadow report.
Celia Medrano, working with DWS El Salvador, described the opportunity to exchange civil society views with the Committee as an effective tool to address national problems through the UN system. She emphasized the importance of speaking out on behalf of many voices, which would otherwise not be heard. (454 words)
The LWF summary report on the CERD review of El Salvador is available at: http://www.lutheranworld.org/What_We_Do/OIAHR/OIAHR-Treaty_Bodies.html
(The LWF is a global communion of Christian churches in the Lutheran tradition. Founded in 1947 in Lund, Sweden, the LWF currently has 140 member churches in 78 countries all over the world, with a total membership of 66.2 million. The LWF acts on behalf of its member churches in areas of common interest such as ecumenical and inter-faith relations, theology, humanitarian assistance, human rights, communication, and the various aspects of mission and development work. Its secretariat is located in Geneva, Switzerland.)
[Lutheran World Information (LWI) is the LWF's information service. Unless specifically noted, material presented does not represent positions or opinions of the LWF or of its various units. Where the dateline of an article contains the notation (LWI), the material may be freely reproduced with acknowledgment.]
* * *
LWI news online: http://www.lutheranworld.org/News/Welcome.EN.html
LUTHERAN WORLD INFORMATION P. O. Box 2100 CH-1211 Geneva 2 Switzerland
Tel.: +41/22-791 63 69 Fax: +41/22-791 66 30 Editor's E-Mail: pmu@lutheranworld.org