rina-meetingBreaking out of Marginalisation programme officer Warda Rina brought APWLD’s development justice principles to the Major Group and Stakeholders meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia last 17-18 September 2013. This meeting gathered civil society and State representatives to provide input on emerging environmental issues and concerns from the region. UNEP is a main site of policy-making for environment policy among UN member states.

The meeting was also an occasion to elect alternate regional representatives from among the Major Group and Stakeholders for the Asia-Pacific Region. Rina was elected as the official UNEP alternate regional representative at this meeting, and she will share tasks with the other regional representatives Thunga Bhadra Rai from Nepal, Meena Bilgi from India, and Chung Haeseung from Korea in terms of reporting to the region and bringing issues from the region to the discussion table.

In the meeting, Wardarina also raised the regional priority issues in the Asia and the Pacific that urgently needs to be addressed:

Access to Resources: The escalating cases of land and ocean grabbing and the adverse impacts of climate change need a greater recognition. Countries in Asia and the Pacific still need to call for an end to corporations control over natural wealth, water and resources that deprive people of food sovereignty, and government policies that promote rapid and resource intensive practices such as extractive industries, forestry and illegal logging, deep sea mining, and unregulated fishing.

Decent Work and Living Wage: particularly in a region where poor women and men bear the burden of difficult work at barely subsistence wages, and exploited under a largely unregulated global industry which dis-value reproductive work. Macro economic policies that we have now only aim to increase women’s productivity without recognising the enormous productive contributions women already make.

Peace, Justice and Voice: women’s rights and autonomy over our bodies and life decisions are violated, especially due to the escalating fundamentalism and the politicisation of religion.

APWLD reiterated its stand on the Development Justice model framed by five foundational shifts: (1) redistributive justice, (2) economic justice, (3) social justice (including gender justice), (4) environmental justices, and (5) accountability to peoples.

For further information about the development justice model, click here http://apwld.org/category/feminist-development-justice