In the report “Case Closed, Rape and Human Rights in the Nordic Countries”, the situation for rape-victims in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland gets highly criticized. The prosecutions of rapists here rarely end in conviction. The reason for this is often deficient police work ending in cases being dropped. One of the report’s other main conclusions is that prejudice against women’s sexuality weakens their credibility in the justice system, while similar ideas about men’s sexuality, on the contrary enhances the men’s credibility.

Though governments try to reverse this trend, enough is not done. We need to put pressure on the countries’ leaders to secure women’s rights. Men’s attitudes towards women also have to change. That a woman dresses provocative is not an excuse for rape, neither is flirting. No means no!

Involve yourself, and chose a way to contribute to this cause here

Between 2002 and 2006, multinational companies have ripped off poor countries by between 98 and 106 billion dollars annually, according to a new report from Global Financial Integrity (GFI).

The countries loose tax money due to a form of mispricing. This arises when transactions are reinvoiced. This happens when goods leave a country under one invoice, which is then redirected to another jurisdiction such as a tax-haven where the price is altered. The revised invoice is then sent to the importing country for clearing and payment purposes. This is presented in the report “Implied Tax Revenue Loss from Trade Mispricing” by the GFI.

Raymond W. Baker, Director of the GFI, writes in the report that “Trade mispricing moves more illicit money across borders than any other single phenomenon.” The money lost for developing countries through this mechanism are roughly comparable to the amount of official development-assistance going into developing countries.

This is money that could help prevent poverty and to ensure a sustainable growth. However, there are ways to prevent this abuse of developing countries. One of the things we can do is inspire the world leaders to require financial transparency. Sign the petition at www.g20transparency.com and help change the world.

The problem of disappearing children is continuously increasing and most of them are never found. In the time period 2000-2008, 600 kids disappeared. PRESS – Save the Children Youth thinks the children are an easy target for human trafficking. Last year alone there were 71 children disappearing from asylum centres.

PRESS – Save the Children Youth, expresses the need to prevent this from happening and they are now demanding that asylum-children are given the same treatment as Norwegian orphans. – Nobody would have closed their eyes if this happened to Norwegian kids, says Kirsten Kvalø leader of the organisation, to Dagbladet.

]]> http://involveyourself.com/norwegian-asylums-leaking-children/feed 1 http://involveyourself.com/400-executed-in-iran-last-year http://involveyourself.com/400-executed-in-iran-last-year#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:16:41 +0000 Caroline http://involveyourself.com/?p=965 A new report from Iran Human Rights shows that over 400 people were executed in Iran in 2009. The reasons behind the executions are political disobedience, rape, drug trafficking and murder.

One of the authors of the report, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, claims that the executions are meant to spread fear amongst the Iranian people and has got nothing to do with fighting drug trafficking or crime.

Lots of Iranians have demonstrated post to the  election June 2009. They do not think the election was fairly executed.

The right to life is a human right! Iranians need our support. Please tell us what YOU think about 400 Iranians being executed below.

However, a new report states that if we don’t work harder internationally towards this goal, we will end up with 56 million children withouth schooling in 2015. For many countries  it has become harder to give their children education due to the financial crises many countries are experiencing.

Save the Children in Norway is trying to push the Norwegian government to take a leading role in working towards the Millenium Goal. On the 23rd of February an important meeting about this matter will be held in Ethiopia. Let us hope international politicans will come up with lots of great ideas on how to improve the situation.

What do you think about the fact that over 72 million children do not go to school?

At Oslo Dokumentarkino you can buy three movies from last years “Human Rights, Human Wrongs” festival. For 250 Norwegian kroner you get the movies China Blue, Shadow of the Holy Book and Darwin’s nightmare on DVD with Norwegian subtitles. The movies address human rights issues concerning huge companies from the north doing business with jeans factories in China, a fishing-industry in Lake Victoria and an oil- business in Turkmenistan.

All the films can be shown in schools, cinemas and other non-commercial contexts. Invite your friends and family to an important local film-festival about human rights.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.It is great news that big companies such as Google takes responsibility and joins our fight for human rights. Their decision will have great impact on the corporate social responsibility of other companies – and not least on nations such as China which stops people from having free speech.

2. Breed with 701 votes

3. Inception with 352 votes

We are glad to announce the winners of our YouTube Music-festival, Give Your Live, which took place on the 14th December 2009. Our audience have given their votes and Katzenjammer, Breed and Inception are the winners.

The prize is historical. Their songs will be part of the new Golden Disc which will contain statements about what youth think about human right’s violations and how they want the world to be. The disc will be historical and will be sent out to space – just like the old one!

Cheating
Unfortunately we experienced cheating during the vote. This was investigated and we managed to find back to the original results.

We want to thank everyone who gave their contributions to the Give Your Live-festival.

Now enjoy the winning songs:

http://involveyourself.com/katzenjammer-a-bar-in-amsterdam

http://involveyourself.com/breed-remember

http://involveyourself.com/inception-back-on-the-road

At the end of the contest which ended on the 31st December, we have reasons to believe that there have been people cheating. Each person (ip-address) is only allowed to give one vote to each band. However, a couple of bands suddenly got extremely many votes during a short amount of time.

It is very important for Involve Yourself that this is a fair competition. We are currently investigating what has happened, and will get back to you regarding the final results.

Thanks to all the bands which gave their “live” to the first ever YouTube-festival.

The board has based their decision on price compared to other suppliers of soft-drinks, but also on ethical grounds. Campaigns over the last two years shows that Coca-Cola factories in India causes a reduction in water for the locals as well as water-pollution.

India Recourse Center welcomes the students’ decision and states they give out an important message to other educational institutions.

Read more here