The
International Festival for Peoples Rights and Struggles 2015 (IFPRS
2015)will be held 17 November at the Bahay ng Alumni, University of the
Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. The festival aims to showcase
the groundswell of global resistance against renewed imperialist offensives
that threaten peoples rights across the globe.
The IFPRS
2015 is a space for peoples to share and learn from each other about new and
longstanding threats to people’s rights. It is an occasion to draw lessons from
and celebrate the victories of people’s struggles from
around the world.
The world
bears witness to the impacts of the ever-worsening crisis of the world
capitalist system with persistent poverty, deepening inequalities,
ecological degradation and climate change, and increasing militarism and
suppression of peoples rights and aspirations.
Governments
and international institutions have made a show of recognising the problems
affecting the people and planet, and have boldly proclaimed 2015 as the year to
supposedly chart a “new course for humanity” – a path to ‘sustainable
development.’
In July
2015, Heads of States and governments met in Addis Abbaba, Ethiopia for the 3rd
Financing for Development Conference to agree on how to restructure the world’s
financial architecture. This September, they agathered in the UN Headquarters
in New York to formally adopt the new set of “Sustainable Development Goals”
and a 2030 Sustainable Development Framework that will set the course of global
development efforts in the next 15 years. In December, the same governments
will gather in Paris to come up with a new global agreement and financing
package on climate change. At the same time, 12 countries representing over 60%
of the global economy are expected to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Agreement (TPPA), the largest “trade” agreement since the GATT that established
the WTO in 1994.
These
agreements all speak of promises and commitments tousher in a new dawn
for humanity. But on the contrary, these agreements would only constitute a new
attempt to give a moribund system a new lease on life. These agreements will
further concentrate power and wealth in the hands of the 1% at the expense of
peoples rights as they face dispossession, exploitation, oppression, poverty,
inequalities, social exclusion, environmental destruction, and injustice.
It is in
this context that workers, peasants, women, indigenous peoples, migrants,
artists and cultural workers, youth and many other sectors and communities from
Africa, Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific and Middle
East and North Africa will gather in Manila, Philippines for the 3rd
International Festival for Peoples’ Rights and Struggles (IFPRS 2015) on 17
November 2015.
This event
will be followed by the People’s Campaign Against
Imperialist Globalisation (PCAIG) on 18-19 November 2015.
Let us make 2015 the year to
take justice and strengthen people’s solidarity for genuine system change!
* Click here to watch the video
* Click here to
download the invitation