On 7 December 2008, Mr. Yuce Hengki Sadok et Mr. Winardi bin Marjuki  were arrested in Indonesia. They are representatives of the trade union HUKATAN SBSI at the company PT Wachyuni Mandira. They were organising a peaceful strike following the failure of collective negotiations and are have been imprisoned for more than 4 months now. We need your support to free them!

In the free trade zones of Southern Tagalog, a blacklist is circulating with the names of 72 regional leaders of progressive people's organizations, which the Philippine authorities want to arrest. In this way, activists are neutralized and the political opposition is silenced.

To stop the repression against trade unionists, Stop the Killings organises a protest action at the Embassy of the Philippines on Wednesday 22 April 2009. This action is supported by several organisations, including World Solidarity (WSM). For more information, www.stopthekillings.be  

On 2 April 2009, world leaders from the G20 countries will meet in London to find solutions to the global crisis. In the meantime, millions of people in developing and developed countries are already paying a high price for the crisis: global unemployment is expected to increase by at least 50 million and the global economic crisis stands to lead to cuts in the wages of millions of workers worldwide with a rise in the number of working poor living on less than USD2 per day (ILO).

The crisis must provide the trigger for a wholesale reform of the global economic order. As such it could be a turning point for the goal of achieving sustainable development and social justice. The central objectives of a new economic architecture should be shared prosperity with decent jobs and income for all. Indeed, the period prior to the financial crisis was characterised by a certain amount of GDP growth, but that failed to generate decent jobs and to extend benefits to working people and the poor. A new global economic order must promote fair distribution of wealth created and resources generated in the economy, based upon the centrality of decent work as a mechanism for employment generation, social protection, social dialogue and rights at work.

To move in this direction, we believe the following steps are necessary:

Instead of the annual, large-scale gathering somewhere around the globe, the World Social Forum 2008 edition comes to you: from 19 to 26 January, thousands of activities will be organised in many cities around the world, culminating in the Global Day of Action on Saturday 26 January 2008.

To find out what's on the menu in Brussels during that week and especially on the Global Day of Action, follow the link.

After a lot of preparatory work, Social Alert International is pleased to present you its database, which brings together an important number of resources on informal economy. The resources can be research reports, activity reports, training modules etc on this particular topic. They are drawn from the work done by Social Alert International and its founding members. Click here for the main page of the database and start your own search for resources!