International Widows Day is the UN’s annual global day of action to address the poverty and injustice faced by millions of widows and their dependents in many countries. It takes place on 23 June.
International Widows Day was initiated by the Loomba Foundation in 2005 and officially recognised by the United Nations General Assembly, on a motion by the Government of Gabon, on 22 December 2010.
The significance of 23 June is that this is the day, in 1954, that the woman who inspired the founding of the Loomba Foundation, Shrimati Pushpa Wati Loomba, became a widow.
When the Loomba Foundation was founded in 1997, its focus initially was on relieving the desperate plight of poor widows and their children in India – and this remains a very important objective. Founder Raj Loomba soon came to realise however that this problem is by no means confined to India alone. “I was shocked to discover that widowhood was a huge problem not only in India, but across Africa,” he explained to WidowsVoice.org. “They were losing husbands through HIV, through genocide, through conflict, and they were becoming destitute. They were not looked after by governments or NGOs and they were shunned by society. It’s such a big problem, and yet nothing has been done. Nobody in the world, including the United Nations, had ever addressed the problem of widows.”
In Africa, too, the problem is more deep-rooted than current devastations like genocide and HIV. Attitudes are founded in traditions and so-called ‘customary laws’.
In 2005, Loomba Foundation president Cherie Blair launched International Widows Day at the House of Lords in London and over the next five years, the Foundation campaigned for international recognition of this day as a focus for sustained, effective, global action to bring about a radical and lasting transformation in the plight of widows. In 2006 the Loomba Foundation held an international conference on the topic at the Foreign Office in London, addressed by widows from ten countries as well as Cherie Blair, Hillary Clinton, Indian cabinet minister Renuka Chowdhury, Yoko Ono and Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon. The Foundation established offices in America and Canada and organised meetings at the United Nations, gaining the attention and support of leaders like Rwandan president Dr Paul Kagame and the former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan.
The big problem with the cause was its invisibility. Governments, NGOs, international organisations – all neglected the issue because so very little was known about it. The Loomba Foundation initiated and supported an investigative programme with writers, researchers and institutions including Chatham House and in 2010, Vijay Dutt’s Invisible Forgotten Sufferers was published with research by Risto Harma: the first comprehensive research study of the plight of widows around the world.
Backed with that hard information, support for UN recognition grew. President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon and his wife Madame Sylvia Bongo Ondimba, threw their weight behind the campaign and on 22 December 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution from Gabon officially recognising 23 June as International Widows Day.
Donate here: http://www.theloombafoundation.org/donate
International Widows Day
The first International Widows’ Day was observed on 23 June 2011, providing an opportunity to give special recognition to the plight of widows and their children in order to restore their human rights and alleviate poverty through empowerment.
“On this International Widows’ Day, let us resolve to end all discrimination against the world’s widows, and to enable them to enjoy their full human rights. The benefits will extend to their children, communities and society as a whole.”
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
In December 2010, the General Assembly declared 23 June as International Widows’ Day (A/RES/65/189). The General Assembly decided, with effect from 2011, to observe International Widows’ Day on 23 June each year, and called upon Member States, the United Nations system and other international and regional organizations, within their respective mandates, to give special attention to the situation of widows and their children.
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![Hold Me (Remixes Part 1) [feat. Yoko Ono] - Ono](http://r.mzstatic.com/images/web/linkmaker/badge_itunes-lrg.gif){kind=icon}
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Hi Yoko!!!
A considerable work on behalf of all the widows with their children orphans. Your work is very significant for all . Therefore John Lennon chose you as a woman and companion because he saw in you all the qualities and characteristics that he possessed and how a great man John Lennon was a very smart and clever he never let himself be manipulated, just found the right woman beside him who did amazing things in art, life and for peace and humanity that you continue to today.
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BIA – BRASIL
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ENDLESS WAR, INFINITE PEACE, COMPOSED FOR 1ST GANDHI STATUE BIRTHDAY READING, OCT. 2, 2006
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arnold passman pazmopa@yahoo.com
7:47 PM (15 hours ago)
ENDLESS WAR, INFINITE PEACE
COMPOSED FOR 1ST S.F. GANDHI STATUE BIRTHDAY READING, OCT. 2, 2006
by Arnie Passman
ENDLESS WAR, INFINITE PEACE
Condi or Gandhi, A Proposal in Progress
They told us right off their battiness,
This is going to be a long war.
Even as W was hustling his class,
The Bin Laden clan out of our land.
And bunker buried Cheney
Directed the chain reaction,
and sneeredick: let that plane keep on comin’.
Then they sent out our kids
On the backs of lies, discrepancies and contradictions,
Off to the anvil of Iraq,
Ill-equipped and writing home
To Mom for socks.
May Day mission accomplished
Is revisionist history to begin with.
This was the 25-30 year work
Of the B Team, begun and spun
In the mid 70s out of the
Nuclear strategy quackery
Of the forgotten Strangelove,
Albert Wohlstetter
At the University of Chicago,
And the start-ups of
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle,
A hardlined blow to the CIA
They thud too soft.
And these acrimoaners were the original
Weapons of Mass Destruction–
The exaggerated might of the Soviet Union–
codified again and againth.
Exit Colby
Enter Bush the 1st.
And now decades later,
Al Q’aida is up from 10,000 to 50,000,
The Iraq War its recruiting agent.
And foul soul insiders
With Afghanistan extending its coarse record
Of the longest gringo adventure
from killer crony nationalism
Tell us
We are less safe.
And Israel gets its 2 schekels in,
With shaken forces,
Untrained in the state of the heart,
Returning to their compromised land to open
Surplus stores to be better prepared
For the fire next time.
And Halliburton,
Blackwater,
And Boeing
And Bechtel
And Lockheed-Martin. . .
Under the patholoid ethos of war readiness
Just keep goosestepping up
Their arms golems.
It doesn’t matter who wins,
Just as in the Balkans,
As long as more and more weapons
Are made, developed and re-made,
And poor youth ain’t.
And not a pfennig for the homeland.
Just be good volunteers and clean up.
Meanwile, back at the peace movement,
here in the aura of the great spinner and
Salt chaser,
We march here, demonstrate there,
As laws change and cell doors clange.
We shall be back at the Mahatma’s likeness
Next year, same time, same patience.
And we shall bring our kids and granderkids
On field trips throughout the year.
As well, our brothers and sisters shall
Assemble under the Gandhi gaze
In New York, Washington, Atlanta,
Houston, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Honolulu,
Yes, at our seven + pillars of wisdom,
With Peace for Keeps poets
Walking, composing, relaying
Between them,
From ‘Frisco to Salt lake,
St. Looie to Houston, Milwaukee, Cleveland,
Atlanta, Washington, New York. . .
Circling not crossing the land
In mythic time with the lore
Through the hells of pork barreling,
War gobbling congressional districts.
Our Salt March!
Occupying our Salt March!
From Gulfstream pollution,
To Redwood dilution,
Lake Inferior
To the going, going gone Gulf.
Battered Battery to Katrina splatter,
Deep South California Gehenna.
On and on and on,
Into infinite spirit
And New York minute Harmonic Convergence.
As god speaks through W.
It is not god
the father or the goddess
but god the transparent