Hi Everyone,
Together with other Gender Forum participants, I'd like to join Kio
Chung, Mavic and Hiroko in thanking GLOCOM for the all your good work in
the Tokyo events. Maraming salamat (that's thank you in my language)
Izumi, Adam, Yumiko, Masuda and everyone who worked in the background.
Specifically, I would like to thank you for supporting participants of
the gender forum.
In the brief assessment that the Gender Forum participants had, everyone
appreciated the opportunity to be able to come together to discuss issues
critical to women and to advocate for the inclusion of gender equality in
the content and process of WSIS. While we felt that we didn't make as
much headway in getting more coverage of gender concerns in the
declaration, we valued the resulting strengthening of a network that can
continue to advocate for gender equality in information and
communications, hopefully in many more forums.
Lastly, I just want to say that for gender activists and feminists,
working within our own networks as well as within the broad civil society
space, such as the AP NGO Forum, is always doubly demanding. In these
situations, we usually have to juggle our time between working on gender
and women's issues and participating in broader civil society issues
which are equally our concerns. In Tokyo, we stretched the limits of our
multi-tasking capacity to participate meaningfully in the overall NGO
spaces. I'd like to thank everyone for the support for gender issues and
the space for gender advocates. Hopefully, there will come a time when
gender equality becomes truly mainstreamed and there won't be a need for
separate gender forums. Then we can enjoy a little bit more sleep
:)
warm regards to all,
Chat
At 04:44 PM 1/23/03 +0800, you wrote:
Dear all,
I also would like to join everyone in thanking Yumiko, Izumi, and Adam
for coordinating the AP NGO efforts in Tokyo. It's no joke
organising such event especially in a situation where NGO participation
is put under serious questions.
Thanks too to everyone who contributed and participated in all the NGO
activities in Tokyo. It was a pleasure meeting all of you.
On another note, I know that Malaysiakini is back online but I guess it
is not too late to say our piece as APNGOCC. We can draft a statement
condemning the raid and circulate it as widely as possible and perhaps
publish it in Malaysiakini itself. What do people think?
As well, I share Serena's concern on how are we going to proceed with
finalising the NGO response to the
Tokyo declaration.
Warm regards,
Mavic