Unions: World Leaders Do Not Deliver the Future We
Want

    No Social Justice without Environmental
    Protection

International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
June 23, 2012

http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/html/rio20-5.html

The global trade union movement is bitterly
disappointed at the Declaration of the Rio+20 Summit, a
declaration that lacks the concrete measures necessary
now to end senseless environmental destruction, drive
investment into the green economy to create jobs and
reduce the alarming growth in inequity with the
guarantee of social protection for the most vulnerable
people.

The trade union movement has prepared over two years
for this important United Nations Conference on
Sustainability, the conference called Rio+20. What
should have been a big opportunity for world leaders to
meet and take brave decisions on our future, "The
future that we want", turned out to be a big failure in
global governance. What happened? It started with the
fact that the text that has been negotiated over a year
was not finalised at the end of the negotiations. Then
the Brazilian government made a new draft of the
Declaration (the main outcome of the conference). The
Brazilian draft came with "Take it or leave it". This
left the conference with a closed text the day before
Heads of State arrived. The 114 Heads of State came to
the Conference not spending one single hour negotiating
and each delivered a speech and had their photograph
taken together.

Words are not enough; a UN process with no targets, no
timelines and no serious inclusion of unions and civil
society does nothing to fuel the anxiety of people
suffering from unemployment, from poverty or from
environmental destruction of their lands and/or
livelihoods", said Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of
the ITUC.

Read Sharan Burrow's own words about the outcome of the
conference:
http://www.ituc-csi.org/no-social-justice-without.html?lang=en

Trade Union Statement for Rio+20: There will be no
social justice without environmental protection:
http://www.ituc-csi.org/ituc-statement-on-the-rio,11586.html?lang=en

Read the United Nations Rio+20 Outcome Document:
http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/rio_20_un_outcome_docuemnt.pdf

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