The IFLRY Bureau is calling upon its Member Organizations to participate in the first ever Liberal Solidarity Week (LSW), to take place between the 20th and the 26th of September 2010.

The LSW is an annual event in which young liberals from around the world show solidarity with people in authoritarian countries which are deprived of their fundamental rights. This can take the form of organizing a workshop, holding a lecture, petitioning politicians, organizing a picket at the embassy, or anything else that will raise awareness and draw attention.

With more than 100 organizations spread over 5 different continents potentially participating, we can send a powerful message to our friends working under difficult circumstances for a more free and democratic society, and to those working against them. It is also a good way of showing to your members, party, media and political rivals that your organization does care about human rights and democracy around the world.

The IFLRY Bureau is proposing three countries which member organizations can focus on for this year's LSW, namely Azerbaijan, Cuba and Singapore.

[Azerbaijan]
Azerbaijan is an often forgotten dictatorship at the fringes of Europe. It is hard to imagine under the current President Ilham Aliev that it actually has a rich historical democratic tradition. A multitude of brave youth organizations (of which several IFLRY MOs) do their best in bringing change, but it's a difficult fight.

[Cuba]
More than 50 years of Communist dictatorship have not done the people of Cuba much good. And that's an understatement. Still widely believed to be a romantic and benevolent dictatorship, much is needed to make young people around the world understand that the vast majority of Cubans are craving freedom and democracy.

[Singapore]
This ultra-modern city-state often tops the lists when it comes to prosperity and business friendliness. Its government, however, is of a clear-cut authoritarian nature and controls its people like a modern day Big Brother. Democracy and human rights are not part of its vocabulary and its authoritarian-capitalist model is spreading across the globe. We need to support our partners on the ground who rightfully fight for their rights.

We are able to provide you with all the necessary information and (digital) materials for each of these countries that you need for your activity. This includes information that you may need for press releases.

In terms of activities, we would like to leave as much space as possible for member organizations to do what they think works best in their own organizational and domestic context. We can make a couple of (compatible) suggestions:

-    Workshop: an internal event in your organization about the issue and perhaps afterwards a resolution for your mother party?
-    Articles in media: get an article posted in a newspaper that addresses the need to support the change-making (young) people in the country in question.
-    Conference: invite dissidents, people in exile, NGO’s or whoever you think will help you having an interesting session.
-    Movie night: Images say more than a thousand words.  We could send you movies or documentaries in DVD or provide you with the links to download.
-    Demonstration. you think that just sitting down wont help much? Create a plackard, get a megaphone and shout for freedom.
-    Political lobby: set up a meeting with influential people in your country and explain what’s going on.

But feel free to do other things! We would just like to encourage you to engage as many of your members in this initiative and to reach out to as many others. You could for example have several local branches participating (and even have them focus on different countries). You can chose to have one activity during this week (for example when you anyway have a regular get-together), or if you have the resources and the enthusiasm to, organize several of them.

The most important element is that you communicate to us in advance what is going to take place within your organization and that afterwards you collect pictures and other materials. We will gather all of this into an online report and a presentation at the IFLRY General Assembly in November 2010.

By the 1st of July we would like to make a first inventory of all the activities taking place during the LSW. Please send us the following information before then to lsw@iflry.org :

1) Member Organization (including local, regional or national level if applicable):
2) Country of focus:
3) Type of activity:
4) Location and date:
5) Information or materials needed from IFLRY:
6) Contact details of the contact person (if other than the person sending the information).

We will get in touch with each of you to discuss further details once we have made the inventory. Since we want to make this a recurring event each year, we would also like you to send us your feedback after the LSW in order to help us improve it each year.

All of your questions, comments, remarks and suggestions can be sent to lsw@iflry.org.

Are you not part of an IFLRY member organization but you still want to take part in the LSW? Please send us an e-mail with your organizational (or personal) background and what you would like to be doing.

We hope to see as many of you taking part!

Liberal regards,

Jordi Villanueva