May 2009

Please forward to other young liberals
(or liberals young at heart)

From April 3 to 8, IFLRY Treasurer Chris Gallaway and Vice President Frederik Ferié were hosted by Future Youth in Beirut, Lebanon. As IFLRY’s first Full Member in the Arab world, Future Youth has been an active participant in the Federation's activities in the last two years. Chris and Frederik conducted four seminars in the Future Movement headquarters on strategic political campaigning for over 100 members of Future Youth coming from different parts of Lebanon.

In addition, the IFLRY BMs had the honor of meeting two of the country’s important leaders: Prime Minister Fouad Seniora, who received them in his office in the Grand Serail (Government Palace), and Majority Leader Saad El Hariri, MP, who welcomed them at his residence. Both liberal statesmen were interested in IFLRY's and Future Youth’s plan to hold the next Executive Committee Meeting in July in Lebanon. Seniora and El Hariri also expressed support for dialogue among young people around the world, especially among the liberals, in order to ensure a prosperous and secure future. Frederik and Chris also had an exchange of ideas about the planned events with Future Youth’s Public Relations and Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as with Dr. Ronald Meinardus and Mr Ralf Erbel of Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation, which has offered substantial support.

“IFLRY is thrilled with our close cooperation with Future Youth, which has been an incredible host and organizer and a highly promising political force in Lebanon,” remarked Frederik, “We are looking forward to being back here in July.”

IFLRY Secretary General Bart Woord attended the Second Alliance of Civilizations meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, on the 6th and 7th of April. Among the speakers and participants of the event were UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Spanish and Turkish Prime Ministers Zapatero and Erdogan as well as many leading government officials, NGO representatives and opinion makers. On the agenda were panels and workshops dealing with the overall topic of intercultural and inter-religious dialogue. Prior to the official meeting, a youth event was held on the 4th and 5th of April which brought together over 60 representatives from different regions of the world in order to discuss the creation of a global youth movement for the alliance of civilizations.

If you would like to receive a special report on this meeting, or if you have any questions, please contact Bart (bart@iflry.org).

IFLRY President, Paola Silva, attended from the 1st to the 3rd of May, the Young Liberals of Canada Convention and the 182nd Liberal International Executive Committee in Vancouver. Both events were hold at the same time with the Biannual Convention of the Liberal Party of Canada. The Young Liberals elected a new executive that will have among it's responsibilities to work on electing the Liberals and the newly elected leader of the party Michael Ignatieff into government.

At the Executive Committee of the Liberal International there was an international panel debate about challenges of the liberalism for the next decade with leaders from different regions of the world. Besides that there was a special session where LI bureau member Juli Minoves presented a report on the effects of the financial crisis. IFLRY brought forward a short paper to remark the effects of the crisis on young people and that was a contribution to the debate. After all comments received from delegates it was decided that the document done by Minoves has to continue its construction and to facilitate the debate, LI with support of FNF will set up a virtual debate to have a final version of the financial crisis document ready for the next meeting of 2009.

For further information please contact Paola at paola@iflry.org .

Preceded by a successful strategy workshop in Beirut last October, delegates of young liberal youth organizations from all over the Arab world gathered in Cairo from April 23 to 27 to decide about the statutes of their new regional network and hold its first ever General Assembly. The event was sponsored by the Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation's Regional Office for the Middle East and Northern Africa, which brought together liberal youth from Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan and Libanon. They also invited IFLRY Vice President Frederik Ferié to attend General Assembly and give input to the creation of the principles, structures and processes of the Union that were to be laid down in the statutes.

After passionately discussing and deciding upon the founding documents of the Union, the participants moved to the second major agenda point: the election of UALY's first Executive Bureau. The General Assembly elected Ms. Daad Azzi (National Liberal Party, Lebanon) as President and Mr. Aziz Dermoumi (Jeunesse Harakie, Morocco) as Secretary General of the Union, as well as five more board members. The General Assembly also discussed a working program and various activities for the future of UALY.

In his address to the GA Frederik invited the delegates and the Executive Board to participate in the next IFLRY Executive Committee Meeting in Beirut, in order to meet and get to know the young liberals of the world there. Many of the organizations present expressed their interest in participating - some even already filed their application for Candidate Membership in IFLRY.

On the 19th of April, IFLRY co-organized the Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy on the eve of the United Nations Durban Review Conference in Geneva. The summit was a great success with the participation of several hundred NGO representatives, students and academicians and was broadcasted live to a wide audience via the Internet. IFLRY Secretary General Bart Woord moderated one of the panel discussions and argued that human rights and democracy activists should also stand up for the freedom of the digital space and against online censorship. Representatives of IFLRY MOs JD (Netherlands) and JFS (Switzerland) also participated at the summit.

On the 20th of April, Bart also participated in the Durban Review Conference as part of the delegation of the international NGO 'UN Watch'.

For more information, please visit the website at www.genevasummit.org or contact Bart (bart@iflry.org).

An IFLRY statement was issued on the 21st of April in relation with world Earth Day:

As the world celebrates the Earth Day this April, the International Federation of Liberal Youth commits to reach the gap between the attainment of multilateral-free-trade-driven-sustainable-economic-growth and healthy and balance environment in the entire planet. The young liberals of the world affirm that environmental protection and promotion of liberal policies on trade, market and economic development exist in mutual thrust and gain with each other; they are complimentary goals, in tandem without conflict. We believe that sustainable development and environmental protection are fundamental ends of every liberal democratic government. Thus, we affirm the World Trade Organization’s goal to allow the optimal use of world’s resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, and to seek to protect and preserve the environment...

For the full statement, see IFLRY News and updates .

The International Federation of Liberal Youth is looking for a webmaster to support its international work.

Tasks will include: (1) Maintenance, updates and innovation of IFLRY website; (2) Creation and maintenance of searchable content from sql databases and their display on the website; (3) Expansion of linguistic diversity on the IFLRY website.

The position is currently only available on a voluntary basis and runs to the end of 2009. The webmaster shall cooperate directly with the IFLRY Bureau and Office.

Find the nomination form here .

Please submit the form to office@iflry.org by the 31st of May. For any questions, please refer to IFLRY Treasurer Chris Gallaway (chris@iflry.org).

With lots of IFLRY members already frequently using the new phenomenon Twitter in their political and personal lives, the IFLRY Bureau of course couldn't lag behind for too long. So, you can trace all our steps and get the latest scoops now via http://twitter.com/iflry !

Once more, I had the opportunity to represent IFLRY at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, PACE, in Strasbourg 27-29 of April. During the 2nd part of the 2009 Ordinary Session, I was able to help the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) during their group meetings.

Last week was one of those weeks in which I lost sense of time and space while on duty for IFLRY. I am still not sure where I have been precisely so allow me to just try recapitulate it with you here. On Saturday the 18th I left in the earliest hours of the morning my new home base Baku for Geneva, where IFLRY was co-organizing the Geneva Summit for Tolerance, Human Rights and Democracy on Sunday the 19th.

The IFLRY Bureau is now present on the increasingly popular Twitter network. Already several members of the Bureau are contributing to the IFLRY account which you can find at http://twitter.com/iflry!

Freedom of the Press 2009 identifies the greatest threats to independent media in 195 countries and territories. Released in advance of World Press Freedom Day May 3, the report shows a seventh straight year of decline in global media freedom, with twice as many losses than gains.

From the LYMEC Bureau:
Dear liberal friends,
We are happy finally to launch our campaign for the European Parliament elections in June 2009. As we decided at the congress in Barcelona, we are focusing on three topics: EU budget, privacy and trade.

DECLARATION
From: Dalga (Wave) Youth Movement (IFLRY Candidate Member)
To: International Liberal Youth Organizations
On behalf of Dalga (Wave) Youth Movement, we appeal to all youth organizations acting in the worldwide and notify that we are the friends of freedom, liberalism and protectors of the democracy, freedom of speech, human rights and pluralism of ideas.

IFLRY, the International Federation of Liberal Youth, is an international political umbrella organisation promoting cooperation among youth and student organisations to spread liberal values.
Learn more about IFLRY > Member organizations >

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