LOS ANGELES: AF3IRM/GabNet member Ninotchka Rosca will speak at the “Women For Democracy” session at the by-invitation-only “High Level Conference” in Krakow, Poland, on July 2-4, 2010. She will also represent the Sisterhood is Global Institute at the said conference.

Seventeen foreign ministers, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former US State Secretary Madeline Albright, Sweden Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt, European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek and other government and non-government luminaries have confirmed attendance at the conference sponsored by the Community of Democracies and co-hosted by the government of the Republic of Poland.

Joining Ms. Rosca at the “Women for Democracy” session will be former First Lady of Poland Jolanta Kwasniewska and other women activists for women’s equality and rights. The panel will address issues that confront women activists in undemocratic societies.

Asked what she will be presenting, Ms. Rosca said that she will tell the conference “exactly what I will say to you. Or for that matter, any audience – meaning the factors, both historical and contrived which make it difficult for women to achieve democratic rights and modern equality. ”

Being a member of the Board of Directors of the Sisterhood is Global, Ms. Rosca will also carry the banner of said international organization which recently launched a global networking site for activist women at www.globalsister.org. SIGI was founded 25 years ago by the US feminist and poet Robin Morgan and the late French feminist and writer Simone de Beauvoir, along with women from 60 countries.

A former prisoner-of-conscience under the Marcos Dictatorship, Ms. Rosca is known internationally for her staunch advocacy for human, democratic and women’s rights, and for her work as a novelist and journalist, for which she has received numerous awards. She was also international spokesperson for a decade for AF3IRM/GabNet’s campaign against the trafficking of Filipinas. She is an organizing pioneer for women of Philippine descent in the United States and was named one of the 100 most influential Filipinas in the US by Filipinas Magazine.

For more information on the High Level Conference, please access: www.community-democracies.org; and for Sisterhood is Global, www.sigi.org.

AF3IRM will be formally launched in October of this year, in a radically different form and orientation, as it takes stock of the increasing complexity of issues for transnational women. For more information on AF3IRM, please email: secgen@gabnet.org -- ##

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Jollene Levid
Secretary-General
Email: secgen@gabnet.org
Website: www.gabnet.org

Association of Filipinas, Feminists Fighting Imperialism, Re-feudalization, and Marginalization
(AF3IRM/GABNet)
PO Box 403, Times Square Station
New York, NY 10036