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July 26, 2007

Resolutions and Election Committee Reports

Resolutions

The Resolutions Committee suggests that we pass a ME resolution in principle, but wait until the Palestinian Section approves the resolution and statement before it becomes official. Our Israeli Palestinian sister, Taghrid, strenously objected to this approach, explaining that our work is based on past work and that the ME Committee wants the organization to move forward immediately. Our Lebanese sister, Samira, agreed with Taghrid and urged us to pass the resolution & statement and trust the work of the women in the committee.

Resolutions are distributed to all sections, relevant governments, and UN entitites.

All resolutions in the packet distributed to tables were passed, some with the understanding that further work on language would happen. The ME Committee agreed to a one week period to smooth the language and confer with the Palestinian Section.

Election Committee Report
Introduction to the process.

Received a written vote from one delegate who had to leave before the vote. The Constitution is silent on this issue, but the Committee feels the vote cannot be accepted because this is a controversial election. EC suggests that the Constitution be amended to clarify this issue for the future.

Preferential Voting - a process that EC recommends someone write a report and present to the IB.

We want to propose that the counting of the votes be done with observers. We thought this would be a good opportunity allow Y-WILPF to be part of the process. They asked for Y-WILPFers who were not voting delegates to volunteer to be observers in the counting process.

The Constitution tells the EC to attempt to form a slate, a slate to recommend to the Congress. We were not able to agree on a slate this year. We are reporting information to you because we could not agree on a slate. The EC is presenting 2 teams and the EC believes that each team can work well as a team, but would be difficult to mix the teams.

EC recommends not mixing the teams, even though you can vote for any individuals.

Team A:
Regina Birchem (USA)
Marta Benavides (El Salvador)
Martha Jean Baker (UK)
Kozue Akibayashi (Japan)
Samira Khoury (Lebanon)
Tamara James (USA)

A representative from the EC explained the reasons for choosing this team. I did not write down the entire statement, it was primarily about continuing the work of the previous officer's team (3 of the people on this team are current officers).

Team B:
Kerstin Greback (Sweden) & Annelise Ebbe (Denmark)
Felicity Hill (Australia)
Amparo Guerrero (Colombia)
Kozue Akibayashi (Japan)
Samira Khoury (Lebanon)
Tamara James (USA)

A representative from the EC explained the reasons for this team. The reasoning included that this is a younger slate, more knowledgeable about issues of racism and classism.

A point of clarification: Marta Benavides announced that she was removing her candidancy and leaving the organization.
Several people spoke after Marta.

Flowers were presented to our Bolivian sisters, thanking them for hosting the Congress. Nepal presented them with a Buddha statue.

Ballots were passed out. Counting done after lunch.

Posted by cj at July 26, 2007 11:30 AM

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