Advocacy

VIS since years is engaged in advocacy for the promotion and protection of human rights aimed at awareness raising and influencing the institutions which at various levels (national, European and international) with their decisions and actions establish policies in some of VIS specific field of interest: quality and efficacy of the international development cooperation and contrast to poverty, the promotion and protection of human rights with specific focus to children rights, right and quality of education e of global citizenship.

VIS for its advocacy interventions utilizes among the various things also the interstitial wedging i.e. using the cleavages offered to CSOs by the international systems (UN, Council of Europe, EU) to bring ahead its targeted interventions for the promotion and protection of human rights with particular attention to its areas of expertise. The aim of such strategy is to act within international political institutions to promote and contribute to the global and local political and social change in the field of human rights.

Consistent with this strategy, VIS participates in conferences, fora, world summits, international campaigns; it also prepared monitoring and supplementary reports to the United Nations Treaty Bodies (Commissions of independent experts with the aim of monitoring the implementation of UN treaties on human rights), with particular attention also to the mechanisms set up by the UN Human Rights Council, including the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Here VIS operates actively within the Comitato per la promozione e protezione dei diritti umani, a network set up by VIS and 10 other Italian NGOs in 2002 to produce monitoring reports on the UN recommendations to Italy related to the human rights and for the establishment, also in our country, of an independent national institution for human rights in line with the Paris Principles and the international standards of the UN still lacking in our country, last among the European states.

Advocacy backed by the concrete experience in the field implemented through the cooperation and development programmes, has allowed VIS to obtain on 27th July 2009 the prestigious accreditation of “ECOSOC Special Consultative Status” with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. VIS is the only Italian organization of the Salesian Family with this recognition and operates in dialogue with the other international organizations of the Salesian Family with ECOSOC accreditation: Salesian Missions of New Rochelle (USA) and International Institute of Mary Our Help of the Salesians of Don Bosco, Geneva (Switzerland).

In Italy VIS is engaged in advocacy thanks to the participation in Italian, European and international networks favouring the exchange of experience deriving from the work carried out and offer the perspective of a broad analysis and comparison with other realities in the world on the best practices experimented through the projects.

In addition, VIS has an active role within the structures of the Salesian Family engaged in advocacy activities at various levels among which DBI (Don Bosco International) in Brussels and DBN (Don Bosco Network), the NGO network of the Salesian Family promoting human development. In this context, a series of formal position papers were produced for the Salesian Family on advocacy, on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals on goal 4, on education, the formal declaration of the Salesian Family at the UN in New York on the issue of migrants, and on the fight against hate speech.