People’s Assemblies 2022 Part of the Global Week of Action Act4SDGs
Objectives:
Physical People’s Assemblies organized by civil society with representatives of the people with marginalized voices at the center to analyze the present food, poverty and financial crisis and develop demands and messages for decision makers e.g. vaccination, livelihood and social protection, debt and the implementation of the Agenda 2030.
The governments and the public are informed about the demands and messages from the People’s assemblies
A FliptheScript stunt during the Global Week of Action from 16 to 25 September 2022
National People’s Assemblies feed into global discussions and the Global Peoples’ Assembly as part of the Global Week of Action.

Political Situation

The Covid-19 pandemic has tremendously impacted the wellbeing of people - worsening the food crisis, increasing the poverty levels and widening inequalities. A healthy, peaceful, just and climate resilient society is becoming a far cry with fast dwindling commitments of the government towards a just and equitable recovery. Undeterred rise in global temperature due to anthropogenic activities defy all claims of a net zero emission. The war against Ukraine is threatening to destabilise the global order.
The threat from the COVID virus looms large with highly unequal rate of vaccination between the rich and the low- and middle-income countries. The blatant opposition of the rich countries to the TRIPS waiver at WTO lays bare their preference for the corporate over the people.
The worsening debt situation in Latin America, Africa and Asian countries has forced their governments to take austerity measures cutting spending on social protection, health and education.
Older people, persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, communities discriminated by on work and descent, migrants, women, transgender people, and children are suffering in multiple ways. There has been alarming rise of violence against women and girls.

Joint Demands: Act for Peace, Climate & Justice
Tumukunde Initiative and GCAP and Action for Sustainable Development developed joint demands and a sample letter. Both will be published in July 2022. Here some elements:

Progress on the 2030 agenda is under threat. In 2022, the world is not working for most people and our planet. Human rights are being ignored and millions of people are being left behind, while a few become ever richer and more powerful.

The war in Ukraine together with other ongoing conflicts has led to a massive increase in the number of people facing acute food insecurity, with rising food prices making life even harder for billions of people.
At the same time, climate change presents a long-term threat to our shared home on this earth, with temperatures continuing to rise and extreme weather events devastating communities at the frontlines.
The Covid-19 pandemic pushed humanity’s resilience to the limit and continues to have vast impacts on the lives of people and the wider social, economic and environmental fabric of our world. Hundreds of millions of people lost their jobs and income and were pushed into poverty.

11 MARCH 2022 ACTIVITIES
On 11 March 2022, the World commemorated the second year fighting against Covid 19 pandemic, it is a day, which was observed differently in different corners of the world mainly among health institutions and various non-governmental organisations.



It is in this line that TUMUKUNDE Initiative as a non-governmental organisation and member of GCAP Rwanda joined other sister organisations to commemorate the day in Rwanda.
The call and motive to commemorate the day was to raise awareness particularly on the western countries mainly countries manufacturing covid 19 vaccines to end monopolies by alleviating Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

In this regard, TUMUKUNDE Initiative conducted a related campaign from the 4th March up to 11 March and it was marked by different activities including:
•Mobilisation through social media;

•Writing and delivering letters to different embassies based in Rwanda, representing western countries;

•Organising a press conference with the aim of spreading our message through Radio and TVs

•Mobilisation in schools and taxi parks

On 11th March 2022, afternoon hours, we organised a campaign in Kimisagara secondary school and Kimisagara Market, both facilities located at one kilometre from the Head office of Kigali City and Central Business District (CBD) of the city.

It is an event that called local leaders on District level, Delegates from Rwanda Biomedical Centre and Education leaders in the city. This event was attended particularly by leaders from sister organisations mainly those working in health sector.

KIMISAGARA Secondary School is a big school in sub-urban area near the city centre, it accommodate over 3500 students and over 100 staff and over 2000 students attended our event.
We chose to campaign at a school with the aim of showing the world that even though big pharmaceutical companies are stuck on intellectual rights, they are doing it to get big profit, ignoring lives of different people who are perishing on daily basis from Covid 19, leaving behind orphans and destitute families.
We reminded them that by doing so they are killing future intellectuals, future innovators, future philanthropists, thus, a future world.

On the other hand, KIMISAGARA market is another location in the same area which accommodates a big market and a high movement of people.

Local authority advised us to use the market instead of the taxi park because it is the most overcrowded area in a sub-urban area where a big number of the people are not vaccinated and needed to do so. At the area, there is a vaccination site which was running out vaccines. Our event helped to show the rest of the world that we always need vaccines despite the progress Rwanda has made so far in vaccinating citizens.

The event at KIMISAGARA Secondary school was marked by different actions including:
- Speeches from local leaders and TUMUKUNDE Initiative
- Sketches performed by students on Covid 19 related issues
- Messages from students mainly those affected by Covid 19 repercussions: they include orphans, those who are from destitute families due to Covid 19 and all of them converged on the idea that vaccines should be made available everywhere and to everyone, even their parents so that they resume their works and feed their children in return.