[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]ASSOCIATION SOCIETÀ INFORMAZIONE

• Società INformazione was set up as a non-profit association in 2001 and was officially registered on 31/07/2003. In 2020, under the new Italian law on Third Sector Bodies, it became an Association for Social Promotion.
• In 2003 the Association started working on a research and training project culminating in the annual publication of the Report on Global Rights, which reached its 17th edition in 2019. The volume is published and distributed in bookshops by the publisher Ediesse. It has been endorsed by a network of major Italian associations actively committed to the issues dealt with, specifically peace, human rights, social rights, civil rights, labour, environment, immigration, third sector, social solidarity, incarceration, addiction.
• With a view to offering integrated tools for information, culture, training and social awareness on the above mentioned issues, Società Informazione ONLUS has also created the websites dirittiglobali.it and www.globalrights.info. The first website currently contains an archive of over 73,000 articles and documents, the latter contains about 7,000 entries. In both websites the materials have always been made available online free of charge.
• Since 2014, the international magazine “Global Rights” has also been published in three languages (English, Spanish, Italian) and can be downloaded free of charge from the website.
• Over the years, Società INformazione has promoted, implemented and participated in numerous public awareness-raising initiatives on the issues it covers, in particular human rights, social policies, imprisonment, discrimination against Roma and Sinti populations, and the conditions of peripheral metropolitan areas. Within this framework of activities, the Association has contributed to promoting the Rete Nazionale di Informazione dal e sul carcere, the National Prison Information Network from and about prisons. The Association is one of the promoters of the Tavolo Rom Milano, the Milan Roma Table on problems of urban marginality and discrimination. The Table is a coordination structure participated by groups, associations and organisations committed to welcoming, living together and supporting Roma groups across the country and in camps.

Società INformazione has carried out many activities over time. Among others:

• In 2008 and 2009, in collaboration with Teatro Litta in Milan, it created and produced two plays on human, social and labour rights issues
• In 2014 it was a partner of the first national independent publishing fair, promoted by the national Observatory of Independent Publishers
• Since 2015 it has collaborated with the Museo della memoria carceraria in Saluzzo, the Museum of Prison Memory and participates, as a partner, in the project Gli archivi della memoria carceraria: le carte e le voci (The archives of prison memory: documents and voices), promoted by the Department of Law of the University of Turin
• In 2017 and 2019 it was one of the promoters of the Festival LiberAzioni – arti dentro e fuori (Festival LiberAzioni – arts inside and outside) held in Turin, where it organised cultural activities inside the local prison and in many districts of the city. On this occasion the Association awarded the Global Rights Prizes to inmates among others, as part of the literary and film competitions held by the Festival.
• In addition to traditional sectors of social interest, the Association has also enhanced its commitment to cultural and international activities, with a focus on peace, conflict resolution and human rights. Specifically:
• In 2009 it launched the El Topo project in collaboration with ARCI Nazionale and ARCI Venezia. This is a project aimed at fostering dialogue and cultural exchange, strengthening youth participation, through the production of music in Cuba, in the Vieja and Havana Centre neighbourhoods in Havana, for promoting young artists.

In addition to financing a website and the creation of a small recording studio in Havana, in November 2010 the Association organised a tour for a Cuban youth band, Cuentas Claras, in Italy. The group had the opportunity to perform in ten Italian cities and to meet many groups and producers (Sud Sound System, 99 Posse, Assalti Frontali, among many others). The tour was documented in the film Con lo Que Tenemos (by Bibi Bozzato and Orsola Casagrande). The band also took part in the CD-Rom Addosso!, created by Ribess and ANPI for the April 25 national holiday celebrations.

• Also in 2009 Società INformazione was one of the promoters of the Planet Kurdistan Pavilion (organised around three themes: identity, language, borders), at the 53rd Venice Biennale, realised with the City of Venice and the Consortium comprising the Province, the City and Region, and the Marco Polo System. The event brought together 13 Kurdish artists from the four parts into which Kurdistan is divided, as well as from the diaspora. During the five months of the international art exhibition the Pavilion was the venue for numerous meetings that gave rise to various projects, such as meetings of Kurdish, Basque, Irish, Mexican and Italian writers; a tribute to the great Kurdish writer Yasar Kemal that took place at the Palazzo Ducale; activities by the Children’s Choir of Sur (a district of Diyarbakir, in Turkish Kurdistan, almost completely destroyed by the army in 2015); meetings of musicians and various art workshops.
• In November 2009 the Association collaborated with the First International Peace Conference, held in Venice, which was attended by Basque, Kurdish and Irish representatives and the South African international peace mediator Brian Currin. In the presence of the city’s highest authorities, the Basque Left announced at this Conference its historic decision to pursue a solution to the conflict exclusively through peaceful means. On this occasion representatives of the Kurds also announced a roadmap towards negotiations that would lead, a few months after the Conference, to the first official government contacts with the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan.
• On the occasion of the Kurdistan Pavilion the website Talking Peace (now included in globalrights.info), was inaugurated, as an Observatory on the Irish, Kurdish, Basque and later Colombian peace processes in particular.
• In February 2011, Società INformazione organised the Second International Peace Conference, in collaboration with the Peace Centre of the City of Venice. In addition to a session dedicated to the ongoing peace processes (Basque and Kurdish), one session of the Conference was dedicated to local governance. Basque, Kurdish, Italian and Irish mayors and administrators, as well as the former mayor of Belfast, participated. On this occasion, several twinning projects between cities in different countries were defined, and a number of projects were launched, for example on waste collection of recyclable materials. Società INformazione is now working on a Third International Peace Conference.
• In order to widen the scope of the original Talking Peace website (adding the analysis of other peace processes, in particular the Colombian one) and to disseminate the work carried out with the Global Rights Report in a variety of languages, in 2014 the website www.talkingpeace.org was included in the www.globalrights.info project carried out for several years by Società INformazione. This is a multimedia and multilingual platform (in English, Spanish and Italian) and an international magazine (the “Global Rights Magazine”) which aims on the one hand to fulfil its mission as an active observatory on peace processes, promoting meetings and practical initiatives, and on the other hand to provide analysis, information and interpretations of issues that are considered fundamental for the creation of a culture of rights. One issue of the “Global Rights Magazine”, in May 2014, was dedicated to the Colombian and Kurdish peace processes; the December 2015 issue focused on a year of relations between the US and CUBA following the announcement by Presidents Obama and Castro of the resumption of diplomatic relations. The December 2016 issue was dedicated to the peace process in Colombia. Other later issues were dedicated to liberation cultures, with the participation of writers from many countries. The last issue, in the summer of 2020, was dedicated to incarceration around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• In 2014 the Association participated first in the creation and then in the distribution of the CD-Rom “Justice for Roboski”, released at the end of 2013 to denounce the violation of the human rights of the Kurdish population by the Turkish government, and in particular the massacre that occurred on 28 December 2011, when Turkish warplanes bombed the district of Uludere/Roboski causing the death of 34 civilians, 18 of whom were teenagers and children.
• The belief that culture is a fundamental component for the creation of a culture of rights and peace, for the encounter between peoples, for solidarity and mutual relations, led “Global Rights Magazine” to launch an exchange project in 2015 involving writers from Ireland, Kurdistan, Turkey, Italy, Cuba, Uruguay, Colombia, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Spain and the Basque Country.
• With a person on site, the Association has closely followed the peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP in Havana since 2014. The Association not only reported on that process but also participated in the creation of a kindergarten for the children of ex-combatants and indigenous communities in the Cauca.
• Since 2017 the Association developed and coordinated a series of initiatives to promote and spread Kurdish cinema. Specifically, it did this by supporting the BANOS FILM project in Serekaniye (after the Turkish invasion in Qamishlo) and the Rojava International Film Festival. This initiative gave birth to a collaboration with the Commune of Cinema of Rojava, presented in Venice in February 2020 and on the website streeen.org.

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Associazione Società INformazione – ONLUS ● via Tognazzi 15 C, 20128 Milano – Italy ● e-mail: societainformazione@dirittiglobali.it

Siti web: https://www.dirittiglobali.it ● https://www.globalrights.info ● e-mail: info@dirittiglobali.it

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