Quazi Faruque Ahmed from Bangladesh was the acting president of International Council of Social Welfare in 2003.  He became unable to serve as president because of political control of him in his home country and he had to resign 2nd of September that year.

The story is: He was a clever lawyer and brought a lot of women’s cases to  court in order to support women’s rights. This was not accepted by the men in political power in Dhaka and they threatened him in different ways. The start was to cut his international contact lines such as email, his telephone line was cut off and at last, he ended up in prison for a while.

I was elected by the Executive Committee to take over as president of ICSW in September 2003. At that time I was the vice president of ICSW Global and European president of ICSW. I became elected global president by the GA in 2004.

As President of ICSW, I am delighted that that the Global Agenda initiated in 2010 has now become a global movement. During the past months ICSW has conducted extensive consultation through our Regional and National bodies and I'm glad that we have finally arrived at the Global Agenda for next decade, 2020-2030. The two ICSW members of the task force led by Abye Tassé, Tapio Salonen and P.K. Shajahan, have offered an important contribution to the definition of the general frame "Co-building social transformation" and of the first theme. The choice of Ubuntu is especially timely at this juncture because of the global socio-political tensions heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. I look forward to the collaboration of the social welfare community to strengthen social solidarity and global connectedness through our joint effort.

Eva Holmberg-Herrström

Press Release - Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development, October 2020 (PDF - 307kb)

To enhance information and knowledge sharing, and to explore possible collaboration in regional/ global level to overcome COVID-19, ICSW North East Asia Region is going to host the “ICSW NEA COVID-19 Webinar on COVID-19: Welfare Challenges and Response” aiming to help the regional welfare sector to exchange valuable experience and identify good initiatives in response to the pandemic.

To ICSW members,

Please find attached a Consultation Document on the Global Agenda on Social Work and Social Development. This consultation process should be finished by end July so the Tripartite Task Force can continue working on it in August to present a plan for the 3 organisations in September.

We hope that the ICSW membership will engage broadly in this process both now and as we move further into the new decade.

Please observe the special email address for contributions at the end of the attached document.

Thank you and stay safe

Tom Johannesen
Executive Director, ICSW

Strengthening the Global Agenda 2020-2030 During the Global Pandemic Crisis and Beyond - REVISED GLOBAL CONSULTATION (pdf)