FOCUS
ACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE Issue 72 / Summer 2005 â‚Ź2.50 ISSN 0790-7249
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INSIDE Countdown to 2015 - the MDGs in pictures / Irish community TV and radio / Challenging racism on the radio / Bringing Kunle Back / The Mazarain - Southern voices from Pakistan
{ Welcome }
Contents: {03} Call to action {04} Community media {04} Reporting racism on {06} {08} {16} {18}
{ Call to action }
Co-ordinator’s welcome
the radio Bringing Kunle back MDG photo essay The Mazarain Action news
Credits & Contact details Focus magazine, established in 1978, now published four times a year, is Ireland’s leading magazine on global development issues. It is published by Comhlámh, Development Workers in Global Solidarity, Ireland, which works to promote global development through education and action. Focus is produced by an editorial collective of volunteers, with the support of the Comhlámh offices in Dublin and Cork. New volunteers are always welcome. Please contact Comhlámh if you are interested in any aspect of the production of this magazine. No prior experience is necessary. The views expressed in individual articles are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the collective or of Comhlámh. © Copyright Comhlámh 2005
Action 1: Create a ‘White Band Moment’ to Make Poverty History
Dear members, Welcome to Focus Action and to Comhlámh, 2005 is being billed as a special year to reduce world poverty. Last year was also a great opportunity, and the year before that, but not enough was done. What would make the difference? While there are many things others should do, there are at least a few things we can do. Comhlámh is here to offer you opportunities to be active in building the mandate for real change, addressing the root causes of poverty and inequality. With your help 2005 can live up to its great expectations.
With only ten years left to the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals, the Make Poverty History campaign was launched to remind governments that they have to get a move on if global poverty is to be tackled. This includes three ‘White Band Moments’ - July on Debt (G8 Summit), September on Aid (UN Summit), and December on Trade (WTO talks in Hong Kong). By creating a local White Band Moment, you can play a vital role in turning up the pressure on our leaders to keep their words. There are lots of ways to make a Moment: ●
Correspondence Comhlámh, 10 Upper Camden Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. Ph +353-1-4783490 Fax +353-1-4783738 E-mail: info@comhlamh.org Comhlámh, 55 Grand Parade, Cork, Ireland Ph +353-21-4275881 Fax +353-21-4275241 E-mail: comhcork@iol.ie Website address: www.comhlamh.org Comhlámh Northern Ireland The Citizenship Centre 34 Shaftesbury Square Belfast BT2 7DB Tel 90 200850 Email: comhlamhni@hotmail.com The editorial team wishes to thank all those who have collaborated in this issue of Focus. In particular we wish to thank our authors and contributors. We have tried, sometimes without success, to contact all relevant photographers and agencies to seek their permission to use photographs.We apologise to those we have been unable to trace. Editorial team: Conall O’Caoimh, Stephen Rigney, Thomas Geoghegan, Elizabet Canestro, Paula. Writing: Stephen Rigney, Conall O’Caoimh, Paul O’Mahoney. Design: Thomas Geoghegan, Alice Fitzgerald (www.thepixeldivision.com). The publication of Focus is grant aided by Trócaire and by the Development Education Unit of Development Cooperation Ireland.
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This year we celebrate Comhlámh’s 30th birthday. Surprisingly, when you look at what issues Comhlámh was busy campaigning on in its first decade, they directly parallel our lead campaigns today: Ireland’s commitment to aid; promoting fair trade; and welcoming to Ireland the Vietnamese ‘Boat People’. This summer edition of Focus takes a seasonal approach by including a photo-essay on the Millennium Development Goals. The goals are powerful in building political will to reduce poverty. However, they also have a down side, which is explored here. Progress towards the MDGs will be assessed by world leaders at the September UN Summit in New York. Among the reckoning will be Ireland’s back peddling on its commitment to reach the 0.7% UN target for aid. May I also take this opportunity to wish the very best to our former co-ordinator, Emma Lane Spollen, who has recently left us for an exciting new challenge.
Yours, Conall O'Caoimh Acting Co-ordinator
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Organise a local event to raise awareness of the MDG stock-taking Summit at the UN in September Buy a Make Poverty History wrist band from any Oxfam or Trócaire shop or online from www.trocaire.org - and wear
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it! Download a Make Poverty History banner from the campaign's website at www.makepovertyhistory.ie, and hang it in your workplace or use it as your email signature, Or sign the petition at www.keepourword.org Better yet, go for a media Moment! Construct a banner and wrap it around a building, wrap it around your friends or even wrap it around your town. Make sure you bring your camera or camera phone and send a picture of the event to g8@o2.ie Let your politicians know you are concerned that not enough is being done to Make Poverty History. Contact them locally while the Dáil is in recess for the summer. You will still reach Betie at An Taoiseach, Government Buildings, Upper Merrion St. Dublin 2.
Your actions could make history in 2005, the year we finally see the start of the end of poverty.
Action 2: Get your local media to talk about global issues In this issue, we describe how community radio and TV can be a powerful tool in the campaign for global justice. It is easier to get on air than you might think, and local media provides a great opportunity to explain world issues to the wider community.
series. You could ring the station to publicise the Make Poverty History campaign, for example, or to talk about some other ongoing campaign in your area. If you have worked overseas, do an interview about your experience and build in why we must Make Poverty History.
What you can do: Check out your community radio or TV station and decide which issues it should cover. Remember that community radio addresses a local audience-think about ways to connect the listeners to the concerns of distant places.
Of course, there is no reason why you can't make an issuesbased programme. Community stations have the facilities and the training resources available to help you. And contact comhlamhmedia@yahoo.ie.
Going on air need not involve a twelve part documentary
Whichever course you choose, let Comhlámh know - we would be delighted to lend you our support.
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{ Integrating Ireland }
{ Integrating Ireland }
Community media is an effective means of getting your message out, and it is easier to get involved than you might think
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of Wired FM’s remit is training students in practical radio skills. In addition, because Mary Immaculate is a teacher training college, the documentary series is part of a wider project which includes development education material for the classroom. “The perspective of community media is easy to tie into development education issues,” says Neasa. “For our audience, mainly students and teachers in training, it is important that they develop a view of the world that is not just student focussed, and Wired FM helps to do that.” Community radio is not just about serving a small and specialised audience, however. Inishowen radio serves a population of about 30,000 in north Donegal and Wired FM reaches most of Limerick city and suburbs. Other stations, such as Near FM in Dublin, broadcast to an even wider population.
Photo courtesy of www.sxc.hu
Are you frustrated when the radio blathers on about Dundrum shopping centre but stays silent on fair trade? Or that television is all Big Brother and no big issues? Well, instead of shouting at the radio, start speaking from it. Ireland has a network of community radio stations, and will soon have a community TV station for Dubliners, where you can broadcast your concerns. Not only are these stations required to feature the range of opinions of Irish society, but they are delighted to air them. “Our licence requires us to have 50% talk, so we’re always on the look out for magazine items,” says Fearghal O’Boyle of Inishowen community radio in Donegal. “Community radio needs more spoken contributions than music driven commercial stations. It’s easy to play 15 tracks in one hour.” Community radio tends to be more responsive to listeners’ concerns than the bigger stations. “Most community radio stations see themselves as community development organisations and are well disposed towards different opinions,” says Fearghal. For activists, community radio provides a great opportunity to interest local communities in global issues. Neasa McGann is station manager at Wired FM, the student radio station for Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, and is currently working on a series of documentaries with development education themes. The first programme of the series features the activities of the Limerick branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign and reveals how the actions of Limerick people can have a positive impact on international human rights issues. Neasa sees the role of Wired FM as a wider one than simply broadcasting information. As a college radio station, part
Nor are programmes limited to the one station. “One of the advantages of community radio is that programmes can be sent around free to all the other stations,” says Neasa. Wired FM’s series will also be rebroadcast on Limerick’s commercial radio station, Live 95 FM. So how can you get involved? It is easier, and much less intimidating, than you might think. The first and most important thing is to be prepared - know your material and be ready to discuss it on air. “Your currency is ideas,” says Neasa. “Think of an idea, write it down, think about who to contact and then get in touch.” Don’t be overwhelmed by the prospect of going on air. According to Fearghal, “It can be daunting to contact professional newsrooms but our newsrooms are community driven and are looking for the spoken word. Most community radio
participation is important and DCI encourages projects which include a multimedia dimension useable in a variety of settings. For anyone who wants to be on television, Dublin Community TV should be receiving a licence from the Broadcasting Council of Ireland very soon, as well as 15 million worth of funding from licence fees. As soon as DCTV receives its licence, it will host a series of workshops for individuals and organisations interested in getting involved. For Seán Ó Siochru, chairman of the DCTV steering committee, diversity is crucial for the new station. “We are determined to have room for immigrant communities and would like this to be a major plank of the station,” he says. Volunteer participation will also be important in producing material for the station. “Accessing community TV is no problem, if somebody wants to get the message out and make a programme with the support of the station,” says O Siochru. “It is guaranteed that it will be broadcast.” Ireland’s community media offers a
Challenge racism on the radio A popular radio show holds a phone-in discussion on welfare entitlements. A listener calls up to rant about asylum seekers taking people’s jobs and free prams.
range of opportunities for activists to educate the public. Whether through the radio or the television, there are more important messages to broadcast this summer than shopping centres and reality TV. Take advantage of community media to get out of the audience and tell people about the bigger picture. Words by Stephen Rigney Some useful contact addresses: ● Inishowen Community Radio, Donegal www.icrfm.ie ● Wired FM, Limerick www.wiredfm.mic.ul.ie ● Near FM, Dublin www.nearfm.ie ● Dublin Cable Television www.dctv.ie ● Community Media Network, Ireland www.cmn.ie ● Development Co-operation Ireland www.dci.gov.ie
Photo courtesy of www.sxc.hu
Raising your voice
presenters are not professionals but would see themselves as conversation facilitators instead of interrogators.” If you want to do more, community stations offer opportunities for programme making. But be prepared to get your hands dirty if you want to make your voice heard. “It is very easy to become a volunteer, but becoming a good volunteer requires effort on your behalf,” says Neasa. Funding is a big problem for most community media, but for activists with a global agenda, Development Co-operation Ireland can provide support. DCI’s Media Challenge Fund offers grants for a variety of media projects on development education issues. Wired FM’s current documentary series is the second project to be funded by DCI. Neasa stresses the importance of DCI to her work: “DCI funding is vitally important. While there is an art to writing applications, DCI are good to deal with and are helpful.” An important caveat to challenge fund grants is that media projects must make the wider community aware of links between local and global issues. Community
What do you do? #1: If you are ready to engage with the caller, ring the radio station. Take a note of what has been said. Check your facts. Be calm; an aggressive approach will do more harm than good. #2: One approach might be: “I thought asylum seekers only received food and board and 19.10 a week – is what you’re saying really true?” #3: If you are not comfortable calling, many phone shows have a text-in facility. You could text in a challenge to the caller. #4: If you are unhappy with the presenter’s attitude and feel that racist remarks are not being challenged, make note of the show, the time and day, and the gist of the conversation, then you can make a complaint to the radio station or directly to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission. Fact Asylum seekers are accommodated in hostels. They receive set meals at set times. They receive an allowance of €19.10 a week. They must pay for travel, toiletries and necessities out of this.
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{ Integrating Ireland }
Bringing Kunle back How a class of Leaving Cert students made sure their friend was not forgotten.
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{ Action 1: EPAs }
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Instead of sitting his Leaving Certificate this June, Kunle Elukanlo might well have been sitting somewhere in Nigeria. Kunle knows that he is lucky to have had the determined support of his classmates in Palmerstown Community School, who threw themselves into a phenomenally successful campaign to reverse his deportation. Kunle’s troubles started in mid-March, when what was supposed to be a routine visit to the immigration office ended up with him being stuck on a Nigeria bound plane with 34 other asylum seekers. The sixth year class in Palmerstown had no idea what had happened. Neal Burke, who began the campaign to return Kunle, did not expect that his friend would be treated so badly: “I first read of his deportation in the paper. I knew Kunle was gone to report to the immigration but I didn’t know after that what happened.” Lost and upset in Lagos, Kunle called Neal for help. It was to be a crucial phone call. “When he rang from Nigeria, we couldn’t believe it,” says Neal. “He rang while I was in school and I told everyone about it. We were in shock.” From shock, the class soon turned to action. “On Tuesday evening, we decided to do something, so we got a group to march
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on the Dáil. We painted a load of banners and went off.” While outside Leinster House, every politician they could get was signed up for the campaign. Socialist T.D. Joe Higgins put them in contact with Dublin radio stations with the result that the following day’s demonstration received wide coverage. Back in Palmerstown, Kunle’s classmates got the school and the wider community involved in the campaign. “We held a public meeting in the school and about 150 came. It was the whole school, Kunle’s workmates, people who knew him from the shop where he worked and people who just wanted to help.” They drew up an action plan and got people to write letters to local councillors and local radio stations. Neal quickly grew used to being interviewed: “At the start I was really nervous, but by the end I was saying what I wanted.” Meanwhile, the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, insisted his decision to deport Kunle would not be reversed. But the pressure was growing, in the media, from Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and on government and opposition benches in Leinster House. Neal’s favourite moment of the campaign was sitting with his classmates in
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the Dáil’s visitors gallery as the Minister for Justice defended his conduct over Kunle. “It was great. Six or seven TDs asked questions. The Minister looked up at us and you could see him sweating.” The demonstrations grew daily. The campaigners delivered over 8,000 signatures on a petition to the Department of Justice. In Lagos, Kunle was busy doing interviews: “Everything was going on, and the media started to get in touch with me. A photographer was even sent to take my picture.” Then, on 23 March, the Minister discovered that he had, after all, a reverse gear. Two weeks after he was put on the plane, Kunle heard the good news: “A radio station called to say that I could come back. It was amazing and I was shocked. I felt happy that day.” A boisterous welcome was waiting for Kunle in Dublin airport, but the celebrations could not last too long before preparations for the Leaving Cert had to be resumed. Kunle, at least has reasons to be happy. The 34 others who shared the journey back to Nigeria have much less cause for celebration. Words by Stephen Rigney
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Courses July/August 2005 The Organic Centre now offers the widest range of courses on organic, environmental and gardening themes anywhere in Ireland. These range from short one and two day courses for the hobby gardener to more intensive courses for the professional grower. We are very willing to tailor training to suit the needs of particular groups. Training can be delivered at The Organic Centre or at a location to suit your needs. Below is the list of courses running between July and August: July July July July
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To book or for a free 2005 programme of events call 071 9854338 or e-mail organiccentre@eircom.net or visit our web site www.theorganiccentre.ie
{ Action 1: EPAs }
Countdown to
Goal 2 Achieve universal primary education Below left: school children in Ghana have fun during their lunch break (Courtesy of www.bigphoto.com). Below right: Encouraged by the Rural Information Network, Edda Max and Ella May, brush their teeth in preparation for their pre-unit classes at the Early Childhood Development Valley Academy in Kamukunji slums, Kenya (2003 RUINET, Courtesy of Photoshare).
The Millennium Development Goals represent a unique ‘contract’ between North and South to halve poverty by the year 2015. Yet the clock is going “thump, thump, thump” while the world dithers over how to achieve the MDGs. Lauded by the development community in terms of ‘practical’ development goals, the MDGs are silent on human rights. To overcome some of the Goals’ weaknesses one country, Mongolia, recently set itself a new 9th Goal on “Fostering Democratic Governance and Strengthening Human Rights”.
Goal 1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger To aid or not to aid? Giving food aid other than in times of emergency undermines local food production. Yet stopping the current practice of rich countries off-loading their subsidised production as food aid would leave many urban poor even more vulnerable.
Above: a woman in Zanzibar harvests algae destined for use in common food and cosmetic products in Northern markets, a sustainable enterprise which employs 10,000 women across the island (2003 Philippe Blanc, Courtesy of Photoshare). Above right: A Catholic Relief Services partner stands by bags of maize in the Touloum refugee camp in eastern Chad before distribution to 4,000 refugees who have fled the conflict in Darfur, Sudan (2004 David Snyder/CRS, Courtesy of Photoshare).
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Goal 3 Promote gender equality and empower women Members of Stay Alive, a cooperative income-generating tailoring group in Kenya, take notes at a workshop on family planning and reproductive health. In addition to economic empowerment, Stay Alive also seeks to empower women in Kibera Slum, Nairobi, Kenya through informed decision making (2004 Courtney Crosson, Courtesy of Photoshare).
Goal 4 Reduce child mortality Madame Aissata Konaté, Director of Elizabeth Nursery School in Koulewondy, Guinea helps distribute vitamin A to the children in her nursery school. (2004 Laura Lartigue, Courtesy of Photoshare)
What’s the story with the Millennium Development Goals? The MDGs carry the strongest mandate ever to fight poverty. Ratified by 189 member states of the UN at the Millennium Summit in 2000, the goals set a global agenda for change. Comprising eight goals, the MDGs offer a welcome multi-dimensional set of targets, measured in human terms rather than economic indicators. The goals garner political will and build momentum to fight poverty. They offer a working definition of what is meant by development and add legitimacy to many targets sought for years by civil society groups. Most of the goals include concrete, time bound targets, which offer a common measure by which leaders and policies can be held accountable. The global deal that the MDGs represent, exchanges sustained political and economic reform in developing countries for direct support from the developed world in the form of aid, trade, debt relief and investment.
What about the other half? The goals lack ambition, only seeking to halve poverty by 2015. Targets are a ‘top down’ approach and may undermine grassroots processes. Much of what is being done in the name of the goals was happening anyway. The goals don’t differentiate between oppressive regimes or democratic ones. The MDGs promote a charity approach, with much focus on aid volumes but not on coherence. They are being used as a Trojan Horse to press controversial policies on the people of the South. Resistance to those policies may be interpreted as failure to work towards the MDGs. The single goal that commits industrialised countries is the only one without dates or measurable outcomes.
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Goal 5 Improve maternal health A member of CHETNA, the Centre for Health, Education, Training and Nutrition Awareness, promotes safe motherhood at a traditional ceremony for a pregnant woman in Gujarat, India. The pot, representing a piggy bank, is for savings that will go towards the child's birth. Mary (dressed in red and white sari in the centre), who is 21 years old and 4 months pregnant, is saving for private care for her delivery. This ceremony encourages women to prepare for labor (2003 Georgina Cranston, Courtesy of Photoshare).
Goal 6 Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases In coordination with the local NGO Sarvodaya, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has underwritten a $1.7 million dollar malaria control program in Sri Lanka. The program includes the distribution of 10,000 mosquito nets in Northern Sri Lanka. (2003 John Rae/The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria)
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Goal 7 Ensure environmental sustainability Limited fresh water in Haiti means that the same water source is used for bathing, washing clothes, and even drinking. A little girl shows disgust at seeing her brothe swim in the same drinking water her mother is using to wash clothes. Population Services International (PSI), the Hopkins' Center for Communication Programs (CCP), CARE, USAID, and Procter & Gamble have created the Safe Drinking Water Alliance to begin addressing water issues in Haiti (2003 Greg S. Allgood, Courtesy of Photoshare).
Goal 8 Develop a global partnership for development Above left: Campaigners from AidLink, Comhlamh, Concern, the Debt and the Development Coalition standing together at the launch of the Irish Make Poverty History campaign (2005 Comhlรกmh). Above Right: UN Millennium Summit, 2000: leaders of 189 countries agree a global partnership to halve poverty by 2015. An Taoiseach, Bertie Anern, announces Ireland's commitment to expand its aid budget to 0.7% of GNP by 2007 (2000 United Nations Photo Library).
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{ Southern Voices }
Reflections from Village 45 Our Comhlámh correspondent visits one of the world’s largest social movements.
I. Just after midnight, when the Mazarain scouts return with the all clear, we emerge from the fields to cross what Kipling called the “Broad, smiling river of life that is the Grand Trunk Road of India” which runs through Okara District, in the heartland of the Pakistani Punjab. On the far side we are met by more Mazarain who guide us on to village Four. Here Satar, a Mazarain leader, maps out the district’s 18 Mazarain villages and describes the most recent atrocities against these villages by their military landlords. In the last siege, Village Four was a major flashpoint. Villagers bear the bullet wounds in evidence, and the flag of the Mazarain flies over graves that dot these villages of those killed by army bullets. When the original villagers were migrated here a century ago - sometimes forcibly - by the British Raj, “mazarain” simply meant “tenant”. But since the rebellion, the people here have become the Anjuman Mazarain Punjab (AMP) – the “Tennant’s Association of the Punjab” – a non-violent mass movement that has spread beyond the 80,000 villagers of Okara to the villages of a million tenants across the Punjab. For nearly five years now, the Mazarain have refused to recognize the
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authority of their landlords. II. An elder points to an abandoned concrete building on the village edge, the former headquarters of the landlord’s foreman. Around us the sugarcane harvest is in full
“We have spent a hundred years among the sheep and only now have realized that we are lions who have been sleeping” swing as he recalls how each morning the tenants would sit in the yard awaiting the day’s instructions. “We sat before them like insects.” he says “But we no longer sit at their feet.” A buffalo-drawn cart of sugarcane is filled and leaves for market. It is the spring harvest which brings most of the sieges as the military – inheritors of the Okara villages’ tenancy from the British Empire – attempt to extract by force their rent in harvest shares. The AMP meet the sieges
and violence with their slogan: “Ownership or death. He who tills the land will reap its fruits”. But today all is quiet, and this harvest will reach its market. III. At a public meeting I speak of the Irish Social Forum. The kids laugh and jostle for space in the village square. I describe how representatives of the AMP (invited by Comhlámh and ATTAC) traveled to Ireland for the social forum, to speak of their struggle. I relay the messages we collected in Ireland for the AMP. Messages of solidarity, support and love mixed with invocations of the Irish struggle for land reform. I assure them that should the authorities launch another siege, we will make their voices heard in Ireland. The applause is thunderous. “If not for the foreigners” one elder tells me, though no doubt exaggerating, “They would have killed us all”. I also tell them of a leaked document that show how the EU is pushing for the liberalisation of land in Pakistan in ongoing trade negotiations. IV. In summer 2004, Human Rights Watch publishes a scathing report documenting
Scenes from the Mazarain villages of Okara. (Photographs by Subaltern Productions)
the authorities’ practices of intimidation, arrest, murder and torture againt the Mazarain. It includes accounts of arrest and sometimes torture of children as young as five. The authorities respond with more arrests. V. The rebellion of the AMP centres on the landlords’ attempts to transform the semifeudal system of tenancy into “modern” commercial contracts. But in commodifiying their labour, the contracts negate a century of tenancy, and remove all fixity of tenure. In them the Mazarain see only dispossession and death. In the context of such “modernization”, the EU’s desire for land liberalization would then open tenants to competition with multinational capital intensive agriculture, directly or otherwise. Abstruse trade negotiations in Brussels and Geneva seldom enter into the daily life and death struggle of the AMP. And yet, the Mazarain know that the price they receive for their buffalo milk has fallen as Nestlé’s entrance into the market undermines the traditional milk distribution. They know
how the costs of inputs soar, while the price of produces falls. And it’s hard to sell their potatoes – though it’s a good harvest this year - because of some international trade barrier or other. Adding to these pressures, the government’s Corporate Agriculture Farming bill dismantles even the inadequate land reform measures that followed independence, paving the way for a capital intensive model of farming that would hold no place for the communities of the AMP. In other districts, AMP landlords are state owned companies who introduce their “modernizing” contract system ahead of privatization – privatization explicitly demanded by foreign donors as a condition of development loans. Understanding of the global dimensions of their struggle emerges slowly, but unmistakably. They know that they are fighting not just for land reform, but for the future of their communities, and for another model of development. VI. In Village 45, a storyteller speaks of a lion separated from its family and raised by
sheep. It grows and lives as if a sheep until, one day, another lion passes. The second lion leads the first to the canal. They gaze at their reflections, and realization strikes. “We have spent a hundred years amongst the sheep”, says the storyteller, “and only now have realised that we are lions who have been sleeping.”
For more information on the AMP, visit www.prmpakistan.org Human Rights Watch report on abuses of the AMP: www.hrw.org/reports/2004/pakistan0704/ On solidarity with the AMP from Ireland ampsolidarity@yahoo.co.uk Although yet to be confirmed, indications are that Comhlámh’s campaigning has suceeded in the EU softening is demand in WTO negotiations for the liberalisation of agricultural land in Pakistan and other developing countries.
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{ Action News }
20 million people in 80 countries mobilise for Trade Justice In April, 20 groups across Ireland joined 10 million people across 80 countries in the largest and most international mobilisation for trade justice ever seen. Kenya observed a day of prayer for trade justice and marched on the EU offices in Nairobi, while over a hundred Bolivian artists painted murals for trade justice across the capital. 12,000 Brazilian farmers marched to meet with President Lula, Ghanaian farmers presented their government with chickens wearing necklaces with messages of trade justice, 25,000 people gathered outside Downing Street in London at 4am to “wake up the Government” with thunderous shouts of “Trade justice now!” Massive rallies filled the streets of capitals across India and Bangladesh, Filipino farmers launched a “Grain March”, mock funeral processions flowed through the streets of Brussels to call for the “death of unfair trade”. And in Ireland, more than 20 groups across the country added their voices. The week was launched by the cast of a play at the Abbey Theatre and a Trade Justice Quiz. The Comhlamh Action Network organised a Lotto Lunch for politicians who having drawn the name of a country, were treated to an elaborate dinner or a plain bowl of rice in proportion to the wealth of the country drawn. Comhlámh Northern Ireland organised a public talk
Join Comhlámh Comhlámh is a membership based organisation working to promote global solidarity through support for returned development workers, development education and campaigning. Comhlámh was founded 30 years ago by returned development workers. Membership is open to all who are interested in development issues.
What you can help Comhlámh achieve z Promote development issues as part of our Development Education Group (Dublin) and Global Impact Group (Cork) that provide development training for development educators z Raise public awareness and campaign for fairer trade and food security through our Trade Justice Group (Dublin) and Comhlámh Action Network (Cork) z Welcome home returning development workers and emergency development workers as part of our Services Group (Dublin, Cork and Belfast) z Raise public debate on good practise in aid and development work including workshops for people considering development work z To support our work with refugees and asylum seekers link with Integrating Ireland z Challenge racism - join the ‘Le Chéile’ project z Join our group of ‘Campaigning Artists’ z Become a member of the editorial team of this magazine by joining the Focus Group
‘No it’s MY roast beef!’: a hungry Sen. Mary O’Rourke gazes longingly at Sen. Terry Leyden’s feast at Trade Justice Ireland’s Lotto Lunch, attended by politicians and campaigners alike to illustrate unfair international trade rules
in Belfast with an African speaker. Other groups organised street theatre and public “Vote for Trade Justice” polls as did Fairtrade groups in six towns around the country organised. Students in Maynooth, Galway and several Dublin colleges held events as part of the week. Comhlamh activists approached community radio
stations who broadcast a Comhlamh Media program on the event, and even in the mainstream media, coverage was unprecedented. Comhlámh Trade Justice group followed-up the week with a one day course: An Introduction to Trade Justice.
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Comhlámh Membership Form {For the Calendar Year 2005} Yes, I would like to renew my membership of Comhlámh:
SOLAS 2005 - November conference celebrating 30 years of Comhlámh, Kimmage and AfRI This year, Comhlámh, AfrI (Action from Ireland) and the Development Studies Centre in Kimmage Manor are all celebrating 30 years of making a difference. To mark this special and notable achievement, the three organisations are co-hosting a conference in All Hallows College, Drumcondra, Dublin, on November 11 and 12. The event will include international guest speakers, an enticing series of workshops, and much exchange of information and debate.
More details on SOLAS 2005 as they are confirmed, so please pencil it into your diary. When:11-12 November 2005 Where: All Hallows College, Drumcondra, Dublin Info: More details as soon as they are available on www.comhlamh.org, www.dsckim.ie and www.afri.buz.org
Stand Up Against Racism Mark it in your Diaries Now! Following the amazing success of previous years, Stand Up Against Racism returns to Vicar Street on July 29th featuring the very best in Comedy and raising vital funds for Comhlámh’s Anti-Racism project and ‘Le Cheile: Artists in Ireland Against Racism’. Contact Alice-Mary Higgins at the Comhlámh office to book your tickets.
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€25 overseas
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20,000 people in 80 countries joined the Global Week of Action for Trade Justice 1. Jumping through hoops - Ben Turner and Dara O’Brian illustrate the insanity of global trade rules 2. African Youth Conference Against Hunger demonstrate in the greater Banjul area, Gambia 3. National mobilisation of the Brazil Landless Workers’ Movement in Brasília 4. The stars of hit Abbey play Improbable Frequency pull theatrical shapes for Trade Justice Ireland 5. Make Poverty History campaigners makes themselves heard outside the Houses of Parliament, London
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