Justice Magazine: The Catholic Social Justice Quarterly - Summer 2013

THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL JUSTICE QUARTERLY June-August 2013 www.justicemagazine.org @justicemagazine

JUSTICE magazine

The fight for Yukpa justice Haiti: Food and water security Clergy march on Westminster Seafarers and modern piracy Respect for prisoners

ENDING POVERTY Achieving JFK’s dream. Justin Kilcullen, page 24

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THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL JUSTICE QUARTERLY

JUSTICE magazine

Contents June-August 2013

Justice Magazine is a non-profit making quarterly publication that reports on and aims to further interest in the Catholic Church’s social teaching.

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Justice Magazine does not charge for the magazine in print, the amount payable goes directly to the printers for production and postage.

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6 10 14 18 22 24 28 34 38 40 44 46 50 56 60

Giving help to those in peril on our seas Helping improve life for exploited workers Respecting prisoners Yukpa justice fight goes on No return to the workhouse Ending poverty and hunger: An achievable aim Providing security for food and water Speak out to end a scandal The price of corporate greed How art and drama can make a difference The last words of Dr King Turning back the clock on domestic workers’ rights A visible presence in the campaign to end hunger Who will look after society’s most vulnerable?

Final thought

Editor Lee Siggs Editorial advisers Jonathan Houdmont Nana Anto-Awuakye For regular news updates from Justice Magazine, remember to visit www.justicemagazine.org

Help spread the word by retweeting @justicemagazine

Acknowledgments The editor wishes to thank all the agencies and individuals who have submitted articles and photos.

The next issue of Justice Magazine will be published in September. Please write to editor@justicemagazine.org with ideas for future articles or to suggest improvements.

JUSTICE MAGAZINE 3

News JUNE 2013

The Pope has said that there is no worse material poverty than preventing people from the dignity of being able to work. Pope Francis was speaking at the annual international conference of the Centesimus Annus - Pro Pontefice Foundation, which was established 20 years ago by Blessed John Paul II. The theme of this year’s gathering was Rethinking Solidarity for Work: Challenges of the 21st Century. “The current economic and social crisis adds urgency to this ‘rethinking’,” the Pope said. “It is a phenomenon, like that of unemployment - the lack and the loss of a job - that is spreading like wildfire in large areas of the west and that is alarmingly extending the boundaries of poverty. And there is no worse material poverty, I would like to emphasise, than that which deprives someone of earning their living, deprives them of the dignity of work.” Francis said the problem was not just affecting the southern regions of the world but the entire planet. “Hence the need to ‘rethink solidarity’, no longer as simple assistance to the poor but as a global rethinking of the entire system, seeking ways to reform and correct it in a manner consistent with fundamental human rights, the rights of all men and women. This word ‘solidarity’, which isn’t seen in a good light by the economic world - as if it were a bad word - needs to have its deserved social citizenship restored.” He added: “Chasing the idols of power, profit, and money over and above the value of the human person has become a basic rule of operation and a decisive criterion of

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organisation. It has been forgotten, and still we forget, that above business logic and the parameters of the market lies human beings and that there is something owed to humans as humans, in virtue of their profound dignity: the opportunity to live in dignity and to actively participate in the common good.”

PHOTO” Mazur/www.catholicchurch.org.uk

No worse poverty than preventing people from earning a living, says Pope

Eritrean refugees protest against the regime in Asmara Nearly 3,000 Eritrean refugees have protested in the camp of Berahle in the Afar region of Ethiopia, a few kilometres from the border with Eritrea.

The protesters wanted to draw the attention of the international community on what they call “the genocide committed by the government in Asmara against the minority Afar.” “We appeal to the United Nations and the international community to protect the Eritrean Afar from the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by this brutal regime,” read a statement from the refugees. In an interview with the Sudan Tribune, Rashid Saleh, president of the youth association of the refugee camp of Berahle, said that the demonstration was organised to coincide with the 22nd anniversary of the independence of Eritrea noting that “despite Eritrea gained independence over 20 years ago, its population has not yet been released.”

Severe penalties needed to curb rapes in Somaliland Official estimates have said there were about 5,000 cases of rape in Somaliland in 2012, compared to 4,000 in 2011.

Figures from the Sexual Assaults Referral Centre (SARC), indicated the increasing trend. The reported

Human values must come first in the workplace, Francis said cases occurred mainly in areas near Hargeisa. More severe penalties and less dependence on traditional justice systems could help end the growing issue in Somaliland, the centre said. Only a few victims seek treatment immediately after the attacks. Many victims fail to reach the centre within 24 hours of the incidents and evidence is no longer easily visible. Many children are also among the victims of the atrocities; the last reported case involved a six-year-old boy, displaced in the area of Hargeisa, who was raped by a family member. Many incidents are not reported because of agreements between the families of the victims and the torturers.

Bishop on humanitarian mission in Syria Mexican Bishop Raul Vera Lopez is part of a delegation of 12 observers who are to attempt to enter Syria this month to collect data and information on the atrocities and human rights violations taking place in the country torn apart by civil war. Bishop Lopez’s mission in Syria will take place after the spiritual

retreat that the bishop is preaching to the Dominican community in Puerto Rico.

Religious protest over violence against Mapuche children in Chile A group of men and women religious and priests engaged in the pastoral work with Mapuche communities, made up of the original Amerindian inhabitants of central and southern Chile and southern Argentina, have reported serious violence by government forces against children of the ethnic group.

The religious insist that despite the complaints against the police and the sentences of the courts of justice, the fundamental rights of children continue to be violated. The communities of Trapilwe and Mawidache have suffered raids with children abused in their homes by masked agents. “We urge the National Service of Minors (SENAME) to rule on these facts, since its mission is to protect and restore the rights to children and adolescents,” the religious said, adding that a vicious circle of violence was being fed instead of promoting

justice in the affected communities. “It seems that this way of behaving is becoming a normal way of acting on behalf of the institutions that should be the first to respect the rights of children and the elderly in Mapuche communities,” the religious concluded.

Peace talks: First agreement on land distribution Colombian bishops have said the issue of land is central to building true peace in the country as talks between the government and FARC rebels continued. The bishops presented a message through Cardinal Rubén Salazar Gómez, president of the Episcopal Conference of Colombia (CEC). The bishops expressed satisfaction on behalf of the Church with regards to the agreement on the agrarian question covered during the talks. “We hope that the agreement reached becomes the effective implementation of a policy of agricultural development that is able to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of peasant families,” the bishops said. Cardinal Gomez added that he hoped that the delegates of the government and the FARC “are able, through transparent dialogue that seeks the common good, to continue the challenging task of determining the basis for the end of the armed conflict.”

Defending rights of Christians in European societies The secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has delivered an address at the Conference on Tolerance and Non-Discrimination in Albania dealing with the issue of combating intolerance and discrimination against Christians and members of other religions. The conference was organised by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Bishop

Mario Toso said: “At the last high-level conference on tolerance and nondiscrimination, held three years ago in Astana, the participating states committed, among other things, to counter prejudice, discrimination, intolerance, and violence against Christians and members of other religions, including minority religions, which continue to be present in the OSCE region.

They were also called to address the denial of rights, exclusion, and marginalisation of Christians and members of other religions in our societies.” He added: “Unfortunately, examples of intolerance and discrimination against Christians have not diminished but rather increased in various parts of the OSCE region despite a number of meetings and conferences on the subject organised also by the OSCE and Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).” He said it was regretful that “a sharp dividing line” had been drawn between religious belief and religious practice so that Christians are frequently reminded in public discourse that they can believe whatever they like in their own homes or heads, and largely worship as they wish in their own private churches, but they simply cannot act on those beliefs in public. “This is a deliberate twisting and limiting of what religious freedom actually means, and it is not the freedom that was enshrined in international documents, including those of the OSCE beginning with the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, stretching through the 1989 Final Vienna Document and the 1990 Copenhagen Document, and including the 2010 Astana Summit Commemorative Declaration,” Bishop Toso said.

Pope Francis: ‘We are not slaves to the mafia’ Pope Francis has recalled the

life of Fr Giuseppe Puglisi, priest and martyr, who was killed by the mafia in 1993 and proclaimed a blessed on May 25. “Don Puglisi,” the Holy Father said, “was an exemplary priest, especially dedicated to pastoral work with young people. Teaching them according to the Gospel, he snatched them away from a life of crime. For this [the mafia] tried to defeat him by killing him. In fact, however, he is the one who won, with the Risen Christ. I think of the many sufferings of the men and women, and even of children, who are exploited by the different mafias, who exploit them by forcing them into work that makes them slaves, with prostitution, and with many societal pressures.

The mafias are behind this exploitation and slavery. Let us pray to the Lord to convert the hearts of these people.

They cannot do this. Brothers and sisters, they cannot make us slaves.”

North Korean event welcomed by archbishop North Korea has formally proposed to South Korea to host a joint event to commemorate the inter-Korean summit of 2000, which marked the beginning of a detente and rapprochement phase between the two countries. The summit of 2000 ended with an historic agreement between the leaders Kim Dae-jung (South Korea) and Kim Jong-il (North Korea) which provided for economic cooperation, meetings of separated families and renewed dialogue between the governments.

North Korea proposes to celebrate that event in the town of Kaeseong or Mount Geumgangsan. The two countries held joint annual celebrations in Mount Geumgangsan from 2001 until 2008, when the crisis of the bilateral relations marked the interruption. According to observers, Pyongyang’s

proposals indicated a willingness to resume joint projects. The proposal comes at a time when the tension between the two Koreas is high, and after threats of a “nuclear war” from Pyongyang. Archbishop Igino Kim Hee-joong, Archbishop of Kwanju, said: “Of course, the government of Seoul said it will evaluate the proposal well, since it affects the start of a sincere process of rapprochement. On our behalf we hope to resume the work of interreligious dialogue soon; we sent to Pyongyang the proposal for an inter-Korean meeting of religious leaders, such as those held in previous years.”

Patriarch urges goodwill to solve Palestinian conflict The Patriarch of Jerusalem has said unless the international community, the nations in the region and the interested parties act truthfully and with goodwill to bring about peace, the conflict in Palestine “will continue to feed aggression, oppression, deceit, double standards and occupation”. Patriarch Fouad Twal said: “There is no doubt that the Palestinian problem is the focus of all conflict in the Middle East for the last one hundred years. This is the truth that we cannot circumvent”. The patriarch was speaking at a conference being held in Beirut with regards to the presence and witness of Christians in the Middle East. Patriarch Twal referred to the historical phase of the so-called “Arab Spring” as a time when the Middle East entered “a dangerous and bloody vortex”. “We, children of the Holy Land understand too well the meaning of words such as displacement, expulsion, murder, injustice, evacuation and exile,” he added.

Source: Fides

JUSTICE MAGAZINE 5

Feature Piracy

No longer simply in the realm of fiction, Greg Watts reports on how the Apostleship of the Sea is continuing to help seafarers cope with the scourge of piracy.

Giving help to those in peril on our seas Pirates are part of modern mythology.

Small boys still love dressing up as them at parties, and the Pirates of the Caribbean films grossed millions at the box office. But piracy is not just the stuff of fiction. Today for seafarers sailing in some oceans of the world being attacked by pirates, and held hostage or even killed, is a reality.

Sr Marian Davey, Apostleship of the Sea port chaplain in East Anglia, knows well the reality of piracy and how it affects seafarers and their families. “Over the last two years or so I have had many conversations with seafarers who have had to experience the anxiety and fear of sailing through piracy waters as the ship makes its way to deliver its cargo to European ports,” she said.

“A while back I spent some time with a crew in Felixstowe whose ship had been threatened by pirates. One pirate attempted to climb onboard, but fell off, as the captain made a 6 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

series of movements with the ship, causing him to lose his grip.

“Meanwhile there was a speedboat full of pirates with a lot of weapons ready to fire at the ship. In this case, it ended well, as the ship was able to speed away from the scene and out of reach of their guns.

“When the ship arrived in Felixstowe three weeks later quite a few of the Filipino crew were still recovering

from the experience. But they said they had no choice but to get on with the next stage of the voyage in order to earn a living wage to support their families back home.”

The number of attacks on ships peaked in 2011 at 243. According to the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre, the world’s only manned centre receiving and disseminating reports of piracy and armed robbery around the globe

PHOTO: APOSTLESHIP OF THE SEA

Countries are working together in missions to combat pirates

24 hours a day, up until March 2013 there had been 47 attacks on ships and three hijackings.

Somalia, one of the world’s poorest countries, has become synonymous with pirates. Some of its waters, especially the Gulf of Aden, have become the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world. In 2009 pirates off the coast of Somalia kidnapped Kent couple Rachel and Paul Chandler

‘‘

Once seafarers know they are about to enter piracy waters the tension builds up and anxiety increases

during a round-the-world sailing trip.

They were held captive for more than a year and only set free after a huge ransom was paid.

Piracy isn’t confined to Somalia, however. Ships have also been attacked in the western Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and the Gulf of Guinea.

When pirates attack, seafarers are usually held prisoner on their own hijacked vessels, some of which are employed as mother ships from which the pirates launch further raids.

“Once seafarers know they are about to enter piracy waters the tension builds up and anxiety increases as procedures and instructions are issued by the captain and senior officers to maximise safety during the passage,” said Sr Marian.

“So even if there is no sighting of pirates on a particular voyage the potential for danger and risk to life heightens their anxiety levels for days prior to entering piracy waters.

“This means they are unable to sleep or rest properly as everyone is on high alert during the passage.

Needless to say, the imagination at such times as this can also go into overdrive.

“They speak of feeling very vulnerable as they are aware that there are very few navy patrols available to help in these situations. As macho men they try to hide the fear as much as possible from each other.

“Often a seafarer will ask me to pray with him to give thanks for a safe passage through piracy waters and for protection and blessings as they make the return trip through the same dangerous conditions.”

Most seafarers come from developing countries. They feel they will let their families down if they return home without completing their contract, as they may be the only wage earner in both their own and the extended family.

Piracy was one of the issues discussed at Apostleship of the Sea’s 23rd international congress held in the Vatican last November. Leading maritime lawyer James Gosling explained that negotiating with pirates over ransoms is complex.

“The way in which the negotiations go is basically the pirates starting at a ridiculously high figure, and the JUSTICE MAGAZINE 7

Feature Piracy

owner then edging slowly upwards. These are not what you and I would call normal commercial negotiations.

“In other words, you don’t start with one figure, counter at another, and then finish somewhere roughly halfway between. If an owner comes up too fast, or gives too high a figure, the pirates have been known to renege on the figures they have come down to and go back up to a higher figure, which is known as the ‘yo-yo effect’.

“The negotiations are always difficult, and no-one should underestimate the strain that this puts on owners. We have known several owners who have had nervous breakdowns and heart attacks because of the stress that has been caused. During the course of the negotiations, there will be very difficult times with the crew forced to plead and pass on various ultimatums, including the threat of the use of torture and execution.

“It is not a pretty picture, and whilst in the early days in 2007/8 the use of threatened torture and mock executions was fairly rare, I have to say that it has become more frequent, and the abuse has become worse.”

The IMB Piracy Reporting Centre say that as of March 2013 Somali pirates were holding five vessels and 65 hostages.

Gosling pointed out that there were many legal problems about paying a ransom to pirates. “Particular pressures are put by the establishment on the banks, and the problem of trying to obtain cash of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from a

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The thing that has truly disturbed me is the increasing move from governments in the First World to try to ban ransom payments, and there are current moves afoot in the US and the UK to do just this

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The Apostleship of the Sea’s chaplains and supporters provide vital help to seafarers

bank and then transporting it around the world to be dropped on a ship in Somalia, should not be underestimated in terms of difficulty.

“The US passed a Presidential Order in April 2010, putting a whole lot of Somalis on a Sanctions List, and this was reflected by similar, but not identical, orders from the UN, the EU, the UK and others.

“On top of this are the very stringent money laundering regulations that most developed countries now have, together with export of cash prohibitions, and the illegality of any payment to terrorists and the difficulty of trying to show that the people you are paying are criminals and not terrorists.

“However, notwithstanding all these problems, we have managed to raise, in each of the cases in which we have been involved, the appropriate amount of cash in dollars from banks and to have that transported legally across the world through many different air spaces and jurisdictions.

Who pays the ransom is a complicated question, he added. “At the end of the day, it is the ship owner. He might, in his turn, be able to recover that from an insurer or from a cargo interest or from a charterer, but it is he who carried that heavy responsibility.

“In these difficult times, many owners are severely stretched, and several

have gone out of business as a result of piracy. Although there are exceptions, very rarely will an insurer or cargo owner pay the money up front. The ship owner has to pay and then recover. If you take into account the fact that many of the ships are heavily mortgaged and rely on daily hire from the charterer (which usually stops once a vessel is hijacked), and the fact that a mortgagee bank will still require daily payment, and where the crew still have to be paid their weekly or monthly salaries, you can imagine the financial difficulties on an owner.”

He said that in some cases families of seafarers have tried to raise the ransom money. “What people tend to forget is that the majority of seafarers in this world come from the so-called Third World as opposed to the First World.

“The thing that has truly disturbed me is the increasing move from governments in the First World to try to ban ransom payments, and there are current moves afoot in the US and the UK to do just this.”

He argued that the approach of these First World countries to the payments of ransoms for seafarers is hypocritical, as they will turn a blind eye to payment for executives of large corporations who are kidnapped and where ransoms are paid.

Martin Foley, national director of the Apostleship of the Sea in Great Britain, explained that piracy thrives in so-called failed states, like Somalia, where the breakdown of law and order allows criminal gangs, including pirates, to operate with near impunity.

“The Royal Navy and other fleets continue to patrol piracy-affected waters to protect merchant ships and deter and capture pirates. However, the scourge of piracy can only be tackled effectively by international action, coordinated by the United Nations, to foster democracy and good governance in countries like Somalia.

“Yet we don’t tend to hear much about the plight of seafarers attacked by pirates in our mainstream media.

It is only when individuals like Rachel and Paul Chandler are kidnapped that the reality of what hostages endure is brought home to us.”

Greg Watts is a freelance journalist

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JUSTICE MAGAZINE 9

Feature Mexico

America needs fresh fruit and vegetables, but that mustn’t come at a cost to the Mexican workers who pick them, writes Robyn Fieser.

Helping improve life for exploited workers Elvira Gonzalez Gonzalez has worked at a succession of bad factory jobs over the years to keep her family afloat in the bustling border town of San Luis, Mexico.

She’s always wanted to exchange her timecard for work picking lettuce next door in Arizona in a town also called San Luis. Across the border, Mexican labourers earn in an hour what she earns in a day.

So when a neighbour asked for $400 (£260) to help her obtain a visa, she gladly handed over her hardearned money. Three months later, though, Elvira had nothing to show for it – no visa and no job.

Such abuse of Mexicans seeking jobs under the federal agricultural guest worker programme known as H-2A is widespread, according to a forthcoming report by Catholic Relief Services.

The H-2A visa programme allows American employers to hire foreign agricultural workers on a seasonal basis when enough local workers aren’t available to do the job. Based on interviews with 382 Mexican 10 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

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I have neighbours who have worked for six seasons [in Arizona].

It’s the only way to improve our situation.

That’s why we have the dream to work there

PHOTO: RICK D’ELIA FOR CRS

Mexican farm workers board buses bound for Yuma’s lettuce fields. They earn ten times what they would earn in Mexico JUSTICE MAGAZINE 11

PHOTO: RICK D’ELIA FOR CRS

Feature Mexico

Socorro Gonzalez lines up for work at a border pickup site near Yuma, Arizona. She crosses the border every day, H-2A visa

workers, the CRS study found that poor oversight of the programme, particularly in the recruitment process, routinely leads to the exploitation and defrauding of farm workers.

Although charging for job placement is illegal, unscrupulous recruiters routinely require money for their services. Some 40 per cent of people interviewed reported paying illegal fees from about $30 to $350 – in some cases, merely to be placed on a job waiting list.

Meanwhile, more than 60 per cent 12 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

of interviewed migrants with H-2A visas paid all or part of their transportation costs, even though employers are required to cover or reimburse workers for those costs, which run about $100. Add to that the expenses of obtaining a passport and visa, and the majority of workers end up shelling out about $270 simply to find a job.

Coming up with that much money in Mexico, where the minimum wage is $5 per day, means many poor Mexicans are forced to take out loans, sometimes from their recruiters.

When these workers return home, they must repay the loan at interest rates as high as 10 per cent per month. The situation creates a work force characterised by indentured servitude.

That is where the Independent Agricultural Workers Center comes in. Known as CITA, the programme matches farm workers in Mexico with legal, temporary farm jobs in the United States.

Designed to improve the recruitment and oversight of the H-2A programme, which many employers

PHOTO: RICK D’ELIA FOR CRS

Nickizael Lopez (far right), Anselmo Ontiveros, centre, and Jose Marquez, left, of San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico, pick red lettuce in a field in the north of Yuma. The men secured work visas through CRS-supported CITA.

in hand, to work on farms in the United States.

overlook because of the rolls of red tape involved, CITA provides stable farm labour under good working conditions while helping families and communities in Mexico. Employers receive support in navigating the process so that they get the workers they need in time to harvest their crops.

The centre, funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, manages the cumbersome H-2A process for farmers and recruiters. CITA finds workers, guides them through the visa process and provides them with

orientation and basic employment readiness training. The centre also offers resources to ensure workers’ needs are met and working conditions are upheld according to the laws that govern farm work. US employers sign on to a code of conduct and agree to respect labour practice standards and pay fair wages. CITA also provides workers with support for emergency medical needs, work force training and assistance resolving labour disputes if they arise.

In addition to restoring a willing and able agricultural work force, this programme has improved farm worker treatment, provided protection of labour rights and reduced illegal migration by giving hardworking Mexicans a safe, legal way to access farm jobs without having to rely on dubious labour brokers. In turn, workers, sometimes with the help of their US employers, reinvest at home in businesses and community development projects, creating much-needed jobs and spurring economic growth.

“The United States wins by keeping farmers equipped with a viable work force, maintaining the level of food stability, security and pricing we are accustomed to,” said Janine Duron, executive director of CITA. “We can be grateful there are people who are screened, trained and thrilled to come here temporarily to provide a living income and a future nest egg for their families.”

It’s the idea of a future nest egg that keeps Elvira going these days.

Her husband, José, quit his job stocking shelves at a local supermarket just days before he was set to attend what his neighbour told him would be his orientation for the new job in Arizona.

Since then, the only work he’s found has been temporary; sewing on labels at a factory for $12 per day. Elvira’s job ends in December.

She has looked into taking legal action against her neighbour, who pawned three of her gold rings in addition to taking her money.

Without documentation of the transaction, though, she doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on.

“They always cheat the ones with no money because we can’t do anything about it,” she says.

But Elvira is not letting the experience defeat her. She and her husband will be applying for their H-2A visa through CITA next year.

“We don’t even make enough to feed the family here,” she says. “And I have neighbours who have worked for six seasons [in Arizona]. It’s the only way to improve our situation.

That’s why we have the dream to work there.”

Robyn Fieser is CRS’ regional information officer for Latin America and the Caribbean. She is based in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic JUSTICE MAGAZINE 13

Feature Prisons

A failure by politicians to recognise that prisoners’ rights are an important test of the strength and maturity of a democracy is not helpful to society, writes Liam Allmark.

RESPECTING PRISONERS When Pope Francis I made an historic break with precedent to celebrate Maundy Thursday Mass in a young offenders’ institute, he shone a light on our Church’s long tradition of compassion and support for prisoners.

As John Paul II reminded us in his jubilee message on prisons: “Christ is in search of every human being, whatever the situation,” a lesson movingly underscored by images of the new pontiff washing and kissing the feet of detainees.

This recognition that people behind bars remain human beings with the same inherent rights as any other, underpins a rich diversity of Catholic social action here in the UK, from groups of volunteers who undertake visits, to professional charities that facilitate contact between prisoners and their families. It is also at the heart of the Church’s advocacy in the criminal justice field, much of which stems from the widely renowned Catholic Bishops’ Conference document A Place of Redemption.

Written in 2004, the challenges it contains remain hugely relevant today, not least regarding the importance of treating prisoners with dignity and respect. To do so is not only just but also inherently rational; humanity and empathy are crucial to the kind of effective rehabilitation that ultimately prevents re-offending, protects community safety and saves 14 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

public funds. Unfortunately very little of this is reflected in the government’s criminal justice strategy, which is instead following a worrying trend towards further alienating prisoners from the rest of the population and threatening to de-rail recent progress in penal policy.

Those of us who call for prisoners to be treated as an integral part of our communities are often caricatured as being ‘soft on crime’ or misconstrued as opposing punishment whilst ignoring victims. In reality nothing can be further from the truth; the Church explicitly acknowledges that “the first imperative must always be to attend to the victim”, yet simultaneously recognises that prisoners are already amongst the most marginalised members of society and that this must be addressed if real justice is to be achieved.

The hard facts are that more 70 per cent of prisoners suffer from mental health difficulties; more than 50 per cent of female prisoners have themselves been victims of domestic abuse and ex-prisoners overall are considerably more likely to take their own lives than other members of the public. Prisoners also represent the poorest and least educated demographic in the UK. Separating them even further from society comes in direct contradiction to the bishops’ Common Good message that we all have a duty “to ensure that nobody is

marginalised in this way and to bring back into a place in the community those who have been marginalised in the past.”

One of the most demeaning entrenchments of the ‘us and them’ division is the denial of prisoner voting rights.

This has its roots in the antiquated concept of ‘civic death’, whereby people found guilty of offences were deliberately and mercilessly exiled from their communities. Whilst that model has been formally consigned to history, the hangover of disenfranchisement remains; this has left more than 80,000 people without a voice in our democracy, sending a stark message that their opinions do not count and their participation is unwanted. In 2004 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that this framework is illegal and that the

PHOTO: CSAN

Westminster politicians need to get to grips with the justice system to improve public safety

vote should be restored to those in prison, only for successive UK governments to respond with years of delaying tactics and tenuous appeals.

Last May, the court reiterated that change was required for the UK to meet its international obligations, prompting the government to publish draft legislation for debate at an unspecified future date.

The intention to continue disenfranchisement is clear however, with the Prime Minister announcing that the thought of prisoners exercising democratic rights makes him feel “physically sick” and stating “no one should be under any doubt – prisoners are not getting the vote under this government”.

The insinuation is that men and women in our prisons should merely watch our democratic process from

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One of the most demeaning entrenchments of the ‘us and them’ division is the denial of prisoner voting rights

the sidelines as outcasts from the very communities that we should be trying to rehabilitate them into. Though this stance and the accompanying rhetoric is part of a wider strategy to appear tough on criminal justice issues, it has no practical benefits for crime prevention, deterrence or public safety. Instead it cynically taps into societal prejudices against prisoners, ignoring the illogicality and injustice inherent in denying any citizen their basic political entitlements.

In practice, restoring the vote to prisoners would be relatively straightforward, particularly as mechanisms already exist for anyone who is on remand during an election, and the positive impact could be tremendous.

Pact, an inspirational charity with Catholic roots that works to support thousands of prisoners and their famJUSTICE MAGAZINE 15

Feature Prisons

ilies recently emphasised that: “When somebody goes to prison they do not cease to be a human being or a citizen. Maintaining the right to vote is a key aspect of this and reinforces that whilst somebody’s liberty is deprived for a period of time, they still have a stake in society. We should be aiming to help prisoners become good citizens rather than going down the path of institutionalisation and exclusion for their communities.”

Regrettably, the Ministry of Justice is not only sustaining this exclusion by brazenly flouting the European Court of Human Rights judgement, but is poised to exacerbate it through unprecedented cuts to support for people with grievances over their conditions inside prison. At present, detainees involved in ‘treatment cases’ regarding serious issues such as bullying by staff or restrictions on family visits can receive funding for advice and, if necessary, legal representation. This funding is already limited to the most severe cases that cannot be dealt with through the prison complaints system and is only available to those without enough money to afford legal services themselves. However, from later this year it will be withdrawn completely, potentially leaving thousands of people without any recourse in situations where they are mistreated.

This move speaks volumes about the perception of prisoners today, carrying an implicit message that the wellbeing of individuals in detention is worth less than that of individuals outside. Catholic teaching emphasises whilst people who are guilty of crimes may justifiably be denied liberty, their fundamental rights should be afforded the same protection as those of any citizen.

John Paul II explained that failing to promote the interests of prisoners is “to make imprisonment a mere act of vengeance on the part of society”; yet under the new framework public funds will not even be available for prisoners to address critical issues such as inadequate sanitation or food.

Beyond the direct impact upon those affected, this will reinforce widely-held views that prisoners are somehow different from the rest of us and will dilute an important safeguard against abuse inside prisons, undermining the credibility of the 16 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

‘‘

Regrettably the Ministry of Justice is not only sustaining this exclusion by brazenly flouting the European Court of Human Rights judgement, but is poised to exacerbate it through unprecedented cuts to support for people with grievances over their conditions inside prison

UK’s penal system. Contrary to the government view that “treatment cases are not of sufficient priority to justify the use of public funds”, appropriately resourcing these cases is therefore vitally important for both the rights of individual citizens and the broader public good.

At the same time as legal support for treatment cases is restricted, prison regimes themselves are set to become harsher under controversial plans to ‘toughen up’ the Incentives and Earned Privileges System. This system currently rewards good behaviour by allowing prisoners who comply with rules and regulations to gradually receive modest benefits including more time to socialise outside their cells, extra visits from friends or family, and a higher cap on how much of their own money they can use in the prison shop.

This will now change, requiring prisoners to not only demonstrate good conduct, but to actively engage in work or education before receiving any such privileges. In theory that is a sensible concept which will help incentivise offenders to gain skills and experience that may help to turn their lives around. In practice however, the widespread under-provision of employment and educational opportunities inside UK prisons, means that many people will be unable to partake in the required activities even if they want to. Successive inspections have highlighted a distinct lack of jobs and training, whilst government spending on re-skilling prisoners

remains dismally low, leading the President of the Prison Governors Association to conclude: “The fact that they’re left locked in their cells watching daytime TV is our fault, not theirs.”

Recently arrived prisoners will also face a much tougher regime, including prison uniforms and strict limits on the amount of money that they can keep for phoning home. The intention is to make initial impressions of prison as unpleasant as possible, yet once again those who know the system have warned of dangerous consequences. Prisoners are most at risk of bullying, self-harm, depression and even suicide during their first turbulent weeks in detention. This will not be helped by marking them out from the rest of the prison population and unnecessarily restricting their contact with loved ones outside. Rather than encouraging offenders to reflect on their crime and work towards reform, these changes risk entrenching feelings of isolation and despair.

The bottom line is that our government, our politicians and our communities, need to do better in recognising that prisoners are citizens too. Whilst people who commit crime and harm others should be punished, they do not leave their own rights at the prison door.

Treating prisoners with humanity, helping them to acknowledge the consequences of their actions, and working with them to find a better path in life, will ultimately benefit society as whole. Further alienating prisoners by denying them a voice in the democratic process, restricting their chances to seek redress when mistreated, and introducing excessively punitive regimes, will do precisely the opposite.

Decisions around criminal justice are often hard and rarely without controversy, but it is only through following the example set by Pope Francis set at Casal del Marmo Young Offenders Institute, that we can truly hope to further the Common Good.

Liam Allmark is the public affairs officer at Caritas Social Action Network

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JUSTICE MAGAZINE 17

Feature Venezuela

Sabino Romero 18 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

The leader of the indigenous Yukpas in Venezuela, Sabino Romero, was assassinated earlier this year, but as Diana Mills reports, the campaign for land to be returned still continues, headed by his daughter Zenaida.

Yukpa justice fight goes on

PHOTO: LUIGINO BRACCI

addresses a crowd in Caracas in November 2012. He was assassinated five months later

Zenaida is the daughter of the late Sabino Romero, a chieftain of Venezuela’s indigenous Yukpa people.

A softly-spoken young woman in her early 20s, she seems shy at first.

Before long, however, her frustration boils over, injecting her voice with a passion rooted in the injustices suffered by the Yukpa community she now leads.

The indigenous Yukpa people claim the fertile, mineral-rich lowlands of Venezuela’s northwestern state of Zulia as their ancestral territory.

Their roots are deeply embedded in its dark soil, forging a physical and spiritual bond with the land they have farmed for countless generations. Yet from Spanish colonial times down to the present day, the Yukpa have had to defend themselves against the encroachment on their lands by cattle ranchers and mining companies.

In the first part of the 20th century, successive Venezuelan governments handed vast tracts of the Yukpa’s ancestral forests and rivers to transnational oil companies.

During the 1940s, intensive livestock farming tripled. Between 1956-1975 a growing influx of farmers, peasants and plot owners JUSTICE MAGAZINE 19

Feature Venezuela

grabbed 90 per cent of the indigenous territory in Zulia. Matters weren’t helped by the 1950s population boom, which doubled every three years, forcing many Yukpa to retreat to the Sierra de Perijá, a mountain range on the border with Colombia.

In the remote Perijá uplands the only viable agricultural land is limited to hillsides or small plateaux between the mountains.

Those Yukpa who chose to remain in the lowlands are trapped on small plots carved out of their original farms. Their restricted freedom of movement depends on the goodwill of the cattle ranchers and the ranchers’ employees. Many Yukpa have gone into servitude, others migrated to urban areas, including Maracaibo, the capital of Zulia state. Sadly, a low level of education and lack of required job skills hampers their chances of finding work. Many end up begging in order to survive.

Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chávez declared that he was ‘on the side of the indigenous people’. However, his plan for splitting the Yukpa ancestral lands into small units was opposed by many Yukpa themselves, including Zenaida’s father Sabino Romero. The chieftain argued that the measures proposed by the government would divide the Yukpa people, thus weakening their community structure and making them more vulnerable.

In 2009 Sabino Romero was imprisoned on trumped up charges for murder. His case caused an outcry among human rights defenders and led to a hunger strike by an 81-yearold Jesuit priest, Fr José María Korta.

In 2011 Sabino was released after the prosecution failed to prove its case

‘‘

In October 2012 Zenaida was shot and wounded during a struggle when the Yukpa tried to reclaim lands taken from them by cattle ranchers

20 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

against him. Undeterred, the chieftain continued with his campaign to regain his peoples’ ancestral lands.

As hostilities escalated between the cattle ranchers and those Yukpa who supported Sabino, Zenaida joined her father in organising their community and leading protests. In December 2012 she came to London as part of a European speaking tour organised by the Latin American Mining Monitoring Programme (LAMMP). In meetings with parliamentarians and human rights organisations Zenaida put forth the Yukpa’s case. She spoke of her desire to follow in her father’s footsteps, but also of her fears for his life and for her own.

Even people linked to Sabino Romero and his daughter aren’t safe.

In 2012, Zenaida’s ex-partner and his brother were kidnapped in the middle of the night. Both young men were killed, one of them after his eyes were gouged out with wire. To date no one has been charged with their murder.

In October 2012 Zenaida was shot and wounded during a struggle when the Yukpa tried to reclaim lands taken from them by cattle ranchers.

Despite her telling the authorities about the violence against her family and the Yukpa people, their situation remains unchanged. At the end of 2012 Zenaida joined her father and hundreds of Yukpa for a key demonstration in Caracas where they requested intervention by the Venezuelan government to end the violence. They also asked the government to fulfill its promise of paying the cattle ranchers compensation for land taken from them and given to the Yukpa, an issue which continues to fuel the ranchers’ animosity against the indigenous community. The government ignored the protesters, who returned home disillusioned and empty-handed.

On March 3, 2013 Sabino Romero was shot dead and his wife Lucia severely injured in an ambush by gunmen as they were returning home from a Yukpa meeting. Minutes later their three sons found them lying in the road. So far the gunmen haven’t been found. But on the night of the shooting, members of the Venezuelan army seized Sabino and Lucia’s sons, accusing them of their father’s murder. The sons say they were tortured

and warned that if they didn’t stop their campaigning activities there would be more deaths.

Zenaida has picked up her father’s mantle, but she fears for her safety and that of her family. They find themselves in an extremely vulnerable situation, living isolated and unprotected in the Sierra de Perijá, constantly threatened by people bent on destroying them. Zenaida has a

PHOTO: LUIGINO BRACCI

Women are at the forefront of the campaign to secure justice for the Yukpa indigenous people

mobile phone, but faces a trek of several hours down to the lowlands whenever she needs to recharge it.

The Yukpa community has issued a list of requests to the government demanding amongst other things that Zenaida be given urgent protection, that Yukpa rights enshrined in Venezuela’s Constitution be respected, that the killing of Sabino Romero be investigated and his killers

brought to justice.

Whether or not the new Venezuelan administration, currently mired in political controversy, listens to the Yukpa people remains to be seen.

Zenaida maintains that her father’s death could have been avoided had the authorities heeded previous Yukpa requests for protection and the return of their lands.

“But nobody listens to us,” she says

bitterly. “There is no justice for the Yukpa people.”

Yet despite official indifference and the ongoing violence Zenaida is determined to fight on.

Diana Mills is a trustee of LAMMP and member of the National Justice & Peace Network executive.

JUSTICE MAGAZINE 21

Opinion Welfare

The EU has urged countries to relax austerity measures in a bid to promote growth.

But Paul Donovan suggests that such a move should be as much about protecting the vulnerable as improving the economy.

No return to the workhouse

22 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

PHOTO: EWAN MCINTOSH

The Coalition Government’s obsession with the need to cut the welfare budget never seems far from the headlines.

It is an area where the spinning of facts is rife in order to produce a narrative that says the welfare state cannot be afforded in its present form.

The fundamental building blocks of the welfare state as it is known today were put in place by the post-war Labour Government.

It moved to enact the recommendations of the Beveridge Report, published in 1942.

Sir William Beveridge identified what became known as the five giants: Want; disease; ignorance; squalour; and idleness.

The reforms proposed marked an essential shift from the Victorian days, when discretionary charity was seen as the answer to poverty, to a system where citizens have a right to welfare support.

Despite the poverty of post-war Britain, the capacity to pay for this welfare revolution was never in doubt. The welfare state remained an unquestionable facet of the post war consensus for ruling Britain up to the 1980s.

The arrival of the Thatcher Government in 1979 started the chipping away of credibility of the welfare state, though its funding levels remained relatively unscathed.

The tide, though, started to turn in those days. The constant flow of misinformation over the years has now resulted in the Coalition Government launching its all out assault on the welfare state.

It is as though things have almost come full circle with Chancellor George Osborne’s crude stereotyping of skivers and strivers, mirroring the Victorian values of the deserving and undeserving poor.

The result is the introduction of the Universal Credit, which brings together the jobseekers allowance, income related employment and support allowance income support, child tax credits, working tax credits and housing benefit into one benefit. There is also to be a cap of £500 a week on all benefits received by a household. The cuts to housing benefits, including the infamous bedroom tax, which penalises

Chancellor George Osborne people living on benefit in houses where there are spare rooms, aims to slash this budget. An assault on people with disabilities has seen hundreds of thousands of people being reassessed in relation to Disablity Living Allowance. Some 560,000 are due to be reassessed by October 2015.

Many are expected to lose the benefit altogether as a result of this often dubious process. DLA is to be replaced by the Personal Independence Payment.

The TUC discovered the extent of misundertstanding when it commissioned a Yougov poll. Researchers found the public believe that 27 per cent of the welfare budget is claimed fraudulently. The actual amount for 2011/12 was 0.8 per cent or £1.2 billion. Similarly, on average people think that 41 per cent of the entire welfare budget goes on benefits to unemployed people, while the true figure is three per cent. There has been much made of those families receiving more in benefits than the median salary of £26,000 a year, so justifying the imposition of the cap. The reality is that it applies to just 58,000 households.

There is so much false information around in the debate on welfare that it makes for a sobering exercise to look at just how the budget does split up. By far the largest part of £166 billion work and pensions budget (2011/12) goes on pensions. Pensions account for £74 billion or 47 per cent of the budget. Pension credit and minimum income guarantee benefit account for another £8 billion. Housing

benefit costs £17 billion and disability living allowance £13 billion. Incapacity benefit and jobseekers allowance account for £5 billion a piece.

There is also a double standard about welfare. Take housing benefit where the focus is on the family receiving thousands in benefits. Never is the focus on the greedy landlords who keep pushing up rents. Rent controls rarely get a mention, yet the rack renting landlords are also welfare benefit cheats.

Tax credits are another area where the bad employer paying poverty wages does not seem to receive the same level of criticism regarding welfare as the single parent struggling by. In effect, via tax credits, people are not only being helped into work but a subsidy is being provided to employers who want to pay poverty wages. This would not happen if a binding living wage existed. The result of the present stripping away of the welfare state is already being seen with a doubling in the number of people going to food banks over the past year.

The food banks are a charitable response to poverty of the type seen in the 19th century when the poor laws and workhouses scarred the landscape. There seems little doubt that the Britain can afford the welfare state. The approach of the present government as in so many things is using a crisis to achieve idealogically driven goals that impoverish growing numbers of people.

Welfare for low paying businesses or rack renting landlords is apparently fine. Would the argument about funding welfare even be on the table if the £42 billion in tax being avoided by companies and individuals were being paid?

The challenge now must be to defend the right of citizens to cradle to grave welfare.

The lies and misrepresentations now being used need to be exposed in order to halt the charge backwards to the days of charitable provision and the workhouse.

Paul Donovan is a freelance journalist.

Visit paulfdonovan.blogspot.com

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JUSTICE MAGAZINE 23

Cover story Hunger and climate change

If we learn the lessons of President John F. Kennedy’s failures, it may just be possible to achieve one of his lifelong ambitions, suggests Justin Kilcullen.

Ending poverty and hunger: An achievable aim It is more than 50 years since President John F. Kennedy declared that the 1960s would be the decade when man would walk on the moon and we would begin to end world hunger.

Kennedy’s belief that these two targets could be met was borne from a belief that money and technology could solve everything. While this approach soon saw humankind take its first lunar steps, resolving problems back on our own planet proved more challenging. Eradicating world hunger really was more complex than rocket science.

Five decades on, there remains a strange naivety about how world poverty will be eradicated. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), unveiled in 2000 and due for completion in 2015, are a case in point. Designed to reduce by half the number of people living in poverty and hunger, they have achieved just moderate success.

A key part of the MDGs was to reform the structures that govern economic relations between developed and developing countries, including fairer trade rules, but the donor states were not up to this challenge. They failed to address the key issues, instead retaining a focus on giving aid as the sole source of sup24 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

port to the poorer countries. Even there the recession resulted in a failure to reach the agreed aid target of 0.7 per cent of GNI as development assistance, and for many countries the trend has gone into reverse.

As long ago as the 1960s President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania was saying “give us trade not aid”. He saw that the harder the developing countries worked and the more money they tried to earn, the higher the cost of bringing goods into the country became. They were running to stand still. At the same time, the prices for the primary products exported from these countries, such as coffee, were controlled by commodity markets in the West. Without radical reform of this system, the poorest countries would never become masters of their own destiny. And so it is today.

The truth is that aid was never meant to be the sole answer. It is always easy to blame the poor for their own plight – to do so absolves us of our own role. If Nyerere and others had been listened to, aid may well already be a thing of the past.

But we could not do it. We shackled the developing world with debt, subjected it to financial structural adjustment programmes, failed to reform trade, propped up corrupt

Locheramoe Kuwom from the village of Kaaruko every day. I have not had a proper meal in seven

PHOTO: EOGHAN RICE/TROCAIRE

o in Lokori, northern Kenya. “I am getting weaker n days. I had nothing yesterday except for tea.”

regimes and continued to asset strip the poorest countries of their natural resources.

And so the donor nations, many now with right of centre governments, wring their hands and say “we need a new development paradigm”.

What might this be, we ask? A reform of all that has gone before?

Not a chance! We will go back to the growth model and invest in the private sector, essentially sticking with the current system. But as Einstein told us, “we cannot solve our problems by using the same thinking that created them”.

If anything characterises our developed world today it is overdevelopment. We would need at least four planet Earths to sustain the current global population of seven billion at the standard of living we enjoy in Europe. On this basis alone, inequality has become a permanent feature of the global economy. If there is to be any serious attempt at righting this structural injustice, it will require radical change in how we in the northern countries shape our economies in the coming decades.

The phenomenon of climate change is the most obvious manifestation of this. The increasingly erratic nature of rainfall in the developing world has undermined agriculture.

Communities are giving up, having been ground down by years of drought and are heading to the cities in search of an alternative livelihood.

Sustainable models of development are now urgently required for both the rich and poor parts of the world if global warming is to be controlled.

The seeming success of the global economy in reducing the levels of poverty by half, a major aim of MDG 1, can deceive us into thinking that the global economy is working. In fact, this “success” has been achieved by the extraordinary growth levels in both China and India. A recent UN study commissioned by the UN Secretary General shows that 2.7 billion people are living on less than €1.50 a day, the UN established poverty line. If you add to this the hundreds of millions living in poverty in the wealthy countries we can see that the number of impoverished people constitutes more than three billion people or 40 per cent of the global population. It is widely accepted that

more than one billion poor people are now living in middle income countries such as India and Brazil.

Today, 2.6 billion people worldwide have no access to basic sanitation and clean water, while three billion people have no access to gas or electricity for cooking. Compare these figures with the growing affluence of the other half of the planet and the scale of inequality becomes clear.

On a recent visit to Vietnam I was astounded by the level of affluence so evident in Ho Chi Minh City. The designer shops, gourmet restaurants and luxury hotels stood in extraordinary contrast to what I knew in the ‘80s and ‘90s when I was a frequent visitor to that country. Many governments, the Vietnamese included, are aware of the political time bomb that is this widening gap in their societies.

Should those excluded from the new found wealth begin to vent their frustration and anger, these countries will face huge social unrest. However, these government seem to have no clear idea how to deal with this phenomenon.

In research recently concluded by Trócaire in six countries on the expectations of the world’s poorest people for the post-2015 era, one of the most telling results was the articulation of what was described as a dearth of pro-poor governments. For many developing countries the view of government is that economic development should follow the western model, with all efforts made to facilitate inward investment to stimulate growth.

Where this is succeeding we are witnessing the division of society into those who can particulate – the wealthy and the growing middle class – and a large underclass who are excluded from the system.

Where citizens’ organisations have risen up to challenge this situation, they have found themselves quashed by government. In the past five years alone, more than 60 countries have introduced legislation to discourage, even prohibit, activism often on behalf of poor people. Local NGOs are only to be involved in providing basic services to the poor – feed the people, do not ask why they are hungry. The recent IF campaign highlighted the underlying causes of hunger that need to be addressed.

JUSTICE MAGAZINE 25

Cover story Hunger and climate change

Moses Kinyua (12) from the village of Ruungu, close to Meru in the Tharaka District of central Kenya. Climate change is having a predictable and reliable but now those patterns have

These include tax dodging by multinational corporations, an absence of land rights, transparency in the relationship between governments and companies, and a genuine commitment to reaching the UN target of 0.7 per cent of national wealth to be invested in support for the developing 26 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

world. Ultimately, the solution to the problems of poverty and hunger are largely political and without a resolution of the political issues, technical advances cannot deliver the desired outcomes.

For the past five decades an alternative approach has been consistently

advanced by civil society leaders, including church leaders, that has been readily ignored. At the heart of this alternative approach is the belief that the earth’s resources are for the benefit of everyone and that global economic structures must be just in order to give poorer countries a better

PHOTO: EOGHAN RICE/TROCAIRE

devastating effect on people in rural areas of Kenya. Until recently, rainfall patterns were stopped. Rainy seasons go by without a drop of rain, making it impossible to grow crops.

than equal chance to catch up.

Pope Benedict produced three major encyclical letters, two of which dealt with issues of global social justice. Like his most recent predecessors, he was highly critical of the current economic system. He called for new models of economy and busi-

ness to be developed that would challenge the status quo, respect the environment and create an economy that serves humanity instead of exploiting it.

Pope Francis used his first homily to continue this message, urging “all those who have positions of respon-

sibility in economic, political and social life … let us be protectors of one another and of the environment…let us not allow omens of destruction and death to accompany the advance of this world.”

Some mainline economists – presumably the same ones who think we are doing just fine as we are – have derided these ideas as simplistic and unrealistic, but there are a growing number of others who recognise the fragility of market based economies in the absence of shared values.

Prophetic voices have never been welcome by the establishment – they challenge the system that favours them in a very pointed way.

We are not looking for a silver bullet here, but an approach to building a just world, honouring the main objectives of the millennium declaration, signed by world leaders in the year 2000, promising to tackle the scandal of hunger and poverty in a world of plenty.

It will require many difference creative and courageous approaches to eventually merge into a new dynamic that will bring about a more just and sustainable Earth.

Despite the disappointment of the failure to reach global targets in eradicating poverty, due largely to the lack of political will by the wealthy countries, significant progress has been made in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Where the circumstances have been created to favour development initiatives – investment in education and healthcare, the growth of democracy, the participation of citizens – the development indicators have improved significantly. The Philippines and Ghana are examples of such countries.

The failure to achieve Kennedy’s aspiration of eradicating world hunger is largely due to the lack of political will to introduce much needed reform.

If we learn the lessons from Kennedy’s failure, perhaps we can finally achieve his dream.

Justin Kilcullen is executive director of Trocaire JUSTICE MAGAZINE 27

Feature Haiti

Environmental degradation and contamination of water supplies in Haiti hit the poor and vulnerable the hardest, but efforts are being made to counter this, reports Lucy Jenkinson.

Access to water is vital for people to grow themselves out of poverty.

Water is essential not just for drinking, sanitation and hygiene, but for growing food, keeping livestock and generating an income for many of the world’s most poor and marginalised people.

Unfortunately water policies have also been seriously neglected in most of the countries where Progressio works. Where water policies do exist, there is often poor implementation of them resulting in mismanagement and waste.

And yet water security and food security are inextricably linked. Without sustainable access to water, smallholder farmers (who produce most of the world’s food) cannot grow the food on which their families and communities – and many others – rely.

These issues are ones people living in the communities of Lamine and Gens de Nantes, on the Haitian side of the border with the Dominican Republic, are more than familiar with. But things are beginning to change.

Progressio development workers, Gabriel, Karina and Bernado, have been working with local families in this area to improve their farming techniques and introduce a wider variety of nutritious crops, but water remains a challenge.

“Later this month,” development worker Gabriel Petit-Homme says, “we will begin building a new water tank in Lamine as the next step in the food security project. It will be able to hold 100 cubic meters of rain water and local people will be paid to help install it.”

Since working with Gabriel and Progressio partner organisation Solidarite Fwontalye (which means ‘Border Solidarity’), people living in these communities say they have seen some really positive improvements.

28 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

Providing security for “We have noticed a lot of good changes since Solidarite Fwontalye came to work with us,” says Christemene Desrivieres, who lives in Gens des Nantes with her husband and 4 children. “Rural development workers give the people a voice and constant support. People have learnt

new farming techniques and received tools and seeds to grow more varied crops.”

Placide Duilma, from Lamine, adds: “We present our concerns to local authorities and radio stations but, until Solidarite Fwontalye started working with us, no one was doing

PHOTO: FRAN AFONSO/PROGRESSIO

A boy with an irrigation pipeline in a field in Lamine, Haiti

food and water anything about these problems. Now we are learning different ways of farming, how to be more productive and sustainable.”

Joseph Basilore, a tailor who lives in Gens de Nantes with his wife and 6 children, says: “Since working with Solidairte Fwontalye we are able to

grow more food and then we sell the extra crops to the cassava factory to be processed into bread that is sold in Cap Haitien.”

These are all important steps toward achieving food security for those living on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but

there is still a lot of work to be done.

“We are hopeful for the future,” Pierre Magloire, living in Lamine, says, “with the support of Solidarite Fwontalye and the knowledge, skills and techniques they have shared, but we are still concerned about accessing enough water.”

The roads from Ounaminthe, the main border town in the North East of Haiti, are long, rocky and isolated, crossing through streams and climbing steep hills, but Gabriel smiles all the way, singing along to the radio, and says “the local people are working so hard, it gives me the motivation I need to make this journey every time.”

Passing by each house there are now examples of healthy vegetable gardens and soil conserving ridges in the larger fields that help to stem the flow of heavy rain water. Recently built flood walls can also be seen at points along the few small rivers; although these were built in the dry season and have yet to be tested properly, the communities thought they did a god job when they had some lighter rainfall.

The food security project is going from strength to strength and the people living in Gens de Nantes and Lamine are extremely engaged in the work the Development Workers are contributing to.

Progressio development workers are supporting people in adapting to changes beyond their control, such as climate change and rainfall variability, and helping them to act on other obstacles to accessing water,

‘‘

The roads from Ounaminthe, the main border town in the North East of Haiti, are long, rocky and isolated, crossing through streams and climbing steep hills, but Gabriel smiles all the way, singing along to the radio, and says, “the local people are working so hard, it gives me the motivation I need to make this journey every time.”

JUSTICE MAGAZINE 29

Feature Haiti

PHOTO: FRAN AFONSO/PROGRESSIO

A young woman at a water pump in Lamine

including weak governance.

Whilst there is not an abundance of water until the rainy season, most of the problems stem from managing the water sources that are available.

Minimising waste and encouraging efficient use of water can have a great impact on improving access to water for people in Lamine and Gens de Nantes and is setting a brilliant example for other rural communities in the region.

But such local efforts need to be backed up by national, regional and global action. Governments must take responsibility for their natural resources and implement policies that protect these resources – and 30 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

protect the rights of all water users, not just the rich, powerful and influential.

Over-exploitation, inefficient use, environmental degradation and contamination of water supplies along with poor governance and little investment in infrastructure are all factors at play in creating socio-economic water scarcity – and the biggest victims of this mismanagement are poor and marginalised communities.

These issues cannot be addressed, let alone resolved, overnight, but water is so fundamental to all aspects of life and development that it does deserve to be higher up the develop-

ment agenda. When people really know how – and are able to – manage water effectively, they can grow more food, earn more money and lead healthier lives – just as the food security project in Lamine and Gens de Nantes is beginning to show.

■ You can support this project by donating at progressio.org.uk and follow the farmers of Haiti and the Dominican Republic as they grow their way out of poverty.

Lucy Jenkinson is Progressio’s communications officer and recently returned from a research trip into rural water use and management in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Meet Michele...

Michele Alcimé works for Progressio partner organisation Solidarite Fwontalye, based in the border town of Dajabón in the Dominican Republic, as their social sector transformation coordinator.

How does Solidarite Fwontalye work?

We work with local civil society organisations helping to strengthen their plans and organise their projects, then develop activities to support livelihoods and environmental awareness.

The larger, more established, organisations can then help to train other smaller, younger, ones.

PHOTO: FRAN AFONSO/PROGRESSIO

Who does Solidarite Fwontalye work with?

In Gens des Nantes we work with two such organisations and in Lamine with one federation comprising 26 organisations.

What is Solidarite Fwontalye doing in the communities on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic?

Solidarite Fwontalye is supporting community organisations to set up cooperative banking and food stores as well as providing water filters for domestic use and training on agricultural techniques that has increased crop yields.

We have supervised the installation of 50 water pumps in communities and 20 motor pumps for irrigation.

This gives access to water systems for irrigation and storage to a significant number of people in this area.

How do you make sure the work is sustainable?

Members of community organisations create committees to manage new water

Clairevena and Pierre Magloire with Gabriel Petit Homme systems.

They then work independently, with Solidarite Fwontalye fulfilling a monitoring role, in case people need advice.

What are the main challenges to accessing water for people in this area?

If people are living far from a natural source of water it can be harder to help them.

Farming is season specific but climate change is reducing the predictability of the

agricultural calendar.

Major infrastructure is needed to bring water to everyone and to irrigate the land properly and evenly – but this would cost a lot of money.

What difference has working with Progressio made to your work?

The way Gabriel works complements the way we like to work and his support means we can reach more people.

PHOTO: LUCY JENKINSON/PROGRESSIO

JUSTICE MAGAZINE 31

Feature Haiti

Mimose, Elismar and two of their children in Lamine

PHOTO: FRAN AFONSO/PROGRESSIO

‘We need equal access to water’ “Water is life and without it we can’t do anything” Elismar and Mimose live in Lamine with their family. They grow sweet potatoes, yukka, cabbages, beans and plantain on a plot of land to the side of their home.

They also have several chickens, kept in a specially constructed coup.

“Generally we use rain water for agriculture and the river for everything else, but the river is quite a long way and a difficult walk,” Elismar, father to 8 children, explains.

“There’s not a lot of water downstream so we usually have to go to the source which is an hour away.”

Mimose, Elismar’s wife, adds that, “The river water is also contaminated so has to be filtered before being consumed and I am concerned it will make my family sick; that’s why we walk further to the source of the river. People wash everything in the river, from their clothes to their bikes,” says Mimose, “and dead animals get washed along the river too, so the water downstream, where we are, gets very dirty. We are not able to collect a lot of rainwater because we don’t have the means to store it,” 32 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

Elismar continues. “Besides, it normally rains in May, June and November but we have noticed that the rains don’t come when we expect them to any more, and it doesn’t rain for as long as it used to.

“This means we don’t have as much water to grow enough crops to feed our family and must buy food from the market.”

Elismar believes he and his wife could grow more food for the family if they were better able to collect and store the rain that does fall, when it does, and if they could find a way of getting water from the river to irrigate their plot of land.

Agriculture has been their main source of income so not having any surplus crops to sell at market means that they must go to the Dominican Republic to work and buy food to bring home. They wish this was not the case.

Elismar describes the way in which the whole community shares the same water source: “There is no formal committee to manage the water but around 250 households rely on the same source of water here. The community further up

the hill have a cistern but we don’t have access to the water it collects because we don’t have the funds to construct a system of pipes.”

Although this community are good at sharing water there is competition between them and other nearby communities especially when the water source is running low after long periods without rain.

“We are concerned that things will only get worse without leadership and intervention,” Mimose adds. “Water is life and without it we can’t do anything.”

The couple agree that there should be equal access to water for everyone, for men and women.

Since Solidarite Fwontalye have started working with them they have noticed a huge difference especially in the techniques for farming, and they are able to grow more than before, but the most important thing for them now is to improve their access to water for their land.

■ You can support this project by donating at progressio.org.uk and follow the farmers of Haiti and the Dominican Republic as they grow their way out of poverty.

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JUSTICE MAGAZINE 33

Feature IF Campaign

In a world in which there is enough food for everyone, it is a scandal that not everyone has enough to eat.

Despite great progress in alleviating global poverty in recent years, one in eight of the world’s population still goes hungry every day and a child dies every 15 seconds because they do not have enough nutritious food.

Faced with this appalling and unacceptable situation, it is increasingly important that governments and society alike move away from the view that simply providing financial aid, important though it is, will ever be enough to end the scandal of global hunger. As a matter of urgency, we must start to address the root causes of the problem, many of which stem from systematic failures in governance and the global economic system.

The Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, of which Catholic aid agencies SCIAF, CAFOD and Trocaire are members, is calling on the UK and Scottish governments to not only keep their international aid promises but to go further.

Ahead of the G8 summit, to be hosted by David Cameron in Northern Ireland in June, the campaign is calling on the UK to lead a global clamp down on tax havens and launch a Convention on Tax Transparency to stop billions of pounds from flowing out of developing countries. It is also calling on the world’s richest nations to help protect poor farmers from land grabs by big foreign companies purchasing large tracks of land to generate huge profits. Land in the world’s poorest countries must be used to grow food for people in need and not to grow biofuels to propel our cars.

Large-scale tax evasion, a lack of transparency in corporate dealings in developing countries, and the misuse of land which sees poor families evicted to make way for big business interests are just some of the major injustices in the global economic system.

Over half of world trade is now conducted through tax havens, half of all banking assets are held in offshore accounts and one third of foreign direct investment is channelled through these accounts. This secret world allows vast amounts of money to be hidden from public scrutiny, 34 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

It’s the largest mobilisation since Make Poverty History. Now the fight starts to end the scandal of global hunger, reports Patrick Grady.

facilitating tax dodging and massively reducing revenues that could promote development. The OECD estimates that developing countries lose three times more to tax havens than they receive in aid each year.

Research by the Tax Justice Network estimates that US$21-32 trillion in financial wealth is being hidden by rich individuals in tax havens. In

Ghana the government estimates that it loses around US$36 million every year through tax dodging in the mining sector alone.

The United Nations estimates that if the world’s Least Developed Countries raised at least 20 per cent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from taxes, they could achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

SPEAK OUT TO END A SCANDAL

PHOTO: VAL MNORGAN/SCIAF

Land must be used to grow food, not biofuels to power our cars

Indeed, evidence suggests that African countries with higher tax collections generally have lower levels of undernourishment: countries collecting more than 20 per cent of their GDP in tax had an average level of undernourishment of 15 per cent during 2005 to 2008, while those collecting less than 10 per cent had an average rate of undernourishment

of 32 per cent.

Many transnational corporations have complex corporate structures involving many subsidiaries registered in tax havens. A survey by the Tax Justice Network of 95 of the largest quoted companies in the UK, Netherlands and France found that all but one had subsidiaries in tax havens, the most popular being the

Cayman Islands. However, the tide is now turning, and this kind of behaviour is increasingly being seen as unacceptable.

Since the global financial crisis, there has been much greater scrutiny of tax havens and the tax affairs of transnational companies. The G20 group of wealthy nations has declared that ‘we are committed to protect our JUSTICE MAGAZINE 35

Feature IF Campaign

PHOTO: VAL MORGAN/SCIAF

The current wave of land grabs is displacing farmers from their land

public finances and the global financial system from the risks posed by tax havens and non-co-operative jurisdictions’. It has called on ‘nonco-operative jurisdictions’ (tax havens) to share more tax information, leading to a proliferation of bilateral tax information exchange agreements.

Governments and tax havens who seek the economic benefits of global trade should be required to exchange full information about tax affairs, to enable states to generate greater revenues for development. The UK should use its G8 chair in Northern Ireland in June to give new impetus to action on tax havens at international level, through a new Convention of Tax Transparency which would provide a framework for all countries to co-operate in tackling tax haven secrecy.

36 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

Scotland must also play its part.

The IF campaign is calling on the Scottish Government to actively support fair and ethical trading, as well as tax transparency, through what it buys. Assessing the full impact of government policies and spending decisions on developing countries and working to reduce any negative impacts across all government departments has huge public support in Scotland.

A recent survey published by the IF campaign highlighted that over three quarters of Scots polled think the Scottish Government should regularly report on the effects its spending policies have on developing countries whilst 69 per cent believe departments should work together to reduce any negative impacts.

Agricultural investment in developing countries is vital and the right

kind of investment can play a positive role in reducing hunger, increasing farm productivity and providing jobs in a more prosperous rural economy.

However, if investment is not well regulated and conducted transparently, it can have the opposite effect.

The last few years have seen a massive rise in land purchases in developing countries.

As the acquisition of large tracts of land by foreign corporations gathers pace, evidence is mounting that communities are paying an unacceptably high price for such investment: they lose their land and therefore their ability to grow food; they may also be forced to pay higher prices for local food. Each of these impacts make the problem of hunger worse. Land acquisitions for biofuels are particularly to blame here. In these cases crops that could have been eaten by

hungry people are burned in petrol tanks instead.

Land ownership is also changing fast. Between 2001 and 2010, 203 million hectares of land around the world have been under consideration or negotiation in large-scale land acquisitions. Around one fifth of farmland in Senegal and Sierra Leone, more than 30 per cent in Liberia and over half in Cambodia have been acquired by companies.

Two-thirds of land deals by foreign investors are in countries with a serious hunger problem. Yet, precious little of this land is being used to feed people in those countries or going into local markets. Instead, around two-thirds of foreign land investors in developing countries intend to export everything they produce on the land.

The current wave of land grabs is often displacing farmers from their land with little compensation, or else violating their human rights. Private investment in land can sometimes benefit small-scale producers – but all too often, investors fail to deliver on promised compensation and job creation, and skewed power relations in negotiations over access to land often lead to a bad deal for the local communities. A recent expert report for the UN finds that ‘large-scale investment is damaging the food security, incomes, livelihoods and environment for local people’. It continues by saying that the rights of women, minority ethnic communities and indigenous people are particularly at risk. A report by the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) notes that ‘new research on the global rush for agricultural land shows how small-scale farmer livelihoods and rights are increasingly at risk as land deals ignore local tenure rights and marginalise poor farmers and pastoralists’. And a World Bank report has said that ‘Many investments… failed to live up to expectations and, instead of generating sustainable benefits, contributed to asset loss and left local people worse off than they would have been without the investment’.

The international community has failed to act on this wave of land grabs. This conflicts strongly with the spirit of intergovernmental commit-

‘‘

We must hold to account our governments, and the corporations they are responsible for regulating, so that as a global community we can better serve our brothers and sisters in the poorest nations. We are clearly encouraged to do this by Pope Francis who has been a long-term champion of the poor

ments made in the G8’s L’Aquila Food Security Initiative and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, which support the role of small-scale women and men producers in tackling hunger.

If companies ignore or undermine rights to land of small-scale producers, they reinforce the power relations that keep people poor. Land investments need to be much better regulated and governed.

The UK Government has said very little about the dangers posed by land grabs, though it has started to acknowledge the need to address the issue. As a matter of urgency the UK should use its financial and political influence, including in the G8 and G20, to improve governance of largescale land acquisitions in developing countries, including ensuring local people participate in decision-making that affects them. Amongst a range of actions that need to be taken, the UK should push for the World Bank to review the impact its funding of land acquisitions has on poor communities, put land grabbing on the agenda of the G8 and promote action to improve governance, transparency and accountability in land agreements, and end its support for damaging biofuels policies.

Recognising these issues is an important first step. However, we must then demand change from those in power. The only way they will ever listen and take action is if we act together. That’s why over 180 organisations have joined forces in support

of the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign.

If we are to live in a world in which everyone has enough food to live and children, regardless of where they are born, are to have a fighting chance of making it out of childhood alive, we need get our governments and big business to address these massive structural issues which perpetuate global hunger, poverty and inequality.

We must hold to account our governments, and the corporations they are responsible for regulating, so that as a global community we can better serve our brothers and sisters in the poorest nations.

We are clearly encouraged to do this by Pope Francis who has been a long-term champion of the poor.

Before his election as Pope, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina said, “Human rights are violated not only by terrorism, repression and murder, but also by the existence of extreme poverty and unjust economic conditions.” During his inaugural homily he called on us to be ‘protectors’, not only of the earth, but of each other and particularly the poorest in society.

The G8 leaders meeting on June 1718 is a major opportunity to demand change. Large scale public mobilisation for Make Poverty History in 2005 led to great strides being made in cancelling debt and increasing international aid. We must build on this. That is why the IF campaign is calling for large-scale public support once again. You can add your voice by joining the campaign simply by signing the online IF campaign petition (see below).

The more people who speak up for an end to the scandal of hunger, the more likely the G8 leaders will sit up and listen. It is our responsibility to demand that they make the right choices to end global hunger. Only by acting together can we make sure that 2013 is the beginning of the end of this scandal once and for all.

■ To join the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign and sign the petition go to www.enoughfoodif.org

Patrick Grady is advocacy manager for the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF) JUSTICE MAGAZINE 37

Opinion Tragedy in Bangladesh

The collapse of the Rana Plaza in Dhaka highlighted the conditions vulnerable workers were forced to endure. We can change this, suggests Tony Magliano.

The price of corporate greed

38 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

PHOTO: JABER AL NAHIAN

Corporate greed and human misery often meet in the workplace. And nowhere else is that more true than in sweatshops.

Taking advantage of extremely poor workers in the developing world, many wealthy companies from economically developed nations demand that employees labour at a fast pace, for long hours, in deplorable conditions, with no benefits – all for the sake of corporate profit. And worse yet, workers often experience serious injury and death.

This was the case when the illegally constructed Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, collapsed on April 24, killing over 716 sweatshop workers.

An eight-story building named Rana Plaza in the Savar neighborhood on the outskirts of Dhaka collapsed at 9am on Wednesday, April 24, 2013. Hundreds of workers were killed, and many more were trapped for days under the rubble until rescued with severe injuries.

This dilapidated building housed five factories that produced garments for the United States, Canada and Europe.

With hundreds of additional workers still missing, this disaster is the worst in the history of the garment industry, according to Charles Kernaghan, director of the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights (IGLHR).

According to the IGLHR, a sweatshop employee named Jannat, who worked for New Wave Style, said she and other workers refused to enter the building after they discovered large cracks in the factory walls. But “managers at the factories threatened us saying they would withhold our [month’s] wages if we did not agree to work”.

The owner of the Rana Plaza factory building, “along with gang members holding sticks, were standing in front of the main entrance gate threatening that they would beat us with sticks and break our bones if we didn’t work that morning. We were frightened and had no choice but to go in to work,” said Jannat.

After working for one hour the power went off. “As soon as the generator was switched on the building started to vibrate and shake … there was a huge bang.”

The building then collapsed, trapping Jannat. Fortunately, she was rescued. But

The collapsed building in Dhaka many others were not so fortunate.

Had strong legislation protecting workers’ basic rights been in place this tragedy would have been avoided.

Corporations benefit greatly from intellectual property and copyright laws. It’s long overdue that workers labouring in miserable conditions receive the same legal protection.

Let’s work together to ensure they get it. E-mail and call parliamentarians, urging them to introduce legislation that would provide transparent corporate disclosure, enabling labour rights organisations to inspect factories producing products for wealthy retailers.

Legislation should prohibit the import, export or sale of products that violate the International Labor Organization’s standards – which prohibit child labour, and guarantee workers’ rights to safe working conditions, to collective bargaining and protection against forced labour.

Please also consider giving a donation to help Bangladeshi victims and their families through http://www.globallabourrights.org Lamenting the Bangladesh factory tragedy, Pope Francis passionately condemned the injustice of their R450 a month salary saying: “This was the payment of these people who have died. This is known as “slave labour!”

And he added: “Not paying fairly, not giving a job because you are only looking at balance sheets, only looking at how to make a profit. That goes against God!” Let’s build an economic system that does not go against God. Passing relevant legislation would be a giant step in that direction.

Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist.

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JUSTICE MAGAZINE 39

Feature Disability hate crime

New figures have shown that at least 65,000 attacks against people with disabilities take place in the UK each year. David Alton profiles a drama group aiming to raise awareness of the problem as well as other groups highlighting contemporary issues through art.

How art and drama can make a difference A theatre company, consisting primarily, but not exclusively, of actors with learning disabilities, recently came to Westminster to perform their play “Living with Fear” – and in one short hour achieved more in raising awareness about disability hate crime than any number of speeches delivered in Parliament.

Drama has an extraordinary capacity to move, to touch, and to reach people and this production by Blue Apple Theatre made me reflect on both the issue which the company explored and on the way in which they succeeded in catching my attention.

Jane Jessop is the founding director of Blue Apple Theatre. She says that the British Crime Survey found that each year a truly shocking 65,000 assaults take place against people with disabilities and that “this is probably an underestimate”. Some one million people with learning disabilities live in Britain and Mencap say that up to 90 per cent of people with learning disabilities are bullied and harassed on a regular basis Determined to raise awareness among policy makers she believes drama is an effective way to do it. So, she persuaded Steve Brine, her local MP in Winchester, to sponsor a performance of the play and, by kind permission of Mr. Speaker Bercow, this was performed in Mr. Speaker’s House. Among those who had travelled up to see the play was Hampshire’s Chief Constable, Andy 40 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

‘‘

Some people think I shouldn’t be here, but I am. I’m a human being, and I’m in love

Marsh. Esther McVeigh, the Minister with responsibility for disabled people was also present.

“Living With Fear” shines a light on the vulnerability of people who are initially thrilled by the idea of independent living but who then have to come to terms with prejudice and negotiate the visceral hatred of the people with whom they have to live alongside. It’s simply impossible to be left unaffected by the play or by a cast which comprises some of those who have experienced such hatred first hand.

I was particularly struck by the young actor with Down’s Syndrome who says “some people think I shouldn’t be here, but I am. I’m a human being, and I’m in love.”

He’s right of course: Eugenic abortions now prevent most people with Down’s Syndrome from being here.

90 per cent of babies with Down’s Syndrome have their lives ended in the womb. The violence, discrimination, and prejudice against people with learning difficulties or disability begins at conception. How sad that this young man’s love is met with society’s rejection.

Jane Jessop says that her first hope

in bringing “Living Without Fear” to Westminster “was to bring our talented actors to the heart of Parliament so that people legislating on abortion and other issues would meet whole and rounded people with learning disabilities, especially those with Down’s Syndrome and see their talent and potential.

“I hope you could see there is no limit to our ambition in helping them realise their potential. Next was to raise the difficult issues around disability hate crime.”

Blue Apple’s website shows the breadth and the range of work in which this inclusive theatre company is involved and which deserves to be seen by audiences up and down the country: Recently I have seen some other brilliant examples of drama being used to explore contemporary themes. At the Easter Celebrate conference in Ilfracombe there were performances by two Catholic theatre groups – Ten Ten and Rise.

Rise produced some thought-provoking sketches and are now preparing to take their play “Soldier to Saint” on a UK tour from June 28 to July 12.

Set in 2020, in an England which is persecuting Christians, it’s the story of a soldier, John Alban. Like his Roman namesake, his friendship with a fugitive priest endangers his freedom and his very life. On a daily basis, in many parts of the world, from China to Nigeria, contemporary

PHOTO: BLUE APPLE THEATRE

A scene from the Blue Apple Theatre’s Captain Miserable and the Book Guardian JUSTICE MAGAZINE 41

Feature Disability hate crime

Albans are deprived of their liberty or their lives and this is a timely reminder not to take for granted the freedoms we enjoy in Britain.

Drama allows the exploration of countless rich and disturbing questions.

Ten Ten used Celebrate to stage a powerful production of “Heart”, a drama which takes on inter-generational relationships and the role a grandmother plays in challenging her grand-daughter’s bullying of another girl.

Later in the year Ten Ten, are back at London’s Leicester Square Theatre where they previously performed “The Jeweller”, an adaptation of John Paul II’s play, “The Jeweller’s Shop” – which examines relationships, friendships, and love, in the context of three couples whose lives become intermingled. The comedian, Frank Skinner, described “The Jeweller” as “deeply funny, gut-wrenchingly sad and thought provoking.”

Between October 1 and 5 Ten Ten turn their attention to another Pole, St Maximilian Kolbe, whom John Paul called “the patron saint of our difficult century.” This brand new production of “Kolbe’s Gift” – an inspirational play by David Gooderson – takes us to Auschwitz, where the imprisoned Kolbe encounters a soldier, Franek Gajowniczec, and freely gives his own life to save the other (www.tententheatre.co.uk).

Like “Confessions of a Butterfly”, the one man play about the life of Janusz Korczak, written and performed by the Catholic writer, Jonathan Salt, and which I saw at a synagogue in London a few months ago, “Kolbe’s Gift” reminds us of the savagery of the Holocaust; the indifference, the silence, or collaboration of so many; and the danger of “never again” happening all over again in our own times.

Salt introduces us to Korcczak’s heroism but also to children like the boy with the violin – who chooses to become selectively mute after watching the execution of his parents.

A profoundly moving and poignant story, it’s not one which I will quickly or easily forget. Each of these dramas explores a different question and tells a different story but they all raise profoundly important issues in a world which can too easily become indifferent and where we need to find a range of different ways to effect change.

And it’s not just drama: Art and graphics, writing, poetry and music all have their part to play. The Catholic musicians, Ooberfuse, have just marked North Korea Freedom week with a brilliant song, Vanish the Night, released on Youtube and features the North Korean escapee and human rights campaigner, Shin Dong Hyok.

An earlier song, about the assassination of Pakistan’s Catholic Minister

for Minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, His Blood Cries Out, has now been watched by more than 137,000 people.

In every generation we must guard against prejudice and bigotry, racism and xenophobia and cherish our precious freedoms and liberties. In particular, minorities, ranging from people with learning disabilities to vulnerable ethnic groups or dissenting religious believers, need to have their stories told. And, this is a world in which anti-Semitism, racial intolerance, and the scapegoating of minorities – such as homosexuals living in those Commonwealth countries which still impose the death penalty for homosexuality – or Christians facing death in countries like North Korea or Iran – or institutionalised discrimination in the form of caste based prejudice against Dalits in India – are all distempers of our age.

Perhaps music and drama will succeed in waking us up to these horrific realities when speeches and commentaries do not – and maybe challenge us to change our attitudes and our laws.

Lord Alton is a Catholic peer

For news about the Church’s work in the world, visit justicemagazine.org

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JUSTICE MAGAZINE 43

Feature Martin Luther King

Fr John Dear’s passion for justice and peace was fuelled by the life of the great Civil Rights Movement leader Dr Martin Luther King. Here he relates how his meeting with Dr King’s late widow inspired him and led him to continue his path of non-violent action.

It was six o’clock on April 5,1968, a Friday morning. My mother came into my room, shook me awake and said, “John, Martin Luther King has been killed. You have to get up.” I was eight years old.

That weekend, the networks broadcast his story and little else. And all of us, my parents and brothers, took in all the reports about his life and work and campaigns to abolish racism, poverty and war. Over and over they played his famous speeches; they discussed his vision of nonviolence.

Sunday afternoon, we piled into the car. And my father drove us from our home in suburban Bethesda, Maryland, into Washington, D.C. – there to see with our own eyes the rampaging and the fires and police repression. Dad said he wanted me to remember this. And I have.

The death of Martin Luther King, Jr., and then Robert Kennedy two months later, set my life’s path. I read, even then, all I could find about their lives and deaths. I didn’t understand everything. But I took it to heart.

Later I majored in African-American history at university. And there was a day, a vivid moment in Professor William Chafe’s class, while studying King’s Birmingham campaign, that a light dawned and things became clearer. I began to understand the dynamic of nonviolent resistance to evil – how love and truth pitted against injustice wears the opponent down, converts and transforms and reconciles him.

I entered the Jesuits in 1982, and there I began a long study of the writings and biographies of Dr King.

During the novitiate’s thirty-day silent retreat, “the Spiritual Exercises,” I wept again over the martyrdom of Dr King, and wondered how anyone could make a difference if such a great prophet could be cut down so easily at 39.

In 1984, Coretta Scott King appeared at a small Baptist church in Washington, D.C. And I made sure 44 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

to be there. She spoke simply and beautifully about “agape,” universal nonviolent love as our common calling. Her talk over, she settled in a chair in front of the altar and received a few people. I hovered about, the last on line. Finally, my turn arrived and I sheepishly introduced myself. By then most had left, so she hauled another chair next to hers and sat me down. And we spoke for 20 minutes in front of the altar to an empty church.

And how gracious she was. She affirmed my interests in peace and justice, and urged me to keep pursuing nonviolence as a priest. Over the years, especially during my tenure as director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, she offered words of support. And I got the support of many of Dr King’s friends, especially Rev. James Lawson and Dorothy Cotton – dear friends who taught me all the more vividly of Dr King’s vision.

His vision impelled me to serve in soup kitchens and homeless shelters, to journey to Central America, to organise campaigns of civil disobedience and to join, in 1993, a Plowshares disarmament action with Philip Berrigan. For that I faced 20 years in prison. I spent eight months in a cell, and there resolved that, on my release, I would visit the historic sites where Dr King campaigned. In 1995, I made a private pilgrimage, first to Atlanta and King’s grave, then to Montgomery and Selma and Birmingham, then to Mississippi and finally to Memphis, staying with friends along the way.

The Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, lingers most in my mind. It sat then in a neighborhood of poverty and despair. I stood on the balcony and looked across the shabby vista. He himself stood there 40 years ago now, waiting to go to dinner and from there to a mass meeting. He called down to the driver, also a soloist in the choir, and requested his favorite hymn for that night, “Precious Lord, Take my Hand.” Precious Lord, take

The last words of Dr King

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C

my hand – Dr King’s very last words.

A gunshot shattered the calm and ripped apart his vocal chords. On the balcony where he died, you can still see a circle of blood in the concrete.

We know now his death stemmed from a conspiracy at high levels. The civil trial in 1999 disclosed that thirty people – FBI agents, policemen, and Mafia assassins – had been stationed about, well armed and taking aim.

Seventy witnesses testified under oath about the government’s plans and involvement. The jury found, in just one hour, that responsibility for King’s death lay with other parties than James Earl Ray. And no surprise, given that Dr King was the leading critic against the government’s war in Vietnam. More, that he had plans afoot for a massive campaign, in the style of Mahatma

PHOTO: TOM LEGRO/PBS NEWSHOUR

Gandhi, to bring the poor to interfere with the workings of Washington, D.C. – this until poverty and war were abolished. The government did what governments do – it executed the prophet. An old story, and new. It’s the story of Jesus; it’s the story of Archbishop Romero, and countless others.

Without Dr King, the Poor People’s Campaign went ahead as best it might. And that June 1968, my dad made us get back in the car and took us downtown again to see it for ourselves. Rained poured that weekend, and “Resurrection City” became a sea of mud. The people, even in their tents, were soaked to the bone.

The media surveyed the scene and proclaimed the project a disaster. And to this day many perceive it that way.

But I’ve never considered it a failure.

I’ve just come to presume that resurrection is a messy, muddy affair; that’s how it starts.

Which leads me to ponder the resurrection of Martin Luther King, Jr. Resurrection is not a serious topic among North Americans. We tie it up with the advent of spring, with bunny rabbits and eggs and shopping sales.

Hardly do we acknowledge a theology, much less a spirituality, of resurrection, or it social, economic and political implications. Many, especially in Black and Hispanic communities, have a theology of the cross. They understand the social dynamic of suffering as a means for transformation But a theology of resurrection eludes us.

El Salvador, on the other hand, has a palpable theology, even a praxis, of resurrection. I learned of it in 1985

when working at a refugee camp, the US-sponsored war raging on all around us. The suffering and death there astonished me. It astonished me too that the people engaged in vibrant discussions of resurrection.

People reflected on the presence of Oscar Romero in their lives. When the name of a recently martyred person came up, his friends shouted “Presente!” They held close the notion that Romero was alive, had arisen, in their communities – and with Romero, all the martyrs, including Jesus himself.

Few speak that way here in the North. Here, the government, the media, and even the churches, declared the nonviolent vision dead along with Dr King. It vanished, say cynics, with his last breath I disagree.

I think Dr King lives on, and his vision of nonviolence lives on as well.

The community activism, the grassroots movements around the nation and the world, and the committed people who espouse nonviolence, have risen in large part from the blood of Dr King’s sacrificial nonviolence. I believe Martin Luther King is alive and well with the risen Jesus, with Coretta, his parents, and all the saints and martyrs.

And because they have risen, we can understand and embrace the same courageous spirit, the same militant nonviolence. We can become people of resurrection, and carry on Dr King’s daring, public, prophetic work. We can begin to understand the dynamics, the politics, the spirituality and praxis of resurrection.

The more we can claim the resurrection of our prophets, beginning with Dr King, the more our lethargy, fear and despair will dissipate, and the more we’ll discover new wells of hope, peace and joy. Then our grassroots campaigns for justice and disarmament will deepen and flourish. We’ll imagine an end to racism, poverty, war, nuclear weapons and global warming, and find new faith and strength to give our lives implementing that vision We’ll practice creative nonviolence as a way of life like never before, knowing that our holy prophet, Martin Luther King, lives in us and our new vision.

For more about Fr John Dear visit www.johndear.org JUSTICE MAGAZINE 45

Feature Migrant workers

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Paul Donovan on the Church’s involvement in the campaign to improve rights for domestic workers.

Turning back the clock on domestic workers’ rights

Domestic workers make their point in Westminster Cathedral Plaza

The often fevered atmosphere surrounding the debate on immigration in the UK rarely takes into account those that fall victim to policies prefaced on the need to reduce migrant numbers. One such group to suffer recently have been domestic migrant workers.

The Government has reversed the previous policy of granting domestic workers a visa that enables individuals to change employers and renew visas. Now in a move back to a pre1998 position, domestic workers receive a tied visa restricting them to the one employer and unable to renew their visa beyond six months.

Many domestic migrant workers come to this country accompanying their employer but end up as virtual prisoners in the employer’s homes.

Former domestic worker and now co-ordinator of Justice For Domestic Workers (J4DW) Marissa Begonia tells how one domestic worker encountered an employer “who would press the lid of a hot pot filled with boiling water all over her body for every little mistake she would make”.

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Feature Migrant workers

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PHOTO: MAZUR/CATHOLICCHURCH.ORG.UK

Another worker was raped by her male employer. “He threatened to accuse her of harming the child that she was looking after if she reported him; this was a child that she loved like her own,” said Ms Begonia.

“Some women domestic workers bear scars on their faces due to hot beverages thrown at them and scars on their arms from flat irons.”

Generally, migrant domestic workers don’t like going to the police. “The focus of the authorities is on immigration enforcement. Workers whose immigration status prohibits them from leaving an employer are often too scared to approach the police to report the crimes committed against them by that employer as they believe that, having broken the terms of their immigration status in escaping abuse, it is them who will be treated as the criminal,” said Kate Roberts, community advocate at migrant group Kalyaan.

It was in order to help counter such situations and the sense of powerlessness that the domestic worker endured that a group of workers together with Sister of St Louis Margaret Healy and Columban Fr Aodh O’Halpin took up a campaign to change the law.

Fr O’Halpin worked in the Philippines for a number of years before coming to England in the late 1970s.

Around the same time, Sister Healy became involved with migrant workers, particularly Filipinos due to her brothers, who were both priests, working in the Philippines.

In 1980, Sr Healy and Fr O’Halpin established the Commission for Filipino Migrant Workers (CFMW).

“We observed that migrant domestic workers were coming to the CFMW centre having escaped from brutalising employers. Soon we realised that the root cause of their problem was in the legislation. They were given a ‘visitors’ visa with ‘employment paid or unpaid’ strictly prohibited and yet the whole purpose of their being in the UK was to work in the household of the employer who brought them here. Outside the household they were literally ‘non persons’ – had no legal rights whatsoever and could be picked up and deported without reference to anyone,” said Sr Healy, who called together a group of those who had escaped from their employers

Support shown at this year’s Migrant Mass in Westminster Cathedral

and were ‘undocumented’ i.e. living and working clandestinely. “There were several different nationalities, Indians, Filipinos, Nepalese, Sri Lankan’s etc. In sharing their experiences together we discovered they had all been brought to the UK by their employers and all had been very badly treated.”

The campaigning migrant group, Kalyaan was formed in the 1990s.

Working together with the trade union Unite the campaign led to the Labour government passing legislation in 1998 that meant a domestic worker visa was made available giving the same rights and protection to domestic workers in the private household as any other worker in the UK. The visa included the right to change employer and access employment tribunals. “Over 4,000 who had been living and working clandestinely were given a legal status which meant among other things that they could at last visit their families,” said Sr Healy.

This though all changed on April 6 2012, when the Coalition Government reversed the position, so that the tied visa was reintroduced requiring that the worker is employed by the one employer, with a six month limit on the visa issued.

Already some of the unjust effects of the return of the tied visa have become evident. Some 62 per cent on the tied visa are paid nothing at all compared to 14 per cent under the previous system. All workers on the tied visa were paid less than £100 a week compared to 60 per cent on the original visa. 85 per cent did not have their own room so slept with the children or in the kitchen or lounge, compared to 31 per cent on the original visa.

The number of visas issued over recent years has ranged from 15,745 last year to 16,649 in 2008 The story of two domestic migrant workers caught up in abusive employment relationships but on the different visas illustrates in human terms the type of injustice occurring due to turning back of the clock on visa stipulations.

A Filipino, Mira ran away from her employers’ house in the early hours.

She had been working around 16 hours a day with no time off. She shared a room with the children and

‘‘

It is a terrible reflection on this government to withdraw workers rights and protection

had no private time or space for herself at all. She kept all her belongings in a small space under the washing machine. She ate only leftovers after the family had finished eating and as they often went out to eat in the evening went hungry. She was forbidden from cooking additional food for herself. She was frequently screamed at.

Three months into her time in the UK, Mira had received no pay and was desperately worried about how her family at home were surviving without her remittances. Mira’s employers had always kept her passport and her ‘trigger’ for escape was finding it left out one day.

The passport was a ‘new’ tied overseas domestic worker visa, issued after April 2012, which meant while she was still within its six month validity period she was prohibited from changing employer and it was not renewable beyond this time.

Therefore there was no option within the immigration rules for her to remain in the UK. An Indian national Sara was bought to the UK from Kuwait on a domestic worker visa. Living in London, Sara was treated appallingly by her employers. She was not allowed to contact her family, was often locked in the house, not allowed out to go to church and expected to be constantly on call, looking after a small baby 24 hours a day.

Sara had no contacts in the UK, no money and her passport had been taken by her employers. During the five months that she had been working in the UK she had received no pay. Sara was on the original domestic worker visa, so entitled to change employers so long as she only worked as a domestic worker in a private household. However her visa was soon to expire and if she was to be able to renew her visa it was vital that she was in full time employment.

She managed to escape, with one week before her visa was due to expire. She secured a job and was able

to apply for a new visa. Sara is currently working in the UK as a nanny for a family. Sara pays her taxes and sends money home to support her family.

Columban Father O’Halpin likens the new situation to returning domestic workers to a situation of slavery. “When these workers are trapped with abusive employers, they become like slaves, there is no escape.

This is what made the visa that brought real employment rights so important,” said Fr O’Halpin.

“It is a terrible reflection on this government to withdraw workers rights and protection from what is one of the most vulnerable group of workers. After all, if you live in the household of your employer you are totally in their control. Many are literally locked in the house when the employer goes out – and domestic workers in the private household are not included in Health and Safety legislation, nor in the Race Relations Act!” said Sr Healy, who argues there was no justification for withdrawing the visa. “It has not been abused, the Home Office knows exactly where every domestic worker lives and works because they have to supply this information yearly when they renew their visa.”

The change is also unlikely to achieve its intended aim of reducing the number of migrant workers.

Many will simply escape the employer and join the ranks of the undocumented workers - untrackable, unregulated and paying no taxes. ”This is bad for the domestic worker and it is bad for the government. Domestic workers want to live and work legally – they want to pay tax and NI, but this will not be possible for them under the present situation,” said Sr Healy.

Common sense would seem to dictate that there should be a return to the previous visa, granting full employment rights. However, given the fevered nature of the immigration debate in this country, whereby lives often seem to become the casualties of populist hysteria, it could be a long fight for those seeking to get back these most basic of rights for migrant workers.

Paul Donovan is a freelance journalist.

Visit www.paulfdonovan.blogspot.com JUSTICE MAGAZINE 49

Feature United Kingdom

A mass lobby of clergy made a spectacular sight in Westminster as they met parliamentarians ahead of the forthcoming G8 Summit, writes Pascale Palmer.

A visible presence in the campaign to end hunger Hundreds of members of religious orders gathered at Westminster earlier this month to call on MPs to act on global hunger.

The mass lobby of parliament by more than 250 nuns, monks, friars, priests and bishops from all over the UK aimed to raise with politicians the reasons why one in eight people go hungry, and challenge them to take action.

During the lobby 57 MPs came to speak to their constituents, including Labour leader Ed Miliband.

He said: “Politics is too important to be left to the politicians. Of course you need political leadership but you need people. All the major changes that have happened in political history only happened because people made them happen.

“Keep the pressure on us. Keep the pressure on David Cameron and on me and on Nick Clegg to do the right thing, to do our duty as politicians, to make good on our promises and

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Keep the pressure on us. Keep the pressure on David Cameron and on me and on Nick Clegg to do the right thing, to do our duty as politicians

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do our duty to the world.

“We have a couple of months when we have got to have the most vigorous campaigning to put the pressure on the G8. Let’s remember our moral obligation to the world – that’s why you’re here that’s why I’m in politics.”

The lobby, organised by CAFOD, comes in the lead-up to the G8 summit which is held in the UK only once every eight years.

This year, the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, of which CAFOD is a founder member, is bringing together more than 200 development and faith-based organisations to call for action to tackle global hunger when G8 leaders meet in Northern Ireland this June.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has added his support to the campaign.

He said: “Many decades ago, hundreds of thousands of British people joined the anti-Apartheid campaign.

The same campaigners came together after Apartheid was dismantled to demand the cancellation of developing countries’ debt, and again in 2005 to demand poverty was consigned to history. They have also worked tirelessly for more than 40 years to realise the promise made by the wealthiest countries to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on aid.

“Looking at the hundred or so charities across Britain that have joined together for this campaign, I recognise veterans of the struggle against apartheid and debt – Oxfam, Christian Aid, CAFOD and many more – some inspired by their faith, some by their compassion – all driven by their

steadfast refusal to accept the status quo of poverty and hunger in the 21st century. The Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign knows that – to tackle the root causes of hunger – aid alone will never be enough; we have to knock down the Jericho Walls of the global systems that are keeping people poor.”

At the rally, Mr Miliband said he wanted to pay tribute to CAFOD and its “incredible work”.

PHOTO: GEOFF CADDICK/PA

Clergy and religious made a highly visible rally in Westminster

“They’re not only a fantastic organisation, but an organisation that is literally changing and saving lives around the world. I warmly endorse the IF campaign. It’s a very easy campaign to remember: it’s about aid, it’s about tax and it’s about transparency,” he said. “All of these things make an enormous difference to people in the world.”

Sr Gemma Simmonds of the Congregation of Jesus and lecturer in

theology at Heythrop College addressed those gathered for the lobby.

She said: “We have power – the power of the vote – and we can tell our MPs that we won’t vote for them if they don’t do something.

“One thing I really wanted to do today was make it clear to our political leaders that religious people are a force to be reckoned with. If you count the number of years and the

experiences of all these people who’ve come together. They’ve been on the front line at home and abroad and have stared human misery in the face.

They may look like old ladies, but they are tigresses. They have seen stuff that would make an ordinary person weak at the knees.”

Many members of the lobby have lived and worked in developing countries and seen hunger first hand.

Sister Pat Robb of the Congregation JUSTICE MAGAZINE 51

Feature United Kingdom

PHOTO: GEOFF CADDICK/PA

of Jesus in London has worked with refugees throughout Africa.

She said: “I believe that we are given gifts by God to share, not to use selfishly for ourselves. It’s an appalling scandal that there’s so much hunger in the world. I’ve worked as a nurse in refugee camps and have seen many children with malnutrition and adults dying from starvation.

“Big demonstrations, like the religious lobby, make the government acknowledge that people from all backgrounds have a voice, that they’re prepared to take part and that the world is watching. We hope and pray that our politicians will not just listen to us, but will act to defend the poorest and most vulnerable in our world.

As long as one person is still hungry, our work is not over.”

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‘‘

I believe that we are given gifts by God to share, not to use selfishly for ourselves.

It’s an appalling scandal that there is so much hunger in the world

And Sr Alphonsus Lagrue, a veteran CAFOD supporter, added her support to the fight against world hunger.

She said: “I’ve come today because I’m concerned about hunger around the world. I have plenty to eat, but there are children dying because they don’t. This makes me unhappy.

“I want to tell David Cameron to

please listen to what we’re saying today. We’re concerned and we care.

Although they’re far away, they are our brothers and sisters.”

CAFOD’s chair of trustees Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster John Arnold took up his placard as the lobby made its way to the Houses of Parliament and added his voice to the IF campaign.

He said: “To see more than 200 sisters, brothers, priests, bishops and lay associates marching on parliament and meeting their MPs shows the strength of feeling in religious communities that the scandal of hunger must end.

“The problem is not a shortage of food. There are deep inequalities in the food system that mean hungry people don’t get the food they need to live. We can put that right, and

PHOTO: GEOFF CADDICK/PA

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Feature United Kingdom

PHOTO: GEOFF CADDICK/PA

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PHOTO: GEOFF CADDICK/PA

we’re here to ensure politicians understand that and take that message up the chain so it reaches the G8 with force.”

The lobby members spoke to their constituency MPs in parliament,

‘‘

We need you. Your enthusiasm is not only infectious but it helps us overcome the arguments of those who say we shouldn’t spend money on aid

including Shadow Secretary of State for International Development Ivan Lewis, Sadiq Khan, Julian Huppert, Glenda Jackson, Jane Ellison, Lady Sylia Hermon, David Lammy, Stephen Timms, Andrew Selous and Nicola Blackwood.

Minister of State for Dfid Alan Duncan also joined the lobby to tell those gathered that their enthusiasm was needed to help win the argument on aid to developing countries.

He said: “We need you. Your enthusiasm is not only infectious but it helps us overcome the arguments of those who say we shouldn’t spend money on aid for the world’s most needy. We’re working a lot cross-party to make the world a better place.

“This is the year when we hit 0.7

per cent, and from now we will continue to hit 0.7 per cent, and we’re going to make sure we target it so that those in most need are helped.”

Pascale Palmer is head of UK news with CAFOD JUSTICE MAGAZINE 55

Feature United Kingdom

With surveys showing support for the cuts to welfare in the UK, Keith Fernett looks at the current state of play in the social care sector and expresses concern over the difficulties that agencies helping the people in most serious need have to cope with.

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Anchor House, of which I am director, is a social action charity that specialises in looking after the homeless, those in recovery from substance misuse and former offenders.

In a recent video blog on our web site I focused on our staff and those in the social care sector overall.

My concern for the sector has lately been re-emphasised by a recent survey which suggested that 90 per cent of society agree that the welfare cuts and the austerity programme are right. As well as this, current reports conducted on several prisons in both the public and private sectors indicate that the rehabilitation agenda is going down the priority scale, with prisoners staying in their cells for 23 hours a day (Source: Her Majesty’ Inspectorate of Prisons).

We are also seeing new systems that mean benefit payments will be made monthly, and access to them is going to rely solely on electronic portals, which is bound to cause problems.

For example, one of our residents appealed against a decision over a telephone link, only for them to have their benefits suspended because they should have used an electronic portal.

How does this relate to my staff and those in the social care sector overall?

Well let’s start with a question; how does society think that all of these issues will help to encourage the rehabilitation and integration into society of those who are homeless, have substance misuse issues or a history of offending?

It seems that organisations in the social care sector and their staff are going to have to try and deal with these problems, potentially without public support.

My concern is that there is a more brutalising regime coming into place by default. We are now hearing on a regular basis about services that are disappearing and closing down. For example, Anchor House was recently asked to rehouse someone who was a schizophrenic, entrenched in substance misuse, and had assaulted staff in an organisation that was trying to help him. Unfortunately, after serious

‘‘

My concern is that there is a more brutalising regime coming into place by default

PHOTO: ANCHOR HOUSE

Anchor House gives people the chance to discover who they really can be

PHOTO: ANCHOR HOUSE

deliberation we came to the conclusion that a ÂŁ60 a week payment to ourselves would never allow us to assemble the concerted help that this individual needs, and that we had to refuse the request.

My concern, then, is where does he go? In a previous video blog, I emphasised that in some cases the only way to help people with complex needs is for them to be arrested and hope the prison service can provide the support they need. Now, however, even this seems unlikely to work.

How can prison help them if the recent reports by the prisons inspectorate are an indication of a direction of travel?

My colleagues and I are therefore faced with a series of daunting challenges. I am not opposed to the welfare cuts or the austerity programmes per se, but I am starting to question how we are addressing the issues. I trained initially as an economist, and more recently I have been specialising in the issues of Perform-

Practical skills are taught to help people get back on their feet JUSTICE MAGAZINE 57

Feature United Kingdom

PHOTO: ANCHOR HOUSE

Sometimes individuals need space to get themselves back on their feet 58 JUSTICE MAGAZINE

‘‘

Instantly, I feel I am in conflict with the large scale procurement exercises of central government

PHOTO: ANCHOR HOUSE

ance Management. This has led me to see the need for a radical reconsideration of how we deliver services, who delivers services and whether there is a need for a paradigm shift towards harnessing volunteers and smaller locally based charities that have a people centric approach.

Instantly, I feel I am in conflict with the large scale procurement exercises of central government that seek to secure individual contractors who can manage big budget ticket projects, such as £100m+ turnover organisations. Anchor House never gets considered for much of the work that goes out to tender in this way, in spite of the fact that we get around 24 per cent of our residents back into work, as compared to the Work Programme that achieves something in the order of just three per cent into jobs.

In 2010, Oxford Economics undertook an assessment of our work and concluded that for every £1 invested in us, we benefited society to the tune of £3.98 – a SROI (Social Return on Investment) of nearly 400 per cent.

Anchor House takes a preventative approach and I believe that time has come for a far more considered approach to prevention. In the current climate of poor resources, social care organisations are spending too much time attempting to deal with each other to obtain services for those who have increasingly more deep seated problems.

My staff are finding this difficult and dispiriting as often there are no immediately evident solutions. This does not mean that there are no solutions, though. If we think instead about making our staff more productive and more capable of dealing with the needs of those requiring our services, things can improve. I have heard about wonderful initiatives for both Probation and Integrated Offender Management to name but two, but what makes sense in Whitehall feels like madness where my staff are concerned. Silo mentalities are still

The message at Anchor House is simple

deeply entrenched in our statutory services, where it is deemed acceptable for 15 staff to be at a meeting to discuss the simple fact that a computer lead cannot be connected to two computers, because one belongs to the Police and the other to Probation. This, together with the numerous other examples of the dysfunctional relationship of partnership arrangements that I have come across, inevitably leads to low performance and harassed staff.

How can we energise, protect and motivate our staff in the social care sector so that they can deliver services in a troubled climate? I believe we can and should be optimistic, so our prescription must be for the government to really address the issue of red tape. If they would consider devolving the Jobcentre responsibilities, say to organisations like Anchor House, we would be able to holistically consider the issues and co-ordinate the response to a person trying to change their lives.

Why can we not act as the probation officer? Recently a resident of ours was given an appointment by the Probation Service which conflicted with one at the Jobcentre. Neither party was willing to reschedule, so he chose to attend the probation meeting to ensure he wouldn’t be sent back to prison. As a consequence he was sanctioned and ended up losing his benefits because he didn’t attend the Jobcentre interview. Needless to

say, it fell on my staff to try and resolve the issue, but the damage was already done and three months of our work trying to get the individual ready to be a good citizen was lost.

Staff in the social care sector face this type of situation and the waste of public expenditure on an increasing regular basis.

Where is the justice in these types of structural behaviours? It is easy to be critical, so I welcome an initiative that would wholly do away with the red tape and allow us to see what we can really achieve - our current SROI of 398 per cent illustrates what we’re capable of. Obviously there have to be rules and structures, but let’s search for a new paradigm. In the name of justice, for our service users and our staff, I would ask the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Works and Pensions to consider such a challenge.

The end result would be both more motivated staff and service users who could truly turn their lives around, dare I say it, in a more efficient manner.

The only question left is does the government have the will to develop this new paradigm and start with a blank sheet rather than their traditional XYZ/2/234 format?

Keith Fernett is director of the Anchor House charity in London JUSTICE MAGAZINE 59

Final thought

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PHOTO: MAZUR/CATHOLICCHURCH.ORG.UK

A Mass in support of migrant workers was held at Westminster Cathedral on May 6. See the report on the campaign to defend the rights of domestic workers on pages 46-49.