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St Anne's Catholic Church
Ormskirk

One World Week

2008 is the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. OWW will focus on bringing together people of many religions and cultures to grow together in mutual understanding of the shared values embodied in human rights relating to freedom from want. Growing Together will stress the need for global awareness of how our everyday local actions affect people's basic human rights around the world through, for example, trade relationships, climate change and the pursuit of the UN's Millenium Development Goals.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, aspires to:

“…a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief

and freedom from fear and want”

Millions of people around the world still do not enjoy that most fundamental right – the right to survive – which forms the basis of all other rights.

In March 2008 at a conference to explore how the implementation of UN Millennium Goals could be speeded up in Africa, Jessica Nalwoga, of the Church of Uganda, told the participants:

‘‘Most parents are not able to provide clothing for the children to wear to school. Neither can they provide adequate school materials. Parents are, on a daily basis, faced with the task of choosing which human rights to violate: education, health or food? For they can hardly meet any since they are themselves living on handouts.''

While the concept of rights is a useful legal device to hold Governments accountable, the concept of ‘Ubuntu’ expresses our individual relationship and commitment to all other members of the human family:

“Sharing this fragile planet, our rights are inextricably linked to those of our fellow human beings. However faraway the event may be, if another human being anywhere is denied their fundamental rights that impoverishes the world I inhabit.”

Milind Kolhatkar, Chair of One World Week. April 2008.

Ubuntu is the traditional Africal philosophy described by Dr Mustafa Ali, Secretary General of the African Council of Religions, in April 2008, as meaning:

“we must all take care of each other for us all to be secure."

It emphasises the interconnectedness of us all, which is being demonstrated so vividly by climate change, trade relationships, economic justice and security.

So how can we ‘Grow Together’ to strengthen the human family?

Growing together – locally…

by bringing together people of diverse cultures and of many faiths and none to grow together in mutual understanding of our shared values and commitment to each others’ human rights locally and globally. (see our Guidelines pages for ideas about how to bring people together - if you're looking for some quick pointers go straight to the Ten Top Tips page).

Or you could take 'Growing Together' at its face value and set up a community allotment! The Black Environment Network [BEN] have useful experience, and a returned VSO,Vicki Clark, has a good story to share.

Growing together – globally…

by learning more about how our local actions and personal lifestyles can affect the rights of members of our human family across the world to a livelihood and what we can do to help.

Organise local events with local communities to explore global interactions which link us together. Try to find issues that local people can relate to, such as:

Climate Change

- its impacts and how people’s livelihoods are affected by drought; floods; loss of land; rising food prices –all threatening their basic right to survive. Explore how actions in one part of the world affect outcomes for people in another, for example:

What will be the effect of using land to grow biofuels instead of food?

South Africa's planned production of biofuels from crops such as maize, sunflowers and sugar cane ‘‘can play a role in improving energy supply for the poor as long as they are grown by small-scale farmers and rural people'', said South African Non-Governmental Organisations Coalition (SANGOCO). But according to Annie Sugrue, southern African co-ordinator of Citizens United for Renewable Energy and Sustainability, a non-governmental organization (NGO):

"we are taking away food from poor people's tables and putting it into rich people's cars".

She was speaking at a South African Non-Governmental Organisations Coalition (SANGOCO). workshop in Johannesburg on the effects of climate change on the poor (May 15, 2007).

Food

Food always makes a OWW event more enjoyable! You could use a theme such as "Food from around the world" to bring people of many cutures together, bringing a dish to share. A speaker (or two or three) could draw attention to global food problems and talk about how climate change is affecting people's livelihoods and what was being done to tackle the problems. (see reasons for rising food prices below. These could be useful for speakers notes) You could mount an exhibition using Practical Action's photos from Bangladesh [see Gallery] or use photos from other aid agencies (see Links) to provide a spectrum of what various faith-based agencies are doing.

Food Crisis

The widespread increase in food prices is currently being widely reported across the UK and around the world. Food prices increased dramatically in 2007 (40% and much more in some areas) and the rise has continued in the first few months of 2008. These soaring food costs hit poorer people hardest, since they spend a much higher proportion of their income on food. The five key reasons for the price rises are, according to the Guardian [May 27 2008]:

· Soaring oil and energy prices have pushed up food production costs dramatically in the last year: fertiliser is up more than 70%, fuel for tractors and farm machinery is up 30%, pesticides, which depend on oil, are up too, as are labour costs;

· Demand is rising as the global population grows and as people in emerging economies such as China and India use increasing affluence to buy more meat, eggs and dairy products. Over 30% of the world's grain now goes to feeding animals rather than people directly. Farming one acre of decent land can produce 138lbs of protein from grain, but one acre given over to beef farming will produce only 20lbs of protein;

· Droughts in grain-producing areas of the world have reduced harvests in the last few years so grain stocks are at an historic low;

· Biofuels are competing with food for arable land, with both the US and the EU mandating their use. About 30% of the US corn crop is expected to be diverted to biofuels this year;

· Speculative trading in agricultural commodities has grown dramatically. Several big investment banks have launched agricultural commodity index funds, as they look for new areas in which to make profits, following the credit crunch. The result has been enormous fluctuations in market prices that do not appear to relate to changes in fundamentals such as supply and demand. Four years ago $10-15bn was invested in agricultural commodities funds - now that figure is more than $150bn. Wall Street investment funds own 40% of US wheat futures and more than one fifth of US corn futures.

Different experts give different weight to each of these factors, but agree that their coincidence has led to the current turbulence.

Go to Stamp Out Poverty's website [www.stampoutpoverty.org ] for more about the dangers of speculative activity contributing to poverty.

To learn more about the catastrophic effects of increased food prices in East Africa, go to Oxfam's website.

For example: Rob McNeil, who has just returned from the region as part of an Oxfam team, said:

‘‘ This is a catastrophe in the making. We have time to act before it becomes a reality. The cost of food has escalated by up to 500% in some places, leaving people who have suffered drought after drought in utter destitution. Some of the roads we travelled on were littered with dead livestock." He continued: ‘‘ People are increasingly becoming desperate. I saw people in one village reduced to pounding the food pellets intended for their animals into porridge to feed their families."

[You will find links to excellent materials about these issues in the resources section of this website]

Only through a growing appreciation of responsibility for each other, ‘ubuntu’, can we hope to tackle the causes and effects of climate change in a way that enables us all to grow together

Trade

Many trade practices have often been guilty, and still are, of exploiting producers and violating their human rights to obtain lower prices for the consumer and higher returns for shareholders; both groups may well have been unaware of practices such as using child labour or indiscriminate use of pesticides which damaged the health of farmers and their families, as well as the soils.
Fairtrade practices are different:

Fairtrade is bringing consumers and producers closer together in recognition of each other's needs, rights and dignity as people, not just producers.
Fairtrade encourages sustainable cultivation practices;
Fairtrade pays producers a price that covers their costs;
The Fairtrade premium enables producers to improve the lives of their families and communities.
So Fairtrade ensures that farmers and their families can grow and flourish together with consumers.

Fairtrade enables consumers and producers to grow closer together – becoming more aware of each other’s lives, needs and rights.

Millennium Development Goals [MDGs]

- have been set by the UN to achieve freedom from want for the world’s poorest people. Many of the Goals address the basic right to survive, including rights to health and education. Explore how Governments, International Agencies and NGOs use our aid to address these goals and how we can help. For example you could explore how the Aid agencies of different faiths respond to the needs and rights embodied in the MDGs - try inviting speakers from the NGO Aid agencies listed on the links pages.

The UN conference on the Millennium Development Goals(MDGs) this September, 2008, will consider how to plug the funding gap to meet the MDGs and provide clean water, healthcare and education to the world’s poorest people. The UN Secretary General has given his backing to the idea of a global currency transaction tax to provide new sources of additional aid. The Stamp Out Poverty Campaign [www.stampoutpoverty.org ] has ideas for action if you want to explore ways of supporting this idea.

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