St. Leo the Great Justice and Peace Group

Report for October 2002

It has been a very busy month for the parish Justice and Peace Group, with 3 events attended on behalf of the parish.

SCIAF Presentation

The first was a presentation on 3 October in Coatbridge arranged by SCIAF, which gave the opportunity to hear members of the Kamwokya Caring Community speak of their work in Uganda, which started in 1987 from local prayer groups responding to the HIV/Aids crisis enveloping the country. SCIAF is one of the supporters of the work of the KCC.

Despite a disappointingly small audience, the presentation and subsequent discussion were very rewarding.

The Kamwokya group from such small beginnings now has a clinic with around 3,000 patients (mainly Aids/HIV) and vaccinates about 500 babies a week! It runs a school for orphans and street children (188 max.), which also provides one square meal a day. It has developed a youth programme for Aids awareness which has spread to 13 other African countries. It has worked to improve sanitation and drainage in the area, as well as clean water. Previously they had 2 wells to serve 40,000 people!

Their pastoral workers do counselling in the home which enables them to identify the real problems. The aim of their school is to get children into "normal" schools and hopefully to university if they can get sponsors for them. They also run a technical vocational school for over 250 children which teaches bakery, tailoring etc. Their "Positive Test" club for women widowed by Aids/HIV and HIV positive themselves teaches the women skills to enable them to earn a living to keep themselves and their families. Perhaps more importantly, it helps these women to do educational work to help prevent the spread of Aids.

Another part of their work is to find foster homes for orphans. The group also work with the police to ensure that widows and orphans get their rights to land and houses.

The stunning and very moving thing is that those involved in the group have direct experience of the problems. The director of the project currently has 6 children in his home who are orphaned nieces and nephews of his brothers and sisters who have died of Aids. He has another brother dying now. The youngest member of the delegation is an orphan who was brought up through the help of the project when her father and mother died of Aids. She was put through university, thanks to the project, and now works with them on a voluntary basis.

The discussion after the formal presentation covered many subjects including debt relief, the need for fair trade rules, the need to get money to the grassroots, and the problem of being self-sustaining when your "client" base is composed of people who are dying.

The message for us was the fact that we are privileged to be able to help people who are doing so much for their communities. I will publicise the next night organised by SCIAF and would urge you all to attend and be humbled by what our small contributions can do!

Justice and Peace Annual Conference

Our second event very shortly afterwards was the annual national Justice and Peace Conference held on 6 October in Glasgow, and attended by members from throughout Scotland. It was an interesting day with the theme of "Spirituality and Justice". I have to say it is the first time I have attended a conference where it began with a relaxation/meditation session!

Having been switched off from our "normal" concerns by Tim Duffy, we were tuned into consideration of Justice and Peace issues at home by Fr. Chris Boles from Edinburgh (despite his comment about the Wise Men coming from the East - as we pointed out, they had to come West for salvation!). He made us see the positive side of the Scottish Parliament with its Minister for Social Justice and the various cross party groups on issues of concern. He also however raised concerns about racism, voter apathy and challenged us that talking and doing were not enough - we needed to pray!

We were then split into small groups to consider one aspect of what we had heard that had impacted us and report back on it - but not in the usual style of flip-chart and talk. The result was a glorious mix of mime, rhyme, song, dance and rap.

The afternoon session was introduced by Mary Cullen of SCIAF who reported on her visit to Southern Africa, in particular the Diocese of Livingstone. She highlighted the problems of a fragile economy and poor infrastructure trying to cope with this crisis, and the terrible pressures resulting from the supply by the USA of GM maixe at $90/tonne against $240/tonne for local produce - what a dreadful dilemma for a government faced with starving people. SCIAF is concentrating on getting alternative grain for the starving.

She reminded us that the key message of SCIAF is working with people not doing things for them. To put things in perspective, she reminded us that life expectancy in Zambia is 37 years; 70% of the population live on less than 75p/day; and there are 1 million orphans out of a population of 10m.

At the breakout session, we were handed a pack of photographs and asked to pick the ones which most affected us. It was interesting to see what the various groups had chosen and why - what was common and what diametrically opposed! The most affecting for me was the photograph that we had rejected in our group as a "nice" photo of an African mother and child which turned out to be a photo of a women who had no food left and had just been told that there would be no food distribution because the supplies were GM maize. She received this news with a submissive dignity. I wondered how we would have reacted in her position?

Our conference finished with a Mass celebrated by Bishop Mone whose sermon is reported in the J&P magazine.

Small World - Big Challenge

Our final event was a conference in Edinburgh organised by the World Development Movement. This was a very full day. First of all we attended a "beginner's class" on all the buzz words in this field. Then the main session started with a look at the Big Picture with a panel of speakers including Peter Tulloch, a former member of the World Trade Organisation, Fatima Ismael of Nicaragua, and Barry Coates of WMD.

Peter Tulloch tried hard to present the positive side of the WTO - how it was improving, and the problems being presented by world trade recession. He pointed to the positive developments and the changes in the world but accepted that the WTO was too complex and new problems with religious divisions were arising. He also acknowledged problems with subsidies being given in the North to farmers etc, and unfair trade barriers.

Fatima works with small coffee growers in Nicaragua and her talk focussed on what world trade changes mean at the grass roots level. 70% of coffee production in Nicaragua is by small farmers. Over 0.5m people depend on exports. Recently over 0.25m temporary workers have lost their jobs. Banks have gone into liquidation. The end result is unemployment, hunger, death and mass immigration to the cities for work. Children are deprived of schooling and the most vulnerable are single parent families headed by women. Suicide and mental illnesses are on the increase.

This is something to think about when we next buy our coffee. Our price cut may be at the expense of real people's lives!

The final speaker for the first session was Barry Coates of WDM. He started with a quote that we need "to make the global system safe for decent society". In the period following the 80s, Sub-Saharan African has seen its income drop 15% and Latin America has at best stagnated.

We need to recognise the right of developing countries to protect their fledgling industries even as the USA did in its early years. He pointed out that trade barriers against developing countries were 4 times higher than for developed countries!. He warned about the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) which is currently under consultation ( very low profile) which requires governments to identify which services they are prepared to open up to other countries - in case we are complacent, this could impact us in Scotland at both national and local government level - and decisions are irreversible. We should check out the WDM website to see what our government could be giving away! His demand was for proper research and assessment before any decisions were taken.

The afternoon session focussed on local grassroots efforts and had input from John Swinney of the SNP, Swati Bhattacharjee of India and Mukami McCrum of Central Scotland Racial Equality Council.

JohnSwinney started by announcing that, recognising that globalisation was a reality and the world is now interdependent, the SNP are reviewing their policies. He wanted Scotland to take responsibility for its own conduct and consider how it engaged with the wider world in the areas of environment, the economy and the movement of people. We should not use the lack of involvement of the USA as an excuse for not acting and seeking effective measures. We need to put real resources into e.g. renewable resources of energy. He challenged the view that the way forward was to accept the need for lower wages to attract employment - we should go for investment in skills and knowledge. On asylum seekers, we have obligations as a civilised society and we should aim to produce a properly structured immigration policy, recognising the benefits to be gained from incomers. He also highlighted an important role for small countries such as Scotland to input contribution to international debates.

The principles he has asked to underpin his review of policy are that policy should reflect international law and the UN charters, and it should work towards eradication of poverty and a peaceful just and stable international community. The roots of September 11 are likely to be found in fundamental inequalities and poverty. We all have a responsibility to contribute to their resolution by our own actions.

The second speaker, Swati, is a journalist who is studying at Stirling University. She specialises in globalisation and health issues. She described her talk as the "worm's eye view".

In Bengal where she comes from, there are major problems of disease proving deadly because of poverty. Increasing globalisation and debt means local governments are unable to act and increasingly look to NGOs to fund hospitals and health care. Globalisation for India has removed the difference between economics and politics. Governments are often powerless against multinationals and require international pressure to be brought to bear.

The World Bank is forcing governments to reduce further already low levels of expenditure on health and education. This impacts rural families who now get into debt to meet medical bills. Reduced food subsidies lead to malnutrition and further health problems - and so it goes!

The opening of markets to competition has not led to benefits. In relation to drugs for example, prices has increased and the companies are not interested in marketing drugs for the illnesses which affect the poor, such as TB, but prefer to go for "lifestyle" items such as skin lighteners!

The last speaker, Mukami, came originally from Kenya- nowadays, she said, she would be viewed as a migrant worker. Her concerns were that the agencies of the North were presenting themselves as experts on the lives of people in the South. Poverty, she reminded us, is not noble and its victims should not be blamed for their situation.

In Kenya, she reported that things are little better from her childhood days. Now there were water pipes and electric lines but the water often ran dry or polluted and the electricity was frequently cut off. Even worse, people no longer felt hope that hard work would improve their situation. Cash export crops now consume 75% of crops, a significant increase from 25% in previous times. This means people don't grow food to feed the country. There is over-production which leads to lower prices and this means in turn that children don't go to school and have less to eat. War further complicates the issues.

She urged people to listen to the voices of the grass-roots. Solve the real problems - lack of rights to land for women and children; HIV prevention rather than expensive drugs for treatment. Most of all, she asked people to recognise that Africa isn' t sitting around waiting for other to solve their problems. The new NEPA grouping is seeking to address these issues and is showing a welcome determination to include women in the solutions.

All in all a very busy but rewarding month.