communications, Author at Franciscans International

Franciscans International, along with the Franciscan Action Network and the General Office of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation in Rome, held a webinar on November 24th 2015, to present the Franciscans’ engagement in the XXI International Conference of Parties (known as COP21) on Climate Change.

As Pope Francis said, “[On climate] there is a clear, definitive and urgent ethical imperative to act.” The webinar explains this international conference, introduces the Franciscan delegation that will participate in person, and also gives examples of what everyone can do locally, from their own communities.

Listen to the webinar here.

On November 5, 2015 the UN Human Rights Committee released its recommendations addressed to Benin after monitoring the civil and political rights situation in the country. As part of the review, a coalition of 24 civil society organisations including Franciscans International (FI) submitted information to assist the Human Rights Committee in carrying out a complete and effective assessment. FI’s contribution focused on two issues: the situation of Beninese children being accused of witchcraft, which jeopardises their rights to life, health, and development; and the slowness of the government towards achieving full birth registration rates.

During Benin’s review on October 27th – 28th, the Beninese government explained that it has been recently carrying out successful awareness-raising campaigns with Franciscains-Benin, one of FI’s main partners, and that this has resulted in the diminishing of killings and abandonments of children accused of witchcraft. While acknowledging the Government’s collaboration with civil society organisations, FI had warned the Human Rights Committee that such improvement are mainly the results of actions initiated by Beninese civil society. In their final observations, the Human Rights Committee recommended that “the State Party should take rigorous measures to punish infanticide.”

The Human Rights Committee also echoed FI’s concern about birth registration in Benin. In this area again, despite recent efforts by the authorities, too many obstacles still hinder the birth registration of all children. The State should act through legislative measures and awareness-raising, and should allocate additional financial means to local civil registration centres “in order to achieve the registration of all children’s births, both in urban and rural areas”.

FI and its local partner Franciscains-Bénin will use the Human Rights Committee’s recommendations as a basis to continue their advocacy work at international and national level towards better protection of marginalised children in Benin.

For more information:

Context: Ritualistic infanticide is a phenomenon still widely practiced in certain areas of Northern Benin. In these traditional communities, a child born breach, or premature, born with teeth, or a visible handicap, runs the risk of being labelled a “witch,” bringing bad luck to the family, and therefore disposed of. The practice of ritual infanticide jeopardises the rights to life, health, and development of thousands of children in several African countries. Addressing the issue remains a taboo, impeding significant improvements. FI and its local partner Franciscains-Bénin have been collaborating for several years to carry out awareness-raising projects on the ground, and to advocate at the UN.

In an effort to build stronger coordination among its African partners, FI has been conducting a series of regional training workshops across the continent to mobilise partners in the field to engage with UN human rights mechanisms, and to provide a space for partners to share the issues they face in their work. This has allowed for networking and new collaborations. The workshops coincide with various country reviews by these mechanisms, such as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and the Treaty Bodies.

From October 9 to 13, 2015, FI lead a workshop in Tanzania, for the East Africa region, focusing on economic, social, and cultural rights. Thirty partners attended, hailing from Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia. The workshop went over the basics about ESC rights, and provided participants with the necessary tools to be able to document cases of rights violations in ways that can be used and highlighted at the UN. It aimed to emphasize the vital role that FI’s partners have in promoting economic, social, and cultural rights in their communities and in the region as a whole.

The workshop also encouraged these human rights defenders and civil society actors to exchange experiences, network, and explore possible collaborations. It was a good opportunity for FI to connect them to and train them further on relevant UN mechanisms, so that their work, and FI’s work, can have a greater outreach and influence decision makers at national and international levels.

Participants left the workshop with new knowledge and consolidated partnerships. Many felt empowered to work beyond their specific areas, analysing the situations they face through their newly acquired lens of economic, social, and cultural rights. Many stated that workshops like these remind them of the value of their work in the fight for justice and peace, and fans the flames of their common commitment to defending human rights.

“I do not want your understanding, I want you to do something,”
Detainee on Manus Island

This is the sentence that changed everything for Carol, a former counsellor and caseworker that had been recently mandated to work with asylum seekers in Australia’s offshore detention center on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Carol had applied to the job for humble reasons: she wanted to experience working abroad. The experience on Manus turned her life around.

Manus Island is one of Australia’s offshore asylum seekers processing centres. From 2001 to 2008 and now again since 2012, all incoming asylum seekers arriving by boat are to be detained in these offshore centres while they wait for their application for refugee status to be processed.

As Carol got to know the men detained on Manus Island, seeking asylum from countries like Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Sri Lanka and Somalia, she felt increasing unease with how her government was treating them. Their living conditions were dreadful: insufferable heat and humidity in the tents that housed them, fences around the compounds, limited access to drinking water, very little health care, loss of personal property, violence perpetrated by staff, but most importantly, a cut-off date for resettlement in Australia that left them without hope and with a decreased sense of dignity. Anyone who had arrived after July 19th 2013 was to be processed for PNG Resettlement, and unbeknownst to the men, the PNG government wanted the men to be able to speak fluent Pidgin and English before they were considered for their refugee status– which meant, at least, a good 5 more years in detention.

Carol was on Manus Island in early 2014 when a riot broke out – just after the announcement from the Australian government to the men that they would certainly not be resettled to Australia, and that their detention was indefinite. The riot left one detainee dead, and many horrifically injured. Carol saw the blood on the ground; she held IV bags for the injured men laying on the floor. She felt prompted to write about her experience, to share the stories of the men detained, so that their lives and experiences would not be forgotten or silenced.

Franciscans International invited Carol to share her experience and the stories of the men at the UN Human Rights Council on September 15th, 2015 in the context of a debate organised with Edmund Rice International, Destination Justice, The Refugee Council of Australia and Human Rights Law Center, to highlight the human rights situation for asylum seekers to Australia, seeking international protection. Carol was able to bring the voices of the men on Manus Island to the United Nations, which is one among many other steps she is taking to heed the call of one detainee who challenged her during her first rotation to Manus Island: “I do not want your understanding, I want you to do something.”

From September 25th to 27th, 2015, Heads of States and Governments gathered at the United Nations headquarters in New York City to adopt the new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that promises to “transform our world” and “leave no one behind.” This agreed text comes to us in the face of overwhelming evidence of persistent poverty, deepening inequality, ecological degradation, unprecedented loss of biodiversity, and climate change accelerating under neo-liberal globalization.

Can the new development agenda live up to the hype and rhetoric? Will the SDGs usher a just and transformative mode of development?

On September 28th, a coalition of concerned organisations, including Franciscans International (FI) and the NGO Mining Working Group, organised a dialogue in New York to hear from and strategize with representatives of social movements and communities coming from the margins, those who are most affected by the current unjust and unsustainable mode of development. Participants took stock of the UN Agenda and pledges made by global leaders in relation to their struggles against land grabs, austerity, rapid urbanization and migration, militarization, gender-based violence, and other issues faced by marginalized groups in society, especially in the global South.

For FI, a key objective was to join the moment and content of Laudato Si‘, the Pope’s encyclical on environmental justice, with the concerns and demands of represented social movements calling for deep, transformational, and structural change. Fr. Peter Hughes, an Irish Colombian Missionary priest representing the Pan-Amazonic Ecclesial Network (REPAM) was invited as a panellist to challenge participants to consider Laudato Si’ in this way.

From this dialogue comes a set of joint analyses and recommendations that the coalition can bring to the Paris Conference on Climate Change (COP21) in December 2015 to gather more support and continue to build a critical assessment of and engagement with the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. The draft document will be used as an outreach and education tool in the lead up to these climate talks throughout the month of November.

With the endorsement of 14 local, national, and international NGOs, Franciscans International submitted an urgent appeal to the UN regarding the arbitrary killing of an 18 year-old student and the critical injuring of a 17 year old student, allegedly committed by members of the Indonesian Police Force.

On September 28th 2015, members of the Indonesian Police Force allegedly targeted and shot two young Papuan high school students at the Gorong-Gorong traditional Market, in Timika District, Papua Province of Indonesia. One school boy, Mr. Kaleb Bogau (18 years old) was killed and the other, Mr. Efrando Sobarek (17 years old) was shot in the leg and chest and is presently in critical condition at the Regional General Hospital of Mimika.

Mr Kaleb Bogau’s family is considering this case as a political assassination: Kaleb Bogau’s father is Pastor Daniel Bogau, a minister at the local Papuan Evangelical Kingme Church, and a member of Komite National Papua Barat (KNPB) in Timika. The KNPB is a West Papua movement which is pushing for a referendum on Papua’s political status, and is seen as primarily non-violent, comprising mostly youth and students. In the last four years , more than 40 KNPB members have been assassinated.

Between 2006 and September 2015, allegedly nine students have been killed by Police and Indonesian military in Timika District. The rate of extrajudicial executions in Papua and West Papua has not fallen for several years despite repeated promises of change in the approach by authorities.

In all cases of extra-judicial executions in Papua and West Papua over the last two years, the victims have only been indigenous Papuans. Indigenous Papuans make up less than 45% of the population and overt racism is part of the daily practice of security forces in West Papua. The fear is that authorities may cover up this case as is commonly practiced in the criminal justice process, and the perpetrators may never be held to account.

The perpetrators should be made accountable before the appropriate legal system.

See FI’s joint appeal submitted to the UN here.

The September 21 launch gave an opportunity for some key players in the fight against extreme poverty to express their appreciation for the handbook and their intentions to support, promote, and use it in their work.

On September 21st, FI and ATD Fourth World launched the Handbook on Making Human Rights Work for People Living in Extreme Poverty at the UN in Geneva, and unveiled the accompanying video Extreme Poverty: Standing Up For Rights, that illustrates the types of situations in which the handbook can be used. A crowd of 100 people committed to a human rights based approach to extreme poverty gathered for the event, combining NGOs, human rights experts, diplomats, and many of those who contributed to the handbook and video.

The launch gave an opportunity for some key players in the fight against extreme poverty to express their appreciation for the handbook and their intentions to support, promote, and use it in their work. All lauded the fact that the handbook was based on consultations with those communities it seeks to help. Many, such as the representatives from the EU and Ecuador, and the Ambassador of Italy, noted the timing of the launch coinciding with the adoption on September 27th of the new Sustainable Development Goals, the first of which is to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere.” They committed to using the handbook as a tool for eradicating extreme poverty. Sr. Deborah Lockwood, President of the Conference of the Franciscan Family, affirmed she would support the handbook’s implementation by encouraging Franciscans to see how human rights are vital in the work to fight poverty.

Francesca Restifo and Janet Nelson, leaders of the process for their respective organisations, Franciscans International and ATD Fourth World, succinctly shared the approach and content of the handbook, underlining the human-rights based approach and the community consultations that undergird the entire handbook. “This handbook is first and foremost for those people we consulted at the grassroots,” affirmed Ms Restifo. “It reflects their concerns and their issues, and offers concrete and applicable suggestions to their situations.”

What now? FI and ATD Fourth World plan to disseminate the handbook and video to their networks of community workers and NGOs working in the field with those living in extreme poverty. FI plans to develop training material and support workshops in the field, so as to have an even wider-reaching impact.

Download your copy of the handbook:

English

French

Spanish

Watch the movie (ENG) here.

Monseigneur Fridolin Ambongo Besungu challenged the international community to consider natural resource extraction in the DRC as the underlying cause of numerous and interrelated human rights violations at a UN debate on September 16th.

“The problem around natural resource extraction in the DRC needs to be redefined. It is not a question of economics or trade, it is a question of dignity and human rights,” affirmed Monseigneur Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, representing FI at a debate organised on September 16th at the UN by Franciscans International, in collaboration with the World Council of Churches, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and International Federation for Human Rights; partners committed to keeping the volatile situation in the DRC on the Human Rights Council agenda.

As the country prepares for a new round of elections, civil society is looking for ways to protect those who defend human rights, who speak out against illicit exploitation and trade of natural resources, sexual violence, the uncontrolled flow of weapons, and against the climate of impunity that makes these violations possible. The debate sought to remind the international community not only about the gravity of the human rights situation in the DRC, but also that the Congolese civil society is counting on its political pressure and financial support for greater protection of human rights and human rights defenders.

Following speakers who highlighted important human rights violations and the complex context in which they occur, Monseigneur Fridolin argued that the underlying cause of the situation was the unchecked extraction of the DRC’s natural resources and the human rights violations this implies. Forced displacement, the uncontrolled flow of arms, the proliferation of armed groups, sexual violence, and the destruction of social life – all of these could be lessened, if not completely eradicated – by a Mining Code that would address the three phases of natural resource extraction: violations committed when land is grabbed, violations committed once companies have settled themselves in, and violations committed as companies ignore their obligations give way to corruption.

Ambongo stressed that it was the responsibility of politicians and governments to ensure that natural resources benefit local communities as well as investors. “The desire for enrichment has trumped justice,” he concluded. “This is behind all of the DRC’s problems.” A testimony from the floor, detailing how an organisation that encouraged youth to get involved into politics was harassed and forced into hiding, only strengthened the need for the international community to continue putting pressure on the DRC to address the situation through a human rights lens, and to ensure that dealing with natural resource extraction is an integral part of UN recommendations to the DRC.

In November 2014, a group of Afro-Colombian women walked the 600 kilometres from their villages in the department of Cauca, to Bogota, the Colombian capital, to protest the devastating impacts of mining and violence in their region: sexual violence, assassination of community leaders, contamination of water, loss of livelihood (artisanal gold mining), and forced displacement. Their signs, songs, and clear demands to the government were in the name of defending life and their ancestral territories.

Soon after the march, the Justice Peace, and Integrity of Creation Commission of the Franciscan Family of Colombia (FFC) started finding ways in which to act in solidarity with the movement, one of which was to carry out a consultation to assess the impact of extractive development policies on Afro-Colombian women and their communities. FI sponsored and supported this effort, convinced that the information collected could be presented at international level, during Colombia’s upcoming review by the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in August 2015.

Based on this information and in dialogue with the FFC and community leaders, FI drafted a report that was submitted jointly to the Committee underlining deficiencies in legal, institutional, and policy frameworks, and documents the discriminatory impacts of policies that promote and allow illegal mining: the reality of unconstitutional and illegal mining, the impacts on the collective human rights of communities, especially in terms of water, forced displacement, and the situation of Afro-Colombian women; the right to prior consultation; and the situation of human rights defenders. The findings corroborate those of the UN expert on minority issues in Colombia: “The map of high-density Afro-Colombian populations overlaps almost completely with the map of areas of extreme poverty.1”

Two representatives – the coordinator of the FFC JPIC Commission and a representative of ACONC – travelled to Geneva in August, to raise awareness about the situation in North Cauca, and participate in Colombia’s review by the UN CERD. The report and comments made by the two representatives were picked up by the Committee on various fronts. The Committee raised issues that were consistent with the report, including how continuing armed conflict disproportionately affects indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations. It stated that Afro-Colombian men and women face “persistent structural discrimination and invisibility, (…) which manifests in itself in the inequality and gap in terms of Afro-Colombian’s exercise of economic, social, and cultural rights in relation to the rest of the population,” and directly mentioned the threats and violence that keep Afro-Colombians from exercising their rights over territorial lands. In parallel to what was stated in the joint FF, FI, & ACONC report, the Committee specifically called out the state for not having consulted the National Development Plan with the Afro-Colombian communities because some officials had publicly cited prior consultation as an obstacle for development.

As our two visitors head back to Colombia after an important review of their country by the UN CERD, intending to report back to the community on how their voice was relayed, heard, and acted upon by top decision makers at the UN, FI continues to seek ways to bridge local movements working against injustice with international policy makers at the UN.

1. Report of the independent expert on minority issues, Gay McDougall, Mission to Colombia, UN Doc. A/HRC/16/45/Add.1 (25 January 2011), Par. 22

On Sunday, 2 August 2015, United Nations Member States unanimously agreed on the final text that will be adopted by Heads of State at the UN Summit to adopt the Post 2015 Development Agenda in late September.

FI, together with the NGO Mining Working Group and the Blue Planet Project celebrate the pledge made by Member States to “A world where we reaffirm our commitments regarding the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation […]” in paragraph 7 of the final text.

This recognition of the human right to water and sanitation in Post-2015 Development Agenda is the result of unrelenting efforts by civil society groups over the past two and a half years during the Open Working Group and Intergovernmental negotiation processes, including a global petition signed by 621 organizations worldwide to name this human right in the document. This call was also carried forward by key Member States who championed the cause within the intergovernmental discussions.

Read the entire press release here.