Reverend Sally Foster Fulton, Church of Scotland, ‘ACT Now for Climate Justice’ Ambassador
Reverend Sally Foster Fulton, Church of Scotland, ‘ACT Now for Climate Justice’ Ambassador
Aaron Tate from ACT member CWS talks about the influx of Burundian refugees in Tanzania and the ACT Appeal
Araga Danrani, 75, (pictured above: LWR/Emily Sollie) is a farmer living in Niger, in the West African Sahel. Over the past few years Niger and surrounding countries have experienced a combination of drought and rising food prices that has left more than 18.7 million people at risk for hunger.
Not long ago Mr. Danrani had to leave whole fields on his farm vacant because he couldn’t afford enough seeds to plant them. Now he’s participating in ACT member Lutheran World Relief’s Resilience Plus project, aimed at helping farmers in West Africa support their families, continue to produce crops and become resilient against changing weather patterns.
Across West Africa, the Resilience Plus project has reached more than 79,000 people with agricultural training that will help farmers grow food despite the challenging conditions. In partnership with a local cooperative of more than 7,800 farmers, Lutheran World Relief has distributed fast-growing, disease-resistant millet seeds so that farmers can continue to plant this traditional dietary staple.
Lutheran World Relief has also provided cash-for-work projects that give families the opportunity to earn income for doing work that will help preserve natural resources.
After receiving an allotment of improved millet seeds, Araga planted his vacant fields. From an original distribution of nearly 18 pounds of seeds, he harvested 1,239 pounds of millet. He saved seeds from his harvest for replanting, and expects to harvest even more this year.
“If not for this project,” he says “my family and I would have had to leave because of hunger.”
Thankfully Araga does not have to leave his farm in search of work and is able to stay on his farm, work hard and make a living to support his family.
Learn more about Lutheran World Relief’s work in resilience.
Her assortment includes salt, onions, Maggi flavour cubes, little yellow peppers and cooking oil. Pointy plastic bags with the yellow liquid are shining in the afternoon sun. Once in a while, a customer comes to buy one of the little spice bags at Cecile Endamag’s (pictured above with her nephew photo: LWF/C. Kästner) market stand in Gondje refugee settlement, Chad. “People here miss the spices,” she says. “We receive cereals and basic food but nothing to make it taste good. Spices sell the best.”
Endamag is a refugee from the Central African Republic (CAR), whose border is only 60km from the settlement. Back home, she had a small food shop and her own warehouse with a good stock of supplies.
“When the war started, we went to hide in the bush,” she recalls. “After a while, that became too dangerous and exhausting, so we fled.”
Endamag lost her husband in the war. She arrived in Chad in 2008.
A year ago, ACT member Lutheran World Federation (LWF) helped her open the business with a cash grant. “I do not earn much but the small money already makes life here a bit better,” she says. “I now have the means to buy school supplies and clothes for my children, and some additional food.”
Like her, 600 CAR refugees and vulnerable people living in the host community have received cash grants to open a business.
“We encourage them to form groups,” says Marie-Grace Longaye, LWF supervisor for income-generating activities in Gore. “This way, refugees form communities organize themselves and ideally also hold each other responsible for paying back the loan.”
The situation of Endamag’s family is what humanitarian agencies call a protracted refugee situation. Because of recurring conflict in their home country, people are forced to live abroad for years, sometimes decades. They build semi-permanent houses of clay with thatched roofs, farm a little piece of land allocated to them by the host country, and wait for peace and stability in their place of origin.
Some of the CAR refugees arrived way back in 2003 – their children know only the refugee settlement. The latest group arrived in 2014, when Anti-Balaka militia staged a coup against the Muslim president of CAR and started a war against the Muslim population. Many of them are Chad migrant workers in CAR. Although considered “returnees”, they have lost their homes and come to a country foreign to them.
Helping people create a business, therefore, is much more than a means to supply them with additional money.
“It gives them purpose again,” Longaye says. “They have seen terrible things and lost family members. Many women lost their husbands. Helping them to take life into their own hands again is also a way to help them heal.”
Small loan groups are meant to provide occupation, stability and a new community. This is most visible in the “Groupement Garage”.
As the name suggests, the group used their loan to open a business in car repairs, painting, welding and carrying out general metal work.
“We were the first to repair a car in the region,” says Amidou, the group’s president. “We now receive requests from people in nearby host communities who wish to join us.”
The group is integrating young and old, making use of a wide variety of talents. The youngest apprentice in training is Abulai Amadou, a 15-year-old boy with a hearing disability. “His mother brought him,” president Amidou explains. “Because of his hearing problem, he cannot go to school, so she asked us to train him.”
The oldest group member is Mamadou Abu, 53, the treasurer and unofficial teacher of the group. “We wanted someone old and wise to handle the money. We also come to him for advice and to train the young ones,” Amidou says. “He used to train apprentices in CAR.”
“This group gave me the opportunity to learn something,” Amadou Soufa, 22, says. When he arrived, he was still a teenager, with no hope of further education. Group members trained him in various aspects of car repair and metal work. Now he plans to one day open his own business.
“It is important to train the young people,” Amidou says. “The situation is psychologically difficult. We have been here since February. After all we have seen, there is no hope of going back anytime soon. We did not just want to sit around and do nothing.”
In the heart of South America, the Gran Chaco covers almost 1 million square kilometres. It is the biggest dry forest in the world, spanning territories in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. The region has some of the most acute levels of poverty in Latin America.
Across the three countries in this area, two ACT members are working on a rights-based development programme with indigenous people. The region, isolated from the large cities, has weak communication systems. Consequently, abuses of indigenous rights and human rights are often unreported, and impunity for these crimes is widespread. Environmental destruction is also largely uncontrolled. The result is that climate conditions in
the region are increasingly unpredictable and humanitarian emergencies caused by long periods of drought or extreme flooding are now common.
Twenty-five indigenous groups live in the Gran Chaco, including the Guaraní, Wichi, Qom and Enxet Sur communities – groups who lived for centuries as semi- nomadic hunter-gatherers before losing their land to non-indigenous farmers and cattle ranchers.
Food security, empowerment
A long-term ACT programme has been supporting indigenous people in the Gran Chaco as they reclaim their ancestral lands, improve their food security and nutrition, and empower indigenous women, young people and organisations working against poverty. The programme provides legal support and accompaniment to communities in their land claims process, and has seen great success in one of the largest claims in all of South America, involving 15,000 people in 12 communities.
The end of a 20-year struggle
In June 2014, Argentina signed a decree handing over a legal land title to those communities, ending a 20-year struggle and beginning a new phase of work, focused on sustainable development projects. Over the past nine years of the programme, indigenous communities have recovered 1,788 square miles of their ancestral land. ACT members are now working with communities on sustainable development and land management for these re-
acquired lands.
The programme begins with participatory mapping in the communities, collecting detailed information about natural resources such as water, what land available for hunting and gathering, and areas of potential tension. Participatory approaches in community-based organisations help prevent conflicts over resources. They ensure that development meets the needs and priorities of the communities and makes good use of local resources and knowledge.
Indigenous groups in the Chaco region are achieving improved food security as a direct result of their work with ACT, such as resources for kitchen gardens and honey production to improve nutrition. Support for small handicraft businesses is improving income streams and livelihoods, and particularly empowering women. The ACT programme also works to protect at-risk human rights defenders, such as community leaders working non-violently for justice and against inequality in the Chaco.
Since the beginning of 2015 a mass influx of asylum seekers could be noticed in Hungary. According to latest data the number of asylum seekers has constantly risen from a few thousand in 2014 to around 83,000 until July 2015. Migrants are arriving from countries of armed conflict, deep poverty, or social unrest, like Northern and Middle Africa, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Almost all of them are coming through the Balkan (Greece, Macedonia, Serbia), approximately 1,500 persons/day cross the border, authorities are scaling up their capacities, but needs are continuously growing.
A total of 200.000 migrants are expected
to arrive to Hungary by the end of this year.
So far Hungarian Interchurch Aid (HIA) have made preliminary surveys, have started to coordinate its activities and plans with the relevant authorities and is participating in the Coordination Mechanism for the largest NGOs. Collaboration with the Lutheran Church in Hungary and congregations is given priority during the work. The Lutheran Church was the first to support HIA’s actions provide assistance to children and their mothers in the form of children’s clothes, diapers, baby food and hygienic items. HIA have started to provide psychosocial services for children in two temporary reception centres: Bicske and Vámosszabadi. The target group of the project is children between 3-14 years.
HIA is planning to raise funds to be able
to go on with supporting migrants in Hungary.
A partner of the ACT Allliance Joint Programme in Zambia, the Zambia Land Alliance (ZLA) has made a difference in the lives of a Solwezi based family after helping them reclaim land that had been grabbed from them by a named local Church.
“I am very happy that our family land has been given back to us after so many years,” said the family representative, Mr. Alex Mukube Mwanza. “I am highly indebted to Zambia Land Alliance and appreciate the work they are doing in the lives of many other people facing similar challenges in the district.”
ZLA Enhancing Sustainable Livelihoods Through Land Tenure Security (SULTS) project Solwezi Coordinator, Marvelous Chansa, narrated how the problem began: “It all started in 2000 when the named Church rented a piece of land from Mr. Mwanza (now deceased) to temporarily use for their meetings,” he reported.
However after Mr. Mwanza’s death, the Church started to put up a permanent structure without the permission of other family members. Mr. Mwanza’s son, Mr. Alex Mukube Mwanza decided to follow up the issue with the Church and was surprised to learn that the church had even began the process of titling the land.
“We held several meetings with church representatives to try and resolve the matter but no progress was made and we failed to reach a conclusion,” said Mr. Mwanza. “This prompted us to seek solutions on the matter elsewhere and we approached various places and people but failed to get the kind of help we needed.”
In June 2014, a neighbour that had heard of the ZLA advised the family to seek the support of the organisation for advice on their land issues. He was advised to follow the matter using appropriate and well established channels.
“I was advised by the Paralegal Officer at ZLA to seek the attention of the Area Development Committee (ADC) as the starting point,” he said. “As soon as I delivered the referral letter given, the Rural Development Committee (RDC), took action and a letter was written to the church to convene a meeting to facilitate the hearing from both parties and seek the way forward.”
The church refused to attend the meeting and the ZLA advised the family to institute civil court proceedings against the church. On November 6, 2014, the court ruled in favour of the family and the church was ordered to vacate the premises before a set date.
The Zambia Land Alliance is a network of NGOs working for just land policies and laws that take into account the interests of the poor. The organization promotes secured access, ownership and control over land through lobbying and advocacy, research and community participation. The organization has district offices in Kitwe, Chingola, Petauke, Chipata,
Monze, Lusaka, Mansa and Gwembe. It is present in Solwezi through the European Union and DCA funded SULTS project.
The alliance began as a committee in 1997 to coordinate activities of member NGOs. The formation of the alliance was necessitated by the Zambian Government’s land reform process initiated in the early 1990s.
A woman carries her child from their half-submerged house in Nyaung Tone, Ayeyarwaddy Delta, about 60 miles southwest of Yangon, Myanmar. Friendly nations and international relief organizations are mobilizing to give disaster assistance to Myanmar, where 69 people have died and another 260,000 been affected by widespread flooding fed by more than a month of heavy monsoon rains and a cyclone. (Photo: AP/Khin Maung Win)
Myanmar is experiencing its worst floods in decades. Finn Church Aid local partners have already begun to assess the extent of damages and the needs for assistance. People affected by the floods are provided with shelter materials, food, clean water and supply packages.
The floods were caused by heavy rains brought to neighbouring Bangladesh by the typhoon Komen on 30 July.
According to international relief organisations, 260,000 people have been affected by the floods. Death toll is 69, but expected to rise, since not all affected areas have been reached due to challenging conditions.
Both coastal and mountain regions are flooding, and the rains have resulted in landslides in the mountains. The Myanmar government has declared four regions as disaster zones (Chin, Sagaing, Magway and Rakhine), but 12 areas in total have suffered damages. Floods have destroyed infrastructure, cut electricity and hindered communications.
Vast areas of farmland are submerged and cattle have died. Large scale damages to cultivated areas will have a long term negative effect on the food security of the impoverished population.
Donate to the FCA Myanmar flood relief:
Donations account: FI33 1572 3000 5005 04, message: Myanmar floods
Cyclone Haruna hit south-west Madagascar in mid-February 2013, while many people on the east coast were still recovering from Cyclone Felleng, which had struck on 30 January.
Haruna killed 75 people and injured many more. It caused widespread damage to housing, power lines, schools and other infrastructure. Our members took part in the nationally coordinated emergency response.
Many people were evacuated to safety from some of the worst-affected areas before Haruna hit, and we helped provide rescue support and immediate life-saving humanitarian assistance to those who were affected.
ACT response
Our response reached out to 1,200 families. We sourced food for distribution from 900km away in the capital Antananarivo (supplies having been washed away elsewhere).
We distributed rice and vegetables, non-food items such as soap, medicines, water-treatment kits, tents, candles, clothes and blankets, amid significant challenges in some areas where roads had been washed away.
Due to damaged sanitation systems and high floodwaters, cases of malaria, dysentery and diarrhoea began to rise.
The flood created good conditions for locusts to breed, which led to locust swarms that affected half of the country’s farmland – causing crop destruction, food shortages and high food prices over many months. Japhet Asukile, convenor of the ACT Forum in Madagascar, highlighted the role of climate change in the increasing weather disasters.
He said: “Climate change is affecting us. There are more cyclones now, which is what climate change scientists have predicted. It is happening now. To say it is having a negative impact is an understatement. We have to be aware of this trend and plan our work around increased risks from climate change.”
Two ACT members and their respective partner organisations have joined forces to focus on rights of migrants and their families in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Russia.
Many of the millions of internal and irregular (unregistered) external migrants in Central Asia are highly vulnerable, as are their relatives left behind in rural and often economically depressed areas. Unregistered migrants, despite being citizens of the Central Asian countries, are refused their right to health or education, and their right to vote and to receive social benefits. Often with limited education, poor language skills, low levels of knowledge about their legal obligations and rights, migrants regularly experience dire living and working conditions. Many do not have secure housing, they face discrimination and stigmatisation, and are at high risk of being cheated or trafficked by middle-men.
Back in their home communities, family structures are often destabilised. Relatives are left with debt, incurred when paying for the move abroad, facing difficulties capitalising family assets registered in the migrant’s name, and often with very little information about their migrating relatives’ whereabouts and safety.
In Kyrgyzstan, up to 1 million people live as internal migrants. It is estimated that a further 1 million from Kyrgyzstan and 1.5 million from Tajikistan look for work outside their home country – in Russia and Kazakhstan – every year. The joint ACT initiative grew from work that first began in 2006 when, with the support of one ACT member, 15 local Kyrgyzstani organisations came together to secure access to basic services for about 2 million residents and internal unregistered migrants. At the same time, another ACT member was supporting local organisations representing and caring for migrants, poorer rural populations and the most marginalised people.
By combining their local partnerships, expertise and experience, the two organisations adopted a holistic approach to this regional migration programme, calling the combined work ‘Central Asia on the Move’. The aims of the programme are to increase access to basic services for migrants and marginalised rural populations, and to address more effectively the many factors that prevent large population groups from exercising their social and political rights.
Through the joint programme, which now works with 25 local organisations across four countries, ACT champions the rights of internal migrants in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as well as those of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who leave their own countries every year to earn a living in Kazakhstan or Russia.
