I think to understand ‘Fair Trade’ and what Freedom Day is promoting, we first have to understand the cocoa trade in its context and entirety so that we know what we are saying is fair or unfair and who we need to target in response to the injustice of child slavery.
As has already been highlighted, the issue of bonded labour and slavery on the cocoa farms is a complex one simply because there are so many factors and actors implicated in the $31 Billion a year chocolate industry. It is not a simple case of the manufacturers exploiting farmers and child slaves. As Mike mentioned, there are middle men, an international market and a range of historical, cultural and economic reasons why the situation has got to this. It is not just about demonising Nestle simply because that is something people will understand. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to let the 'billion dollar profits' a year producers off the hook because at the moment solutions are out there that would go a long way to change the situation, and have only been addressed by these companies through lip service.
Because of the complexity and size of the issue, we have debates such as this raging about what the appropriate responses from the industry, and ourselves as consumers of that industry, are. Is it the chocolate producers responsibility to monitor farm level labour practices and therefore them that we need to boycott until they do? Is it the Ivory Coast government's responsibility to ensure trafficking and labour laws are established and enforced? That traffickers are persecuted and stopped, that child slaves are released? Or should the response be legislation in developed countries that forces companies to put ‘made by slaves’ on the labels of products and leave it to consumer choice to fix the problem in the market?
I personally think all of the above sound great. Social Justice will only be achieved when we have a legal system that protects people, a society that views all humans as equals in the eyes of God and each person is given equal opportunity. The complexity of the differing interests in the industry make finding an effective simple solution a challenging task.
This issue actually exposes a lot about the current world system we live in and the processes that lead to exploitation. I don’t believe this issue is simply about Nestle or Cadbury being evil but a much broader understanding of what is going on in the world. The more I learn about the context of Jesus’s ministry, the more I see how well he understood the root causes of the social problems, and how the political powers were implicated.
So lets take the challenge of Mike’s and lets try and understand the injustice. I don’t believe reading just the fair trade brochures is enough, because they point to the problem without giving enough context for us to engage in 'intelligent' debates with the actors involved. So lets take a look:
Part 1: Push and Pull factors of Traffiking in the Ivory Coast today
In attempting to understand trafficking, often push and pull factors are used. Lets nut a few of these out and understand the trafficking link to the Cocoa industry in the Ivory Coast:
Historical Factors: The sheer size of the Ivory Coast’s Cocoa Industry is a Pull factor for trafficked children
Cocoa first appeared in Cote d'Ivoire in 1880 on a plantation. Initially only the Europeans owned cocoa plantations there until World War I. As cocoa prices increased on the world market during this period, Africans themselves began to grow cocoa. By the latter part of the 1970's, cocoa supplanted coffee as the major commodity when a cocoa boom occurred as the government encouraged cultivation by offering various price incentives. This emphasis on cocoa production has been entrenched in the economy to the extent that many farmers are dependent on cocoa for their livelihood. Approximately 1/3 of the Ivorian economy is based on cocoa exports.
Low productivity and the volatility of the commodity market, resulting in low and unstable farm-gate prices also creates a vicious circle of lower investments, lower productivity, lack of competitiveness and dwindling incomes. This only perpetuates the problem of child slavery on farms.
Cultural Factors as a Push Factor
An important concept we need to distinguish here is confusing child slaves with children working on family farms. There is a difference. Children working on farms is a very common practise in developing countries. They start working at an early age and are seen to play a vital function in the daily survival of the household and family. That however is where child labour is a cultural variable that contributes to the problem. Unlike in the west, where we might think it unimaginable to send our children away to work, this in many places is an acceptable and cultural practice. What we are talking about here however, are the children who trafficked under false pretences.
Poverty as Push Factor
Although some children come from Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Togo, most of the estimated 15,000 trafficked children, or child slaves, come from Mali. Since Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world, people travel to Ivory Coast to find jobs. It has become a destination of promised hope. Families send their children away thinking they are sending them to better job opportunities. If people are able to secure work, then they could send money back home to help their families for daily subsistence. Therefore, families allow their children to go away with people who turn out to be slave traders and are unaware of the reality of the situation.
(http://www.american.edu/ted/chocolate-slave.htm)
Monday 18 February 2008
'Intelligent' fuel to the Fair Trade fire - Part 2
Part 2: the Global Cocoa Supply Chain
Small farms - Most cocoa is grown on small farms of less than 6 hectares. Cocoa bean production is labour-intensive and overwhelmingly a family enterprise.
The cocoa supply chain includes many intermediaries also. Small farmers typically sell their cocoa harvest to local middlemen for cash. The middlemen work under contract for local exporters, who, in turn, sell cocoa to international traders and the major international cocoa brands.
Therefore for small farmers, access to market or price information is difficult and as a result, many become increasingly dependent on these middlemen and receive smaller and smaller returns for their work. In bad times, many lose their only property - their land - and thus, their livelihoods.
The global market price for cocoa beans, averaging 78 cents per pound in August 2004, is determined on the future markets (explanation below) of the London Cocoa Terminal Market and the New York Cocoa Exchange. Of course, after every level in the supply chain earns a profit, farmers receive substantially lower prices per pound than the price on global markets.
What is a futures market?
The world price of cocoa is determined by the futures market. A cocoa futures contract is an agreement for a specified quantity and grade of a commodity (Cocoa or coffee) at an established point in the future and at an agreed upon price. This is a contract between the exporters and manufacturers.
The profitability of cocoa there depends on world prices that farmers' cannot control (they are price takers). Cocoa is known to be one of the most volatile commodity markets in regards to price. Supply of cocoa is extremely vulnerable to climatic changes and as such the price of cocoa may rise or fall considerably during the year. Currently, the Ivory Coast and Ghana are the world's leading cocoa producing nations. Conflict in the Ivory Coast region has hindered cocoa production and added considerable volatility to the cocoa futures markets. Demand, or Buyers – that is, the cocoa-processing industry and its clients – naturally wish to cover themselves against such price fluctuations.
The futures market in cocoa owes its existence to these uncertainties. Consequently this negatively affects the farmers as they get less profits, so then they look for ways to cut costs by using cheap labour, driving them to even resort to use slave labour.
Manufacturers
For a long time, many major chocolate makers have insisted that they bear no responsibility for the problem, since they don't own the cocoa farms. They buy from exporters on the international market. But there are other chocolate companies who manage to take this responsibility, and it would seem that if the bigger companies really wanted to reform problems in the supply chain, they have the power and ability to do so. With an annual sales of over $65 billion, Nestle SA is not only one of the world's largest manufacturers of chocolate products but also the third largest exporter of cocoa from regions affected by forced and abusive child labour. Through its subsidiary Nestle Cote d'Ivoire, Nestle maintains distribution, administrative and sales offices throughout the Ivory Coast, even as it claims to have little idea where its cocoa comes from or what the conditions are like on the farms with which it regularly does business.
With pressure on the chocolate industry mounting, on October 1, 2001, the chocolate industry announced a four-year plan to eventually eliminate child slavery in cocoa-producing nations, and particularly West Africa, where most of the world's chocolate is grown. If all went according to the plan, called the "Harkin-Engel Protocol," the "worst forms of child labor" - including slavery - would no longer be used to produce chocolate and cocoa by 2005.
The agreement was signed by the manufacturer's association and the World Cocoa Foundation; as well as chocolate producers Hershey's, M&M Mars, Nestle and World's Finest Chocolate; and the cocoa processors Blommer Chocolate, Guittard Chocolate, Barry Callebaut and Archer Daniels Midland. It was endorsed by a wide variety of groups including the government of Ivory Coast, the International Labor Organization's child labor office, the anti-slavery group Free the Slaves, the Child Labor Coalition, the International Cocoa Organization (which represents cocoa growing countries), and the National Consumer League.
The six-point protocol commits the chocolate industry to work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the International Labor Organization in monitoring and remedying abusive forms of child labor used in growing and processing cocoa beans. A series of deadlines is part of the plan. For example, an independent monitoring and public reporting system is to be in place by May, 2002. Industry-wide voluntary standards of public certification are to be in place by July 1, 2005.
In addition, the chocolate companies agreed to fund a joint international foundation, run by a board comprised of industry and NGO representatives, to oversee and sustain efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in the industry. Plus, the agreement provides for a formal advisory group to investigate child labor practices in West Africa, and a commitment by the chocolate companies to "identify positive development alternatives for the children" who might be affected.
(http://www.foodrevolution.org/slavery_chocolate.htm)
Stop the Traffik – Chocolate Campaign – WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?
"Do you remember the ICI (International Cocoa Initiative)? This is the body that was set up in 2001 which promised to deliver the Harkin-Engel protocol, with a clear aim to eradicate child slavery from the chocolate industry and establish certification on all farms by 2005. They failed. They announced another deadline of 2008 and reduced the definition of certification to handling and collecting data. We will watch closely to see whether the chocolate industry will finally admit that their process is not working and that they cannot keep delaying clear action to eradicate this crime leaving thousands of children caught today in this horrific life.
We are placing our Cocoa Pledge, which has growing international support (see the web site), as the best response to a failed industry protocol."
So now we’ve looked a little further up the cocoa supply chain and now it gets to us as consumers and hopefully the aims of Fair trade may make a little more sense:
Fair Trade is understood as having three components:
1. The organization of alternative trading networks;
Fair Trade started as a partnership between non-profit importers, retailers in the North and small-scale producers in developing countries. Many of these producers were at the time struggling against low market prices and high dependence on intermediaries. They saw Fair Trade as an opportunity to protect their livelihoods, bypass the middlemen and directly access Northern markets. Over the years, more and more Alternative Trade Organisations (ATOs) were created in different countries, often closely linked to volunteer groups and Worldshops. These networks of ATOs and Worldshops played a vital role in the development of Fair Trade as we know it today.
2. The marketing of Fair Trade labelled products through licensed conventional traders and retailers;
In 1988, in an effort to expand the distribution of Fair Trade products to mainstream retailers, a Dutch ATO, Solidaridad, found an innovative way to increase sales without compromising consumer trust in Fairtrade products and in their origins. The organization created a label, called Max Havelaar, which guaranteed that the goods met certain labour and environmental standards. The label, first only applied to coffee, was named after a best-selling 19th century book about the exploitation of Javanese coffee plantation workers by Dutch colonial merchants. The concept caught on: within years, similar Labelling Initiatives such as the Fairtrade Foundation, TransFair and Rättvisemärkt, emerged across Europe and North America in an effort to follow Max Havelaar’s footsteps and boost Fairtrade sales. The organizations launched their own campaigns and certification marks and originally operated independently.
In 1997, these organizations created Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), an umbrella organization whose mission is to set the Fairtrade standards, support, inspect, certify disadvantaged producers and harmonize the Fairtrade message across the movement.
3. the campaign-based promotion of Fair Trade to change both purchasing practices and the rules of conventional trade.
In 2002, Fairtrade Labelling Organizations launched a new international Fairtrade Certification Mark. The goals of the launch were to improve the visibility of the Mark on supermarket shelves, convey a dynamic, forward-looking image for Fairtrade, facilitate cross border trade, and simplify procedures for importers and traders. The Fairtrade system has always been about global relationships and global standards of fairness - these were recognised for the first time with an international Fairtrade Certification Mark.
Active and concerned consumers are an important part of a civil society. Though young consumers cannot vote, their decisions about what to buy, and what not to buy, are a way of expressing their views on a range of consumer issues, including global and ethical ones.
According to Consumers International, consumers have a responsibility to use their power in the marketplace to "drive out abuses, encourage ethical practices and support sustainable consumption and production". This, they believe, will help achieve good government, fair and effective markets and protection for the environment.
Some of the cites I gathered this info from for your future reading:
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4653997/The-cocoa-industry-and-child.html
http://www.american.edu/ted/chocolate-slave.htm
http://www.fairtrade.net/about_fairtrade.html
http://www.foodrevolution.org/slavery_chocolate.htm
http://www.chicagofairtrade.org/aboutFairTrade/chocolate/chocolate-and-child-slavery-unfulfilled-promises-of-the-cocoa-industry/
http://www.stopthetraffik.org/chocolatecampaign/
Hope this helps people :-)
Til Next Time,
Heath
Small farms - Most cocoa is grown on small farms of less than 6 hectares. Cocoa bean production is labour-intensive and overwhelmingly a family enterprise.
The cocoa supply chain includes many intermediaries also. Small farmers typically sell their cocoa harvest to local middlemen for cash. The middlemen work under contract for local exporters, who, in turn, sell cocoa to international traders and the major international cocoa brands.
Therefore for small farmers, access to market or price information is difficult and as a result, many become increasingly dependent on these middlemen and receive smaller and smaller returns for their work. In bad times, many lose their only property - their land - and thus, their livelihoods.
The global market price for cocoa beans, averaging 78 cents per pound in August 2004, is determined on the future markets (explanation below) of the London Cocoa Terminal Market and the New York Cocoa Exchange. Of course, after every level in the supply chain earns a profit, farmers receive substantially lower prices per pound than the price on global markets.
What is a futures market?
The world price of cocoa is determined by the futures market. A cocoa futures contract is an agreement for a specified quantity and grade of a commodity (Cocoa or coffee) at an established point in the future and at an agreed upon price. This is a contract between the exporters and manufacturers.
The profitability of cocoa there depends on world prices that farmers' cannot control (they are price takers). Cocoa is known to be one of the most volatile commodity markets in regards to price. Supply of cocoa is extremely vulnerable to climatic changes and as such the price of cocoa may rise or fall considerably during the year. Currently, the Ivory Coast and Ghana are the world's leading cocoa producing nations. Conflict in the Ivory Coast region has hindered cocoa production and added considerable volatility to the cocoa futures markets. Demand, or Buyers – that is, the cocoa-processing industry and its clients – naturally wish to cover themselves against such price fluctuations.
The futures market in cocoa owes its existence to these uncertainties. Consequently this negatively affects the farmers as they get less profits, so then they look for ways to cut costs by using cheap labour, driving them to even resort to use slave labour.
Manufacturers
For a long time, many major chocolate makers have insisted that they bear no responsibility for the problem, since they don't own the cocoa farms. They buy from exporters on the international market. But there are other chocolate companies who manage to take this responsibility, and it would seem that if the bigger companies really wanted to reform problems in the supply chain, they have the power and ability to do so. With an annual sales of over $65 billion, Nestle SA is not only one of the world's largest manufacturers of chocolate products but also the third largest exporter of cocoa from regions affected by forced and abusive child labour. Through its subsidiary Nestle Cote d'Ivoire, Nestle maintains distribution, administrative and sales offices throughout the Ivory Coast, even as it claims to have little idea where its cocoa comes from or what the conditions are like on the farms with which it regularly does business.
With pressure on the chocolate industry mounting, on October 1, 2001, the chocolate industry announced a four-year plan to eventually eliminate child slavery in cocoa-producing nations, and particularly West Africa, where most of the world's chocolate is grown. If all went according to the plan, called the "Harkin-Engel Protocol," the "worst forms of child labor" - including slavery - would no longer be used to produce chocolate and cocoa by 2005.
The agreement was signed by the manufacturer's association and the World Cocoa Foundation; as well as chocolate producers Hershey's, M&M Mars, Nestle and World's Finest Chocolate; and the cocoa processors Blommer Chocolate, Guittard Chocolate, Barry Callebaut and Archer Daniels Midland. It was endorsed by a wide variety of groups including the government of Ivory Coast, the International Labor Organization's child labor office, the anti-slavery group Free the Slaves, the Child Labor Coalition, the International Cocoa Organization (which represents cocoa growing countries), and the National Consumer League.
The six-point protocol commits the chocolate industry to work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the International Labor Organization in monitoring and remedying abusive forms of child labor used in growing and processing cocoa beans. A series of deadlines is part of the plan. For example, an independent monitoring and public reporting system is to be in place by May, 2002. Industry-wide voluntary standards of public certification are to be in place by July 1, 2005.
In addition, the chocolate companies agreed to fund a joint international foundation, run by a board comprised of industry and NGO representatives, to oversee and sustain efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in the industry. Plus, the agreement provides for a formal advisory group to investigate child labor practices in West Africa, and a commitment by the chocolate companies to "identify positive development alternatives for the children" who might be affected.
(http://www.foodrevolution.org/slavery_chocolate.htm)
Stop the Traffik – Chocolate Campaign – WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?
"Do you remember the ICI (International Cocoa Initiative)? This is the body that was set up in 2001 which promised to deliver the Harkin-Engel protocol, with a clear aim to eradicate child slavery from the chocolate industry and establish certification on all farms by 2005. They failed. They announced another deadline of 2008 and reduced the definition of certification to handling and collecting data. We will watch closely to see whether the chocolate industry will finally admit that their process is not working and that they cannot keep delaying clear action to eradicate this crime leaving thousands of children caught today in this horrific life.
We are placing our Cocoa Pledge, which has growing international support (see the web site), as the best response to a failed industry protocol."
So now we’ve looked a little further up the cocoa supply chain and now it gets to us as consumers and hopefully the aims of Fair trade may make a little more sense:
Fair Trade is understood as having three components:
1. The organization of alternative trading networks;
Fair Trade started as a partnership between non-profit importers, retailers in the North and small-scale producers in developing countries. Many of these producers were at the time struggling against low market prices and high dependence on intermediaries. They saw Fair Trade as an opportunity to protect their livelihoods, bypass the middlemen and directly access Northern markets. Over the years, more and more Alternative Trade Organisations (ATOs) were created in different countries, often closely linked to volunteer groups and Worldshops. These networks of ATOs and Worldshops played a vital role in the development of Fair Trade as we know it today.
2. The marketing of Fair Trade labelled products through licensed conventional traders and retailers;
In 1988, in an effort to expand the distribution of Fair Trade products to mainstream retailers, a Dutch ATO, Solidaridad, found an innovative way to increase sales without compromising consumer trust in Fairtrade products and in their origins. The organization created a label, called Max Havelaar, which guaranteed that the goods met certain labour and environmental standards. The label, first only applied to coffee, was named after a best-selling 19th century book about the exploitation of Javanese coffee plantation workers by Dutch colonial merchants. The concept caught on: within years, similar Labelling Initiatives such as the Fairtrade Foundation, TransFair and Rättvisemärkt, emerged across Europe and North America in an effort to follow Max Havelaar’s footsteps and boost Fairtrade sales. The organizations launched their own campaigns and certification marks and originally operated independently.
In 1997, these organizations created Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), an umbrella organization whose mission is to set the Fairtrade standards, support, inspect, certify disadvantaged producers and harmonize the Fairtrade message across the movement.
3. the campaign-based promotion of Fair Trade to change both purchasing practices and the rules of conventional trade.
In 2002, Fairtrade Labelling Organizations launched a new international Fairtrade Certification Mark. The goals of the launch were to improve the visibility of the Mark on supermarket shelves, convey a dynamic, forward-looking image for Fairtrade, facilitate cross border trade, and simplify procedures for importers and traders. The Fairtrade system has always been about global relationships and global standards of fairness - these were recognised for the first time with an international Fairtrade Certification Mark.
Active and concerned consumers are an important part of a civil society. Though young consumers cannot vote, their decisions about what to buy, and what not to buy, are a way of expressing their views on a range of consumer issues, including global and ethical ones.
According to Consumers International, consumers have a responsibility to use their power in the marketplace to "drive out abuses, encourage ethical practices and support sustainable consumption and production". This, they believe, will help achieve good government, fair and effective markets and protection for the environment.
Some of the cites I gathered this info from for your future reading:
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4653997/The-cocoa-industry-and-child.html
http://www.american.edu/ted/chocolate-slave.htm
http://www.fairtrade.net/about_fairtrade.html
http://www.foodrevolution.org/slavery_chocolate.htm
http://www.chicagofairtrade.org/aboutFairTrade/chocolate/chocolate-and-child-slavery-unfulfilled-promises-of-the-cocoa-industry/
http://www.stopthetraffik.org/chocolatecampaign/
Hope this helps people :-)
Til Next Time,
Heath
Saturday 16 February 2008
Just Choices
So…I turned 24 recently…and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about life choices...specifically, my own, and what to do with my life this year, which jobs to apply for, where to live etc. I feel like since I left school at 17, all I have done is make choices, and re-make choices. And for those that know me, I struggle just to choose what to order out at a restaurant if the menu is greater than 2 pages… But this flood of choices, is quite symbolic of my generation really…we have choices and more choices. What a blessing, and what a curse. So many of us are lost.
In November last year, I decided that I had until Christmas to figure out what I was doing this year…I feared facing the family’s ‘what are you doing this year’ question without an answer. How silly to think, against everything I’ve learnt about God’s way of working in my life, I could timetable what doors God would reveal and open to me. But God does have a plan, and as I’ve been helping Danielle Strickland write a book on Social Justice, I have been reminded how much God has shown and taught me over the last 7 years, even through the decisions that I made my for my own selfish gain, he has been able to use those experiences to teach me. Friends have asked me as I debate what path to follow, whether I would go back to working at ANZ Bank, or get a graduate position at one of the other big banks …and it is not unattractive. I enjoyed my work there, and it was well paying, challenging and fun. But now with all that God has shown and taught me, do I really have a choice to go back to living a life for my own motives? Maybe it isn’t a choice anymore…I love the idea of crossing that one off my list (how easy does that sound!?). But I’m learning that to decide to try and live a life of social justice is a decision that has to be made over and over, just as my decision to follow Christ is. It’s a choice to follow him in the hard times, when life and the world pull us in a different direction.
JustLose has been teaching me a lot over the last few months. One of the decisions I made was to only eat fair trade chocolate. I have to admit, I have broken my rule a few times, but on a whole, it has been such a good experience of disciplining my behaviour to match my beliefs … my beliefs that
1.I don’t agree with the unjust practices of the chocolate companies and
2. I DO believe in the power of consumer choices and demand side factors as a solution…
But every time someone offers me a chocolate, that is a choice I have to re-make….over and over again. So I choose the ancient path again today, the path of trying to be a person fighting for Justice, how that looks, I’m still praying to God about...But we have to remember that choice in itself is a privilege. Poverty robs people of choice and opportunity. Those that argue that women in brothels are there by choice are ignorant to the reality of poverty. I was told statistic today that was along the lines of, 80% of women interviewed in brothels in Canada said they would leave if they had alternative employment opportunities (i would take a guess at the % being higher in developing countries).
So let’s create some, maybe our choice is to give them back their right to a choice.
What do you choose?
Tuesday 4 December 2007
Monday 8 October 2007
No Africans allowed. Has our way of life come to this?
"There may indeed be problems in the resettling of some African refugees, but these are not strictly of their making; rather, they represent the bridging of a wretched, traumatised past and a new, vastly different, society with its own rules and structures. Just as the refugees must learn to adapt, so, too, should Australians learn to be encouraging, not dismissive. For example, African migrants in Dandenong are able to enrol in a driver-education program set up in response to a spate of incidents, including drink-driving. In May, Victoria Police sent two officers to Sudan to learn about a culture that includes an inherent distrust of those in authority. The man who sent the officers, Assistant Commissioner Paul Evans, told ABC Radio yesterday that such prejudices would be overcome, but in time. "There's no quick fix," he said.
No such compassion or understanding is to be found in the Government's own quick fix. Instead there is dispassion and obduracy, along with the ominous feeling that Australia is tightening its borders for short-term political advantage that can only further this country's unfortunate racially intolerant reputation. Is this really how we want to be seen by the rest of the world?" (Article from The Age)
In a conversation about how best to approach working with the Sudanese Refugee community, I wrote this to a friend a few months ago:
'I think exploring the 'Human Capacity Development' is a really positive way of approaching working with the Sudanese Community in Australia. I have been involved in a volunteer capacity over the last year or so tutoring english and from my experiences, the biggest challenges for them as they arrive in Australia is obviously language, but also social integration. And is there any wonder, in a society that is very private and comes across as quite cold to them. The challenges of living in the australian system - eg. job hunting, guidance in dealing with government support (centrelink -in which most english speaking australians struggle with!), attitutes to authority/police etc. This is to not even mentioning dealing with the past trauma that most have faced.
For me, all of the concerns that i've heard over the last year highlight the need for us as a church to be present with them above all else and supporting them as they face each hurdle. I was embarrassed to be Australian one day when a young sudanese guy said to me "you are the first white person that just wants to be friends". It hit me what impact our culture of being 'cold' on public transport has, the fact that at his university (where he is trying to complete high school as a mature age), you could sit in a class with the same people for 12 weeks, and not even ask someone thier name. Come, sit, listen, go home. That was my experience of university - and if university was where i was looking to make friends, I would be very lonely right now. Is there any wonder on my part that there are barriers to Social Integration? No. Just as growing up in a lifetime of war is foreign to most of us, so too is the culture that we live in here. It takes two to break down those barriers of igorance and misunderstanding, and without making the effort to be in relationship with each other - i can't see the way forward. (And between you and me, i don't think its the Sudanese that are holding back)
No such compassion or understanding is to be found in the Government's own quick fix. Instead there is dispassion and obduracy, along with the ominous feeling that Australia is tightening its borders for short-term political advantage that can only further this country's unfortunate racially intolerant reputation. Is this really how we want to be seen by the rest of the world?" (Article from The Age)
In a conversation about how best to approach working with the Sudanese Refugee community, I wrote this to a friend a few months ago:
'I think exploring the 'Human Capacity Development' is a really positive way of approaching working with the Sudanese Community in Australia. I have been involved in a volunteer capacity over the last year or so tutoring english and from my experiences, the biggest challenges for them as they arrive in Australia is obviously language, but also social integration. And is there any wonder, in a society that is very private and comes across as quite cold to them. The challenges of living in the australian system - eg. job hunting, guidance in dealing with government support (centrelink -in which most english speaking australians struggle with!), attitutes to authority/police etc. This is to not even mentioning dealing with the past trauma that most have faced.
For me, all of the concerns that i've heard over the last year highlight the need for us as a church to be present with them above all else and supporting them as they face each hurdle. I was embarrassed to be Australian one day when a young sudanese guy said to me "you are the first white person that just wants to be friends". It hit me what impact our culture of being 'cold' on public transport has, the fact that at his university (where he is trying to complete high school as a mature age), you could sit in a class with the same people for 12 weeks, and not even ask someone thier name. Come, sit, listen, go home. That was my experience of university - and if university was where i was looking to make friends, I would be very lonely right now. Is there any wonder on my part that there are barriers to Social Integration? No. Just as growing up in a lifetime of war is foreign to most of us, so too is the culture that we live in here. It takes two to break down those barriers of igorance and misunderstanding, and without making the effort to be in relationship with each other - i can't see the way forward. (And between you and me, i don't think its the Sudanese that are holding back)
Monday 24 September 2007
Sunday 16 September 2007
Peace
I was asked to talk at Camberwell Corp tonight – just a bit about what I’ve been doing – but connected to the theme of Peace...I was a little confused at first and I think the words I used was “what the hell do I know about peace!? Is the Peace Vigil about Iraq or something??”…cause I’m clueless. But I think God has actually been teaching me a lot about peace lately so I thought I would just share some of those rambling thoughts around what I’ve been doing...
For the past couple of years I have be working for the Asia Pacific Regional Facilitation team, and one of the places we have been most involved with is Sri Lanka. For those unaware, Sri Lanka is the tiny island next to India and has been in Civil War for the last 25 years. The Tamil Tigers in the North are fighting for independence from the Sinhalese population which represents the majority. But there is a strong resentment from the Tamil people of all ages, of the Sinhala majority.
When I first went there 2 years ago, the “peace” agreement was fragile but holding. We were actually able to go up to the North and hold a Tsunami Trauma Counselling Workshop – where we were trying to establish groups of volunteers to go and be community counselors, allowing people the opportunity to share their grief and deal with the psychological impact of the tsunami. Very quickly we established, the tsunami was just one part of a lifetime of war trauma. When the Tsunami came, people actually just assumed that it was the sound of fighting starting again. It was very much a superficial belief in ‘peace’ – they didn’t trust it. I can tell you some great stories about our translator for the week that ended up being a Tamil Tiger spy – just keeping tabs on what we were up to.
But one home visit we did, this tiny little lady sat in her temporary shelter and showed me the last picture she had of her 8 sons…Pointing to each one…war, war, tsunami, war …of her 8 sons, 5 were killed in the war, 2 in the Tsunami, and one had managed to escape to London. After a very emotional encounter, I came away from Jaffna asking a lot of questions about peace….
I have a good friend in Sri Lanka who is a young single officer and from the North and I once asked her the all important question of why did she decide to become an Officer? her response… “Because Tamil and Sinhala marry each other”…Not the response I was expecting but one that I’ve thought a lot about since. For her, The Salvation Army was modeling what society could be like, where Sinhala and Tamil lived together. What a powerful testimony to what we as the Salvation Army can be.
As limited as my understanding is, the peace agreement that was brokered by the UN did nothing to change the attitudes of people in everyday life towards each other, and so the grief and hurt still fuels the division hatred and fighting.
However God has really been challenging me a lot lately about how easy it is to look at places like Sri Lanka, say they should all live in peace without looking at what is underneath, and what’s more, without looking in the mirror on ourselves and in particular the Indigenous situation here in Australia. I won’t even begin on the Government’s intervention but the image of how the Salvation Army are modeling reconciliation in Sri Lanka (whilst not perfect), is a powerful statement. And my questions is…does our church model that same image of Australia reconciled with its Indigenous people??
Daryl Crowden has written a piece on Reconciliation (which I recommend, see his blog link on the right) and I particularly love a part under a section “WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR THE ARMY?”
“This means taking time to understand the Aboriginal culture, not just to observe and judge the forms, but take time to reflect on the function and meaning behind the often-misunderstood observable behaviours.
Allowing the culture to influence our own. Acknowledging that the culture has impacted our own. Our values are, in part, formed by our common history. We need to face this history truthfully and honestly – acknowledge the part we have played in the current economic, physical and spiritual context of the Aboriginal person and seek to find ways in which this wrong can be redressed. Forgive and be forgiven by hearing and telling the stories.”
But for me that means we need to make the first step to put ourselves in a position that we can actually hear those stories, we have to be in relationship.
Tuesday 18th is National Close the Gap Day – and Oxfam are holding a rally at Federation Sq 12pm – 2pm.
If anyone is interested in joining a group of us going as TSA, you’re most welcome. For me it is about starting to step out into spaces where I can learn about the Aboriginal people, their culture, doing something very small but symbolic to say that I care about the situation and that I want to learn and be changed by it.
I have fallen in love with a quote underneath a painting at THQ that reads:
"The promise of reconciliation begins with the journey of indigenous and non-indigenous people approaching the cross of Christ where we sit and share stories, honoring one another as those made in the image of God. United in purpose, we walk away as partners – reconciled people – committed to being agents of reconciliation"
So that is my small ramble about some thoughts around “Peace”…
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