Throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America, there is no dearth of stories where communities have been forced to leave their lands to make way for government-sanctioned and corporate-driven natural resource extraction. You would not need to look far to find communities in areas where such projects in the name of development are taking place. Communities…
Read more
In 2000, the United Nations (UN) held a Millennium Summit and in its Millennium Declaration adopted the eight international Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by 2015. As 2015 drew to a close, at the Rio+20 meeting (2012), the document, “The Future we want”, called for the formulation of sustainable development goals, as a continuation of the MDGs. In 2014, the UN Open…
Read more
Sister Nathalie Kangaji has never been ready to accept injustice. She has been fighting for ten years as coordinator of the Legal Aid Center (CAJJ) in Kolwezi, in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for the rights of the most disadvantaged who are facing multinational corporations, including Swiss based Glencore, acting in…
Read more
I arrived among the Nuer in November 2005. It was my first mission assignment. I had expectantly waited for that moment throughout many years of training. Now I was there and my first concern was learning the language. I did not hide my trepidation: it was my first non-European language. My confreres were very helpful…
Read more
“I have nothing, I own nothing, I do not want anything, I have fought all my life for a complete but responsible political liberty. To the loss of economic freedom, towards which we are moving ahead in Italy, it will follow an actual loss of political freedom, even if the elective forms of an apparent…
Read more
The Bribris are a native people of about 11,500 in total, established in Costa Rica for centuries, some think for 5,000 years. They live on the Indian reserves of Salitre and Cabagra and speak the only indigenous language of Costa Rica taught at the university. They practice a form of religion related to shamanism and…
Read more
Money is what hurts the most. Popovic, the founder of Otpor (Enough), a student movement that played a key role in toppling Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, in 2004 created the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS). In his Blueprint for revolution, a book that Popovic has just presented at the Freedom Forum in Oslo, he…
Read more
Seventy-year-old Father Michael Bossano’s solemn declaration sounds resolute. His streaks of white hair tell tales of many years spent travelling the world. For now, however, the soft-spoken Catholic priest has found his place in Malakal, a long way from the comforts of the city he used to call home, New York. “I always felt I…
Read more
An Amerindian legend says that one day, there was a huge wildfire. All the animals gazed at the disaster terrified, distressed and helpless. Only the little hummingbird was hurrying, going to find a few drops of water with his beak to extinguish the fire. After a moment, the armadillo, flustered with all the agitation, said,…
Read more
In Oruro, few months ago, there took place an exchange of knowledge among women from ten communities on the defense of their rights: it was an initiative of the Itinerant School of Mother Earth’s Defenders promoted by RENAMAT and the CASA Collective of Bolivia, and after a tour in the Huanuni mining center and in…
Read more
Hunger and homelessness continued to rise in major North American cities. Unemployment, employment-related problems, and low-paying jobs are likely contributing to hunger. High housing costs cause lack of affordable housing and are a source of mental illness. Social problems arise from substance abuse while emergency shelters turned away many from family life. The millions who…
Read more
“We are the ‘No’ that God scrawls on the wall,” said Cardinal Joseph Tobin, addressing a gathering of Faith leaders in Newark. He had first voiced that it is “the little person who goes into the square in the middle of town in the dark of the night and scrawls on the wall, ‘No’ ” that…
Read more
Throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America, there is no dearth of stories where communities have been forced to leave their lands to make way for…
Read more
Once upon a time, there lived a man called John who was a hunter as well as a magician. John had seven dogs and seven large…
Read more
We humans, the species on this planet with the large brains, so-called intelligence and abilities and power to change the face of our planet, are doing…
Read more
