“President Trump announced the launch of his Deal of the Century to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine.” “Donald Trump’s peace plan isn’t a plan for advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. It’s a plan for scuttling them.” “The administration’s peace plan tears up the playbook of prior presidents who have tried and failed to make real…

Advocacy, more than economic interests, is about consciousness and knowledge. It is about building a strong democracy, holding those in power accountable. It is about focusing on questions left out or hidden, on how information is shared or concealed. So, as maybe you know, but most people do not, a Peace Pact was signed on…

Advocacy is about defending a noble cause and denouncing oppression and injustice. However, it should be also a source of inspiration for alternative solutions to social, political and economic threats. Solutions advocating for inclusion and equality instead of exclusion or, worse, only of private financial interests. First, what is Global Homelessness? Its current statistic are…

Concluding the Special Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, Pope Francis in his homily said with a witty remark that the final document speaking of women falls “short” because of the importance of women in “transmitting the faith and in preserving the culture.” For the laity to be privileged actors, “the Church in the Amazon…

Advocacy is a strategy used around the world by NGOs, activists, and even policy makers themselves, to influence policies. Advocacy is about creating reform of policies, and their effective implementation and enforcement. A policy is a plan, course of action, set of regulations adopted by government, business or an institution, in order to influence or…

There is no consistent and successful advocacy but the one founded in strong credibility. Credibility is the quality or power of inspiring belief; it can refer to a person, a corporation, an activity or a report. Credibility gives legitimacy of speaking or acting on behalf or support of a plan, an idea, a project, or…

Advocacy is about politics and change, values and beliefs, consciousness and knowledge. It is about building democratic organizations and expanding citizens’ skills to understand how power operates. It is a sort of good advice empowering people to know the reality, how to make choices and how to behave in modern society. Pope Francis, during the…

On 27 February 2019, the Security Council welcomed the African Union’s “determination to rid Africa of conflicts and create conditions favorable for the growth, development and integration of the continent as encapsulated in its goal of ‘Silencing the Guns in Africa’ by the Year 2020.” The global endorsement received by this commitment was not a…

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…

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…

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…

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…