CLIMATE BILL NEEDS CHANGE
BURMA’S ROCKY ROAD TO DEMOCRACY
ARAMARK AND DIRECT PROVISION
Exasperated ca mpa igners deride absent targets, weak mechanisms and ambiguous definitions.
The recent news f rom Burma about the beating and arrest of student protesters is cause for concern.
The company has been fiercely criticised by people in the best position to know how it operates on the ground.
> CLIMATE PAGE 3
> GLOBAL PAGE 4
> CAMPUS PAGE 3
FOCUS
ACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE. May 2015 | Published By Comhlámh | ISSUE 96
www.comhlamh.org
A mural commemorating the 10th Anniversary of Cochabamba Water Wars and a protestor in Rialto. | Photo Credits: Kris Krug and Jamie Goldrick
From Edenmore To El Alto.
How Water Is Transforming How Politics Happens In Our Communities. PATRICK BRESNIHAN Maynooth University
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n February, Comhlámh hosted a First We d ne s da y deb a te which put the ongoing resistance to water charges and Irish Water into a global context of popular struggles for water justice. The evening debate ‘From El Alto to Edenmore’ opened with a screening of Muireann De Barra and Aishling Crudden’s documentary, Water Rising. The film follows three protagonists – a family, a doctor and a water activist – as they deal with the everyday politics of accessing water in El Alto, the city that sprawls above La Paz in Bolivia. On the face of it, the comparison between El Alto and Dublin’s Edenmore is not obvious. If we dig a little deeper, however, the comparison becomes instructive. In both contexts the problem of debt and the question of how
water services are to be financed is central. The famous Water Wars that began in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba in 2000 and spread to El Alto a couple of years later were sparked by the privatization of the public water systems. This private contract was a condition tied to a loan from the World Bank. While the Irish government was not forced to privatize the water system as part of the bailout agreement with the Troika, it was obliged to introduce a model of water provision that was self-financing. The result, as we know, is the introduction of water charges. What is given less attention is that further external borrowing will be required to cover the €600 million capital investment required every year up until 2030. This means that the financing of our water services will be increasingly tied to the financial interests of global investors, something that is bound to have a significant impact on how our water services are managed and
them. This doesn’t mean that these who will benefit from the money communities ignore the state – we pay for them. which performs important and A second struggle that has necessary functions – but that they been at the heart of the Bolivian refuse to abdicate their power experience but less so here to a single, centralized relates to democracy entity and in the and power: who decides how our “Decisions over how process reduce water services are our water resources democratic participation to managed and are used and how? managed are not just an occasional As the technical matters to vote. While there documentary be left up to experts is nothing like ‘Water Rising’ or politicians.” this scale of selfshowed, government in communities Ireland, the basic without access to point remains: decisions over how water in El Alto have organized our water resources are used and themselves to dig wells, lay pipes, maintain water systems and decide managed are not just technical matters to be left up to experts or how they should be managed and politicians. for whom. The water justice movement in Even today, these communityIreland should take this important managed water systems refuse lesson from Bolivia and translate it to be incorporated within the into a broader effort to reclaim the public water system because they public good and democratise the recognize that their power lies political system. in coming together in regular assemblies to make collective decisions about issues that affect
THAIS MANTOVANI LASC Researcher
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he state of São Paulo, Brazil, is currently experiencing a severe water supply crisis. The main source of water catchment in the region, the Cantareira System, was only at 3% capacity last December and the state is experiencing a third consecutive year of soaring temperatures and rainfall patterns well below historic records. The water shortages are affecting the economy of the main city, São Paulo and many city dwellers are having to get by on just 2 or 3 hours of water per day. Some critics say that the present crisis is due to lack of long-term planning and emphasise the economic or political drivers of the crisis, while the government of São Paulo insists that the water supply crisis is being caused by drought. There is a link between the water crisis in São Paulo and the issue of water in Ireland. Both cases show how essential water is to life. Water management must be long-term focused, while providers must be transparent, accountable and guarantee a regular supply of water with no unexpected fees.
>TTIP AND TRADE PAGE 2
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FOCUS ACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE
NEWS
Campaigners against TTIP make their point loud and clear at a demonstration at the Central Bank | Photo credit: Monica Manzzi
FOCUS
ACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE
EST. 1978
Focus Magazine is Ireland’s leading magazine on global development issues. Since 1978, Focus has been making links between the situation in Ireland and in the South, with a view to challenging assumptions, and promoting understanding, interest in and action on development issues among a broad public. In particular, it aims to provide alternative views to those expressed in mainstream media. Editorial Group: Inese Japina, Rory Fogarty, Lindsay Murphy, Sive Bresnihan, Aine Rickard, Miren Maialen Samper and Mark Furlong. To receive copies to distribute please contact info@comhlamh.org Comhlamh is a signatory to the Dochas Code On Images and Messages. Feedback welcome to info@comhlamh.org
OPINIONS “This trade agreement is likely to lead to more natural gas and oil exports meaning more fracking, more pipelines and more climate disrupting pollution on both sides of the Atlantic. TTIP is simply a Trojan treaty set to empower large corporations at the expense of the people and the planet.”
- Camilla Kane, spokesperson for Young Friends of the Earth “The ongoing trade deals between the EU-US, and the EU and Canada, threaten to damage our democracy. Investor-state arbitration gives special privileges to foreign companies – creating a dangerous chilling effect on essential legislation aimed at protecting people and the planet. Any trade deals that seek to put the interests of BIG business before the interests of people should be stopped.”
- Emma Jayne Geraghty, Campaign Coordinator, Uplift. “TTIP is not about evil American capitalists seeking to impose their will on the benign EU - the EU has a long history of promoting the interests of European capital, often at the expense of poor people throughout the world. The EU Commission in particular is a partner in crime with the US government in seeking to undermine living standards, erode environmental protections and delimit democracy.”
- Andy Storey, spokesperson Afri (Action From Ireland) and College Lecturer, School Of Politics & International Relations, UCD.
THE EU/US TRADE DEAL
What’s Wrong With TTIP? No one is arguing against better trade but this deal doesn’t stop there. BARRY FINNEGAN TTIP Information Network.
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o one is against recognising each other’s standards for car airbags and indicators; the same goes for medical devices related to insulin, stints and the like. So let’s make trade better between the EU and the USA. Great! With only 5% of trade between the EU and the US subject to import taxes, the only place for them to go to get more profit from a new ‘free’ trade deal is to remove rules and regulations relating to democracy, public services, workers’ rights, food and the environment. If TTIP is agreed as planned, “behind the border barriers to trade” like government monopolies, including water, would be illegal. Public services would have to be privatised. Government grants and funding, including for community development, would be awarded on a cheapest-bidder-wins basis. Banning fracking would be, “an unnecessarily restrictive barrier to trade”. Food sovereignty as a political goal, banning or enforcing labelling of GMOs and maintaining our high standards of food regulation and animal farming would be classed as an “overly meddlesome barrier to trade”. Plus, the precautionary principle would be classed as legally unscientific, and we could not use it to interfere with corporate profit. And as if that wasn’t enough, the people would have to pay for corporate profit lost as a result of any new rules to cut down on fossil fuel use and stop climate change. And so we ask the question - how could corporations insist that citizens pay for
simply as costs; removing their loss in profit? The answer costs is always calculated is through a mechanism as an economic gain. called Investor-State “The people would Even though they Dispute Settlement have to pay for predict large worker (ISDS). The purpose corporate profit lost displacement, they of ISDS is to allow as a result of any do not factor in a corporations to sue new rules to cut financial cost for the states through a special down on fossil fuel impact of the human private ‘court’ if they use and stop climate and social disruption and feel they have lost, or change. ” unemployment caused. might lose money as a result The plan for TTIP is to make of government policy. It means all EU and US rules and regulations the corporations become independent same (harmonisation), or to promise to global actors, able to sue sovereign states in respect each other’s rules and regulations special courts, and not subject to the same (regulatory recognition) not just of food democratic court system that citizens are. and agriculture and cosmetics (we ban This allows them to bypass the democratic 1,100 chemicals in cosmetics, they only judicial systems of Ireland, the EU and ban 12) and the environment, but workers’ the USA and is clearly an assault on the rights too. With ISDS, US companies separation of powers, the independence of will be able to do like Veolia did in Egypt the judiciary, and equality before the law. recently, and sue the government for In creating favourable economic imagined unearned future profit “lost” as forecasts for TTIP integration, particularly a result of a rise in the minimum wage. for jobs and growth, the Government and The Egyptian government backed down, the Commission rely on figures generated and did not raise the minimum wage. One by the Computable General Equilibrium would be naïve to believe, that TTIP is Calculation System. This system makes a going to do anything except drive down number of problematic assumptions about the labour market. It assumes that free peoples’ pay and conditions of work, and efficient labour mobility exists across block chances of stopping climate change, all sectors, that 100% employment is a enforce the privatisation of public services, pre-condition and operates on regulation force US-style, chemical-fuelled food in to free conditions for environmental and our shops, and eradicate the democratic human health standards. Despite relying principles of the independence of the on this questionable model, these reports judiciary and equality before the law. still only predict that economic growth would be 0.05% per year, not the 0.5% that Malmström has suggested. The Commission’s CEPR study and our government’s Copenhagen report treat regulations which protect workers, health, food quality and the environment,
FURTHER INFO
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CLIMATE & CAMPUS
A protest in Athlone against the Direct Provision system | Photo credit: Caroline Reid
This Climate Bill Needs Change.
Exasperated campaigners deride absent targets, weak mechanisms and ambiguous definitions. RORY FOGARTY Comhlámh Member
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“The bill can be deemed to be aggressively conservative in its reach. Basically only re-affirming aims already committed to at an EU level”
he Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Bill 2015 was published on the 19th of January to a tepid response. After 3 years of waiting, exasperated environmental campaigners welcomed the arrival of Ireland’s first identifiable piece of climate change legislation, but simultaneously derided it for its absent targets, weak mechanisms and ambiguous definitions. Ostensibly the Climate Action bill is designed to prepare Ireland for a transition to a ‘low carbon economy’ by 2050. To facilitate this two national-strategy frameworks will be established; a National Mitigation Plan to lower greenhouse emissions, and a National Adaptation Framework to provide responses to changes cause by climate change. Also included in the the bill is the provision of an Expert Advisory Council made up of 9 to 11 members. However, the minister and the department of the environment will not be compelled to take the advice of the council. Whilst these particulars should be viewed positively, they are minor successes when compared to the major pitfalls on the legislation. Firstly, the bill does not include the government’s own definition of low carbon and does not set out any specific targets to be reached on a national level. This
allows the government near unlimited room to define its own success rate in the years leading to 2030 and ultimately 2050, the year zero of the climate change movement. The bill can be deemed to be aggressively conservative in its reach. Basically only re-affirming aims already committed to at an EU level (20% reduction on 1995 levels by 2020), it is only making up the numbers for the EU’s contribution of global emission cuts in the run up to the UN Climate Convention in Paris in November. Furthermore, the minister for the environment Alan Kelly chose not to include the recommendations of the Oireachtas Committee on the Environment, which included guaranteeing the independence of the Expert Advisory Council, a definition of a low carbon economy, and the concept of climate justice, which this bill does not refer to once. The Bill, without any of the all-party committee’s recommendations included, means very little. It will be little more than statement of intent, rather than any proactive policy change. In reality, without these recommendations, the bill is largely redundant. Given that the soft deadline for national contributions passed this March, and the Climate Action Tracker organisation, who have been assessing all pledges have declared that they are not sufficient to prevent warming of above 2C, it is easy to grasp how far short this bill falls.
People’s Climate Ireland and Young Friends of the Earth Protest | Photo credit: 350.org
JIMMY BILLINGS AND AIDAN ROWE UCD Against Direct Provision Campaign
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ntroduced on 10 April 2000 as a temporary emergency measure, the system of ‘Direct Provision and Dispersal’ is 15 years old last month. In this time, it is estimated that the Department of Justice (via the Reception and Integration Agency, RIA) has paid out almost 800 million euros to private companies. These companies effectively profit from the indefinite detention and suffering of asylum seekers and from what has been widely condemned as an inhumane system. As asylum seeker activists have pointed out, the system of Direct Provision is part of a global asylum detention industry. Most accommodation centres are owned and managed by private businesses; others are government-owned, with management outsourced to profit-making companies such as Aramark, a global corporation with big stakes in the detention industry. Aramark Ireland Holdings Ltd is contracted by the Irish State to manage three direct provision centres: Kinsale Road in Cork, Lisseywollen in Athlone, and Knockalisheen in Limerick. The company has been fiercely criticised by people in the best position to know how it operates on the ground. Asylum seekers in Lisseywollen and Kinsale Road protested
against the direct provision system last autumn and cited Aramark as a key issue. Aramark Ireland Holdings Ltd also has lucrative catering contracts with several third level institutions in Ireland, including University College Dublin. The implication of the university with the much-criticised Direct Provision system, through its connections with Aramark, is symptomatic of the hijacking of academia for governmental ends. Exercising the vital right to academic freedom, we are organising a joint studentstaff campaign in UCD to add our voices to grassroots campaigns to end Direct Provision and to respond to Aramark’s presence on our campus. We hope that our organising on campus in UCD will encourage students and staff in other universities to get involved in university campaigns to end DP and to end our educational institutions’ complicity with the corporations that profit from the asylum and deportation industries.
GET ACTIVE.
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FOCUS ACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE
WORLD
Activists mark the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2007. | Photo Credit: lewishamdreamer
The Rocky Road To Democracy In Burma. The recent news from Burma about the beating and arrest of student protesters reflects the current direction of democratic reform in the country. AINE RICKARD Comhlámh Member
Shan, Arakane and Kokang regions. There have also been many new laws passed by government which restrict indiv idua l rom positive beginnings, it has freedoms such as the right to bear children become clear that the much and marry freely. There are increased arrests hoped-for reform process of people peacefully protesting or handing has not only stalled, but moved out information fliers about citizen rights. T he peacef u l st udent ma rch f rom backwards. On 13th November 2010, Mandalay to Yangon this February is a the news that Aung San Suu Kyi had clear example of the refusal of Burmese been released from house arrest in authorities to allow democratic freedom. Burma (also known as Myanmar) Students marched peacefully to protest a seemed to mark a true turning point in Burma’s political history. proposed education reform bill which would It added to the release of hundreds of stifle academic freedom. 140km outside of political prisoners, and the holding of the Yangon in the town of Letpetdan, Burmese country’s first democratic elections in police set up road blockages to halt the over 20 years, as genuine steps towards students’ progress. When students refused to posit ive refor m i n t he cou nt r y. stop their march, the police and other The new government, whilst pro-military forces proceeded to still largely run by the military, violently beat protestors along seemed focused on change. with monks and journalists Civil society organisations supporting the students. “Such treatment Over a hundred people were given more freedom to clearly shows that were wrongly arrested, express their opinions, and basic democratic some forms of independent rights are not being with several students being med ia were a l lowed to protected in Burma severely injured. Some of report from the country. those arrested still have not at present. ” A s a r e s u l t , i n 2 012 , been released, and satellite t he EU and US governments protests in Yangon and elsewhere dropped many economic sanctions in which were started to express solidarity place against the previous Burmese junta. with the students have been similarly repressed. Development aid flooded into the country, Such t reat ment clea rly shows with more than €200 million received t hat basic democrat ic rig hts a re not from Europe. The Japanese have made even being protected in Burma at present. stronger commitments, forgiving a colossal EU funding which has been pumped into $5.32 billion of debt owed to it by the police training in Myanmar since 2013 has Burmese military, whilst investing hundreds clearly not been effective. Worse still, the UK of millions into development projects. government has been a key trainer of Burmese In the last 24 months, there have been police forces, providing riot gear and seconding four violent conf licts in Burma involving a PSNI officer to Burma. That same riot gear the Burmese authorities. These have killed may well have been used by police in March thousands of people and caused over to beat and refuse Burmese students their 300,000 to flee their homes across Kachin, right to democratic and peaceful protest.
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Aung San Suu Kyi Trial Daily Protest at Burma Embassy in 2009. | Photo Credit: TotalOutNow Very serious questions need to be asked be leaders in the West before more support is given to the broken Burmese promise of democracy. It is time to ask whether the flood of money from the West is helping Burma move towards democracy, or is actually financing and modernising the Burmese authoritarian regime.
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GENDER
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NURSE OPPORTUNITIES We have a number of exciting Nurse Opportunities in our Homeless Residential Detoxification and HIV Respite/Stabilisation Units What We Promise: Competitive Salary and Benefits Development Opportunities Opportunitiy to Use a Wide Variety of Skills For more information or to apply for the above position please view our website www.dubsimon.ie or phone 01-6354800 for additional information.
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FOCUS ACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE James and Disability activist Esther Mkamori pictured together. | Photo Credit: Maria Isabel Rivera
VOLUNTEER RECRUITMENT
POST-MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Language Matters
A Red Cross Recruitment Specialist Has Some Tips. LIZ HARRIS International Committee of the Red Cross
Why is that? you might ask. Well, the ICRC is known for gaining access to places and people that other organisations can’t reach, thanks to its scrupulously neutral stand. This means that iz Harris works for the when working in a given conflict, we don’t send International Committee of the Red Cross as a recruitment staff from states which are involved in any way on either side. consultant, specialising in languages. During the Iraq war in 2003, for example, we here she talks about why the organiwould not send anyone from a country which sation wants to attract more Irish was part of the coalition forces. Given the numstaff. A few weeks ago, I was in Ireland to check ber of countries that were in it, this presented it out as a recruiting ground for the ICRC. serious headaches in finding suitable nationAlthough I’ve been in my post in the UK for alities with the right experience and languages four years I hadn’t visited before as my focus that we could send. Languages are crucial if you had been heavily on interpreters of Asian and want a job as a general delegate for the ICRC and African languages, which are not taught in highly desirable for most of the other profesIreland. Now that I’m focusing more on finding sions. With the ICRC working in over 80 counother profiles, such as ICRC general delegates tries, we need staff who can work in English and medics, Ireland has become a very attrac- and French at the very least. All the better if you tive destination. have Arabic or Russian! The number of universities What I find at ‘careers with lanoffering relevant degrees is quite guages’ type events, however, is astounding, all of them well “Languages are that students of degree subjects served by excellent careers sercrucial if you want relevant to the work of the ICRC vices who make life very easy a job as a general – such as development, conflict for recruiters like me. delegate for the studies or international relations The Irish are known for their ICRC.” – don’t tend to come, even if they international development and do have another language. This solidarity work, travelling overseas is probably due to the misconception to work in all four corners of the world – so that the only jobs on offer will be teaching I don’t have to do much persuading. But there’s and translation. another reason why Ireland is so appealing: the Irish ‘neutral’ passport is pure gold.
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February 2014. Mbara (right), hugs her four-year-old son, after he had been lost for two days in Bangui, Central African RepublicRivera. | Photo Credit: ICRC / Annibale Greco
JAMES O’BRIEN VSO Ireland
From international volunteers to community health workers and home-based carers, volunteers have been at the heart of extending the reach of essential services beyond what formal s we approach the end government systems can achieve. By working date for the Millennium alongside communities and gaining an insight Development Goals into the needs of people on the ground (and (MDGs), governments have begun what they’re doing themselves to meet these to gather in New York for monthly needs), volunteers have been able to extend negotiations on the Post-2015 services to the poorest and most marginalised agenda, including new ‘Sustainable people in a way that is locally appropriate. Development Goals’, which will We should be pushing governments replace the MDGs from the start to include volunteerism in the Means of of 2016. The negotiations will run Implementation component – looking until July, and the new agenda beyond financial and technical intervenwill be announced at a Summit in tions to human resources to people-centred September. Last month I was at the intergovernmental approaches. The Secretary General’s Synthesis negotiations on the Political Declaration part Report, published in December, was strong of the agenda, which will be a new version on this point ‘As we seek to build capaciof the Millennium Declaration. I was there ties and to help the new agenda to take root, as part of a civil society steering committee volunteerism can be another powerful and which was tasked with channelling the voices cross-cutting means of implementation. of civil society into the negotiations. From a Volunteerism can help to expand and mobiComhlámh perspective, it is interesting to see lize constituencies, and to engage people in how the role of volunteers and volunteering national planning and implementation for is evolving in the new agenda. We know that sustainable development goals. And volunthe Post-2015 agenda will be made up of four teer groups can help to localize the new agenda by providing new spaces components – a Political Declaration, Sustainable Development Goals, of interaction between govTargets and Indicators, Means ernments and people for concrete and scalable “As volunteer of Implementation and a groups, we should be actions’. New Global Partnership and calling on member Follow-up and review. The We should be speakstates to think about place of volunteerism in the ing directly to the govwhat they mean by Declaration is uncertain. By ernments of the countries inspiring” the end of the February negotiwhere we work about the ations it was clear that there is an role that volunteers can play appetite amongst member states in development, and the need for a Post-2015 agenda that for a declaration that is concise, simple and inspiring. ‘Concise’ will mean no more recognises and supports the role of volunteers. than three pages and ‘simple’ will mean that a Last October, volunteer groups at the IVCO 13-year old could understand the declaration. conference agreed on a set of priorities for As volunteer groups, we should be calling on the Post-2015 agenda, the Lima Declaration. member states to think about what they mean A good first step is to sign the declaration, by inspiring, and what voluntary action we and to contact the Post-2015 Volunteering want to inspire people to take in their own Working Group to find out how you can join lives and communities. Volunteers were not other volunteer-involving organisations in mentioned in the MDGs, but they have been a pushing for the recognition of volunteering. major part of the implementation of the goals.
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CULTURE
Some members of Dublin Afrobeat Ensemble pictured in 2014. | Photo credit: André Sanches
A look at the demise of civil society, the enviorment and human rights in an oil rich region of Colombia.
The Rhythm Of Afrobeat. Fela Kuti’s funky mix of musical styles is alive and thriving in Dublin town. SIVE BRESNIHAN Comhlámh Member
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ormed in 2012 and comprising of 15 plus musicians from almost as many countries, Dublin Afrobeat Ensemble is known for its collaborative style, high energy performances and infectious grooves. Recently, the Ensemble gave way to two unique but complementary musical projects, Yankari Afrobeat Collective and Ájo Arkestra. We caught up with Derenik, GP, Rafa, Isra and Yves to talk afrobeat and new directions. How did you guys get started? Basically it happened when a group of musicians who were into afrobeat started to get connected. There was James (an Irish musician now living in Brazil), Segun (drums) and Isra (bass) and then others who got on board pretty quickly – GP (trumpet) and Yves (lead vocals). We played together in open mic sessions run by Derenik (trombone) in Smithfield. Gospel, reggae, rock was all going on but what we had in common was that interest in afrobeat. Rafa (guitar) came over from Brazil then - so it was really organic. We didn’t have auditions. It was more like ‘ah you play, come and play here’ and with the good vibe and the good feeling we were all like ‘we want to do this music, it’s special’. That was in 2012. The original Dublin Afrobeat Ensemble has recently given way to two distinct but complementary musical projects: Yankari Afrobeat collective which focuses more on the pure afrobeat and Ájo Arkestra which blends free flow afrobeat rhythm and heavy dance-floor afro-funk. What binds the two projects together is the afrobeat influence and shared world view and we really hope that our efforts will enhance the
development of the afrobeat genre here in Ireland and globally as well. What’s afrobeat all about?
richness straight away - the band and the crowd become one very quickly. It’s been like that since the very first gig. Otherwise, we’re playing music which is already a mix of different types of music and we ourselves are a mix of people coming from different places and people respond to that. We think we’ve come up at the right time you know? We kind of represent what Dublin is now – as multicultural a city as you can get in Europe.
The main guy behind afrobeat was Fela Kuti, a Nigerian artist who was big in the 70s and 80s. Fela started out being into high life a kind of West African pop and when he went to study music in England in the 60s, began mixing this high life up with jazz. He spent time in America after that. He met his Tell us more about the gig you played for first wife there - she was a ‘black panther’ during the civil rights anti-racism day on March 21st movement and played a big part in his political radicalisation. After that he went back to Nigeria and began to mix funk Music is one of those things where there are no (James Brown was big at the time) with jazz and colours and where everyone can get together the high life. He met an amazing drummer then and have a good time. You can get a message “You can get a called Tony Allen who brought in some type across pretty smoothly with music. Even if message across of percussion rhythm that nobody had done people don’t have the mindset to want it, pretty smoothly before. That’s how afrobeat was born. they can get into the music and the music with music. Even if You know afrobeat when you hear it - you can convince them. So March 21st was a people don’t have can’t mix it up with anything else. You need special gig for us. It was in support of the the mindset to want a big band to make it – a lot of brass, percusAnti-Racism Network and organised with it, they can get into sion, but it’s not just about that. Fela was a mix Discotekken. Yankari Afrobeat Collective the music and the of music and political attitude and his lyrics played, plus Ájo Arkestra, Mixtapes from the music can convince were political. There was a lot of political corrupUnderground and others. The vibe was good, them. ” tion going on in Nigeria at that time and he sang the music was good. We like to be part of such about that as well as other things. The band played out of his things you know. It’s important to us that we stand for club ‘Afrika Shrine’ and you could say he tried to put some stuff that actually matters. Music is the weapon right? consciousness in the people who came to listen. He used to say ‘music is the weapon’. What’s it like playing afrobeat for crowds here in Ireland? The rhythm of afrobeat is infectious so people get the
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SPORT
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Campaigners have been highlighting the lack of migrant rights in the build up to the World Cup. | Photo Credits: Omar Chatriwala
LOCAL & GLOBAL
RHODES MUST FALL The University of Capetown removed the controversial statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes following a month of protests. ll The removal of this 1934 statue was greeted with cheers from students, academics, and Capetown residents. More at: bit.ly/1GAP3cN
Football’s Dark Shadow.
Shankley quipped “football is a matter of life and death.” In Qatar it’s no joke. TOMMY BERGIN Community and Youth Work, NUIM.
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he hosting of the 2022 World Cup by Qatar has been mired in controversy since it was awarded the finals in 2010. While the decision to move the finals to the winter months of November and December (due to the extreme summer heat of 50+ degrees) for the first time has been grabbing all the headlines, accusations of bribery, corruption, slavery and forced labour have also cast a dark shadow over Qatar’s hosting of the tournament. Jutting north into the Persian Gulf from Saudi Arabia, Qatar is one of the richest countries in the world due to its exploitation of its large oil and gas fields. As countries go it is in its fledgling years only gaining independence from British rule in 1971. It relies heavily on foreign labour to man its rapidly growing economy, to the extent that migrant workers comprise approximately 94% of the workforce. There are about 400,000 Nepalese workers in Qatar among the 1.4 million migrants working on a £137bn construction spree in the tiny Gulf state. In November the Guardian newspaper reported that Nepalese migrants building this infrastructure were dying at a rate of one every two days in 2014. The figure excludes deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi workers, raising fears that if fatalities among all migrants were taken into account the toll would almost certainly be more than one a day.
Amnesty international amongst others persistent criticism of the decision to allow have been vocal critics of the legal, physi- Qatar to host the tournament. Qatar authorities cal, working, and housing conditions have responded by promising to implement migrants have to endure in Qatar. recommendations made last May The Guardian article described 2014 after a report by internaconditions as “forced labour tional law firm DLA Piper. The “With so many and conditions amountreport recommended that lives at stake Bill ing to slavery” while the Qatar reform its labour laws Shankleys famous International Trade Union as well as do more to record quote was never Confederation says that if and investigate the causes more apt as it is conditions don’t improve, at of death among the migrant right now.” least 4,000 migrants will die population but it has made litbefore kick-off. tle outward progress. At the crux of this issue is While reform has been the sponsorship law, known as “kafala”, promised as of yet nothing of note has which limits the rights of movement of foreign changed with Qatar authorities claiming it workers in Qatar and has allegedly led to wide- will take time to change legislation and they spread exploitation. are going to take their time to get it right! With The system requires all unskilled labourers hundreds of billions of dollars at stake the fear to have an in-country sponsor, usually their is that Qatar and FIFA are only paying lip employer, who is responsible for their visa and service to the issue of human rights, making legal status. This practice has been criticised by the right noises but doing very little to enact human rights organizations for creating easy change. opportunities for the exploitation of workers, With so many lives at stake, legandary manas many employers take away passports and ager Bill Shankleys famous quote was never abuse their workers with little chance of legal more apt as it is right now. repercussions. The overall picture is of one of the richest nations in world exploiting workers from some of the poorest to get ready for the world’s most popular sporting tournament. Pressure from international human rights and civil society groups has been mounting and recently FIFA president Sepp Blatter, in the run-up to the group’s presidential election this spring, has said human rights would be a criterion in awarding World Cup hosting rights. Mr. Blatter’s pledge was in response to
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MINING IN THE SPERRINS The Comhlámh Belfast group went for a walk in the Sperrins last month. They and others interested combined the enjoyment of natural beauty with learning about the mining activity in the area. ll Ann Kristin Sivertsen wrote a piece for the Comhlámh website looking at the variety of discussions that took place over the day. Essential reading. Read more at bit.ly/1HMUrv4
#MIGRANTSLIVESMATTER In response to the loss of another 900 lives crossing the world’s deadliest border, a vigil was held outside the outside the European Union House in Dublin. ll So far this year, 1600 migrants have died while trying to make the journey from North Africa to Italy – 30 times higher than the figure recorded last year. Look up ENAR Ireland and ARN.