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TFF@BXL asks students to help feed the world!
Earlier this week, Thought for Food (TFF) held its inaugural summit in Brussels. TFF is a movement that aims to challenge university students to develop creative action plans to build a sustainable and just food future. For its inauguration, TFF brought together a group of “creative mentors”, who have started social enterprises, are advocating for new policies and who are using social media to change the world.
Each speaker told their personal story, outlined what they do and gave ideas for how young people can get involved. Ellen Gustafson, the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the FEED Foundation, talked about the unsustainability and unfairness of the world’s food system which is causing both hunger and obesity. She called on participants to “Change Dinner!” as a means to changing this broken global system.
Our own Alexander Woollcombe, ONE’s Acting Brussels Director, screened two videos: a Living Proof video showing the incredible progress that have been made in development and the The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity, a campaign ONE launched to fight famine in the horn of Africa.
Audrey Matthias and Zach Goodwin, from Creative Strategist, talked about the potential of new media and online technologies to bring about changes in the offline world . Participants also learned more about the virtue of camel milk with Sebastian Lindstrom, Co-founder/Producer of the What Took You So Long Foundation, and had the chance to taste it. All the speakers shared inspiring stories and encouraged participants to do what they are good at to change the world and start early.
In the afternoon, participants and mentors brainstormed and pledged to make a positive difference and contribute to feed the planet. Participants made various individual pledges from shopping and eating more sustainably to raising friends’ awareness, from making videos about that issue to spreading the word on social media. ONE will be encouraging them to get involved in our exciting forthcoming agriculture campaign.
Tweeters saw #TFFpledge and @TFFChallenge repeatedly showing up on their Twitter feeds on that day. Everybody went home inspired and committed to do something to contribute to reinvent our food production and consumption systems to feed the two billion extra mouths to come in the next decades.
Video: ONE in Tanzania
This post first appeared on the ONE Africa blog
When ONE and ANSAF delivered a petition earlier this month on behalf of more 16,000 African citizens to Tanzania’s State House, our message was received with the urgency it deserved.
President Jakaya Kikwete had invited several African Ambassadors and the donor community to witness this event and it was clear to us from the word go that the president was indeed taking the issue of food insecurity in Africa very seriously. An event that was supposed to take about an hour, ended up with us being at Ikulu for more than three hours with President Kikwete having time for each and everyone present. He took time to mingle and speak not only with the Ambassadors present but also the small holder farmers personally.
These informal meetings and conversation saw President Kikwete ask the farmers to return the very next day, so that he could hear first hand what they would like to see his government do to boost agriculture in the rural areas.
This humble gesture left us rest assured that the petition could not have been in better hands. As if to confirm this notion, President Jakaya Kikwete went ahead and did two things:
- He made a bold and public declaration that he would commit 10% of his national budget towards agriculture and rural development.
- President Kikwete also promised to deliver the petition to African Heads of State at the next African Union meeting in Malawi this July.
For us this was a clear demonstration of an African leader taking responsibility and showing leadership on an issue that has the potential of transforming the whole continent.
Africa: a path to Dutch growth?
Guest blog post from ONE advisor and advocate Bob Geldof, which was published today in the Netherlands as part of the #YouGetWhatYouGive campaign:
Has it come to this? A nation that pioneered the exploration of undiscovered continents, one of the first true capitalist economies and earliest global traders, is about to turn its back on the world? A country that has always understood that its economic and cultural self-interest lies in global engagement is set to retreat to a state of Little Hollanders? This Low Country that has always occupied the high moral ground, and been admired around the world for that, is actually willing to throw away that hard-won reputation for the sake of a short-term saving of next to nothing, and at the long-term cost of its place in the global economic recovery?
One of the Netherlands’ greatest exports – its wise, generous and profitable investment in the development of the world’s poorest countries – is under threat because of petty and short-sighted political posturing. Just at the moment when years of investment are leading to rapid growth for Africa, creating phenomenal opportunities for Dutch companies, there is a real chance the country will cut aid to Africa, turn its back on the continent and write itself out of the story. This would be a huge mistake. You might expect me to say that Dutch aid should not be cut because it will cost lives, and it will. Cuts in aid will mean children who do not go to school, families locked in permanent extreme poverty, women left to give birth alone. And yes, lives lost as clinics are closed, AIDS patients have treatment withdrawn, innocent victims of natural disaster and war are unreached and left to die. All this is true. But this is not my point.
My point is that the evidence is clear: Dutch aid doesn’t just deliver for Africa. It delivers for the Dutch. This is true in a very direct sense, as about 40 per cent of Dutch aid flows directly back to the Dutch economy. But it doesn’t stop there: investing in development is more important now than ever before as Europe tries to grow its way out of economic misery. It will help to create markets. For a country like the Netherlands whose past, present and future prosperity is based largely on world trade, investing in global development is the smartest thing to do. Just as the growth of India and China has led to jobs and wealth creation in the Netherlands, Africa too holds the promise of new economic opportunities at home. Aid has helped Africa to reach an economic take-off point. The Netherlands and the rest of Europe can fly in Africa’s slipstream. How foolish would it be to now cut off Holland’s economic nose to spite its austerity face?
The question should be asked: why is China increasing its aid as well as its investment? Why is Britain increasing its aid as well as its investment? Why does the German government say for every German euro spent on aid, Germany receives euro 1.40 in benefits? These are the hard questions the Dutch government should be asking itself, rather than indulging in outdated platitudes on the cost of aid. Debt cancellation, predictable aid flows and, as a result, decreasing mortality figures alongside increases in health and education, mobile connectivity and Chinese investment have all put Africans onto the fastest growing middle class in the world, outpacing last year even Brazil in consumer spending. This is the reality of the 21st century and not the tired bromides coming from some less thoughtful and intellectually lazy Dutch politicians.
For a continued tiny investment of 0.7% of its wealth, the Netherlands has bought the entrance ticket to the biggest growth story in town: Africa. To cut now would be the ultimate political and economic folly – just at the moment that every euro in aid will pay back far more in new markets and opportunity.
International aid may be a soft target in hard times. But those in Holland who argue against maintaining aid are betting against their own country’s economic recovery and future prosperity. Even at this eleventh hour, the Prime Minister should realise what is at stake – and change course.
Find out more on the #YouGetWhatYouGive website and please tweet about the campaign using the hashtags #YouGetWhatYouGive and #jeKrijgtwatjeGeeft
Campaign on extractives gathers speed in European Parliament
Together with Tearfund and the Publish What You Pay coalition, ONE organised an event in the European Parliament this Wednesday, to raise awareness about the transparency laws for oil, gas and mining companies currently under discussion.
Titled “Can transparency end the resource curse?” with Bishop Stephen Munga from Tanzania, an expert within the ‘Publish What You Pay’ movement there, MEP Birgit Schnieber-Jastram and our own Acting Brussels Director Alexander Woollcombe the briefing session attracted over 20 MEPs and Parliament staff as well as 30 activists and volunteers. Fiona Hall, a British MEP, said: “I’ve had more people contact my office on extractive industries transparency than anything else in recent years.”
ONE’s petition calling on leaders to pass strong transparency laws for oil, gas and mining companies is over 86 000 signatures strong. Tearfund and ONE supporters have sent numerous letters to their MEPs and some of them came to Brussels to meet with them and ask for their support.
This is a crucial time in the European Parliament, because next week German MEP Klaus-Heiner Lehne and British MEP Arlene McCarthy will publish the draft Parliament reports on the EU transparency laws. It is important for the European Parliament to champion transparency, because in order for the EU laws to be adopted, they have to strike a deal with the Council of the European Union.
We need your support to make sure MEPs and EU member states don’t water down the laws. As Bishop Munga said during the event, “If information is published on the payments made to developing countries in return for oil, gas and mineral contracts, communities local to these projects, often exploited as a consequence, can be empowered to hold their governments to account”.
Click here to sign our petition!
ONE praises Obama, Cameron on joint alliance against global poverty
As the UK Prime Minister David Cameron visits Washington, Michael Elliott, ONE’s President and CEO responds to today’s joint article by the Prime Minister and US President Barack Obama in the Washington Post. In the article they make clear that they “embrace their responsibility as leaders in the development that enables people to live in dignity, health and prosperity.”
ONE welcomes the support of the Prime Minister and President for investment in food security, their work to improve maternal health and reduce the preventable deaths of children, and their ‘renewed commitment’ to the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria and reaching the ‘beginning of the end of AIDS’. We also applaud their recognition of the importance of the Open Government Partnership, which will help to make governments all over the world more transparent and accountable.
Now that the L’Aquila framework has run its course, there is a momentous opportunity to use the G8 and G20 summits to secure a new global compact on agriculture and food security. But American and British leadership is required to make this a reality.
International support for developing countries’ own agricultural investment plans could help to lift millions of people out of poverty, in an approach that stresses country ownership, private sector participation, and smart development assistance. The UK and US agree on the importance of these guiding principles. Now we need to rally broad international support around them.
This new framework for agriculture must also emphasize the pivotal role of nutrition. If the right interventions are made, there is an opportunity to prevent millions of children from becoming stunted, and hence from suffering irreversible developmental damage. That will ensure that a generation of future leaders, fathers and mothers can reach their full potential and not be held back by preventable impediments.
These are practical and strategic goals that are appropriate for a bold, historic partnership to promote food security across the developing world. Now is the time to catalyze action to reduce hunger and malnutrition, using the platforms provided by the G8 at Camp David, the G20 at Los Cabos, and continuing the good work into the UK’s crucial presidency of the G8 in 2013.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Keeping African citizens’ budgets short, simple and to the point
Last week, the International Budget Partnership (IBP) hosted a very informative session about citizens’ budgets, why they’re important, and how they can increase participation and transparency in budgetary processes in developing countries. A citizens’ budget is a short, easy-to-understand summary of government priorities and spending. It is usually the only budget document created expressly for a government’s citizenry. Ideally, a citizens’ budget illustrates how government spending impacts the daily lives of its citizens and increases transparency and access to budget information.
The key to citizens’ budgets is digestibility. Budget documents are highly technical and usually very long. In many developing countries, budget information is inaccessible, convoluted or entirely unavailable. However, the capacity of civil society to analyze and disseminate digestible budget information is growing. The Malawi Economic Justice Network has taken an active role in creating citizens’ budgets. The Nigerian organization BudgIT has taken to Twitter to provide Nigerians visual budgetary information through infographics. With an increasing understanding of the value of a citizens’ budget, more and more governments are interested in publishing their own. The International Budget Partnership has helped five governments produce citizens’ budgets, and provided technical assistance to others.
UNICEF State of the World’s Children report: Don’t neglect the urban poor
It might come as a surprise, but the images of compelling landscapes from our recent Amazing Africa photo series are as foreign to many Africans as they are to us. Consider this: Today, more than 3.5 billion people live in cities — and that number is only set to grow. By 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas, and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs predicts that Asia and Africa will experience the greatest urban boom. (Check out this interactive infographic to see for yourself.)
A UNICEF report released last week focuses on the more than 1 billion kids growing up in burgeoning cities around the world. On average, children in urban areas are more likely to be well-fed, educated and healthy than those in rural areas. But as the UNICEF report highlights, this so-called “urban advantage” is gravely misleading. Gaps between affluent families and disadvantaged ones are huge — which means that the averages fail to reveal just how difficult circumstances are for disadvantaged city kids. And since these stats obscure reality, too many children living in urban poverty aren’t receiving the resources and support they need.
Already, 30 percent of city residents worldwide live in slums; that percentage skyrockets to a devastating 60 percent in Africa. As cities continue to grow, slums will too, and by 2020 an estimated 1.4 billion people will live in disadvantaged informal settlements. Disparities in access to education and health care between rich and poor kids are often greater in cities than in rural areas. Even though urban dwellers tend to live closer to schools and hospitals than residents of rural areas do, they are often denied access because they can’t afford services or because of discrimination against their gender, ethnicity or disability.
But the news isn’t all bad. The report offers a few steps to get us started in the right direction — toward equality for all kids, especially those in poverty, in rural and urban areas alike.
Improve understanding of the scale and nature of urban poverty and social exclusion that affects children. Now that we know the “urban advantage” is a myth for millions of kids, researchers need to focus on gathering data that accurately represents the challenges they face.
Identify and remove the barriers to inclusion that prevent marginalized children and their families from taking part in public life and from benefiting from existing services.
Focus on the particular needs and priorities of children by following recommendations like those in the Child-Friendly Cities Initiative.
Promote partnership between the urban poor and government. People in difficult circumstances know what they need and should be consulted in the development of their communities. Children and young people, too, should have a voice in the conversation. Check out UNICEF’s Oneminutesjr. videos to see what kids have to say. Ginândria António Novela, a 13-year-old from Mozambique, aspires to put her plans into action when she becomes governor of her hometown, Chibuto.
Work together to achieve results for children. All actors — national and local government officials as well as community members and aid workers — should combine forces to work toward fairer cities for kids.
The goals aren’t easy, as UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake admits, but they’re worth working for. “Some might ask whether we can afford to do this,” Lake writes, “Especially at a time of austerity in national budgets and reduced aid allocations. But if we overcome the barriers that have kept these children from the services that they need and that are theirs by right, then millions more will grow up healthy, attend school and live more productive lives. Can we afford not to do this?”
Bono comments on Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign
ONE co-founder Bono commented on Invisible Children’s “Kony 2012” film and campaign in Ireland’s edition of the Sunday Times yesterday. The campaign, which aims to raise global support for Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony’s arrest, has caught the attention of the world over the past few days, and the filmmakers have urged public figures to speak out in response. Here’s is Bono’s full comment on the campaign:
“Having just been in Gulu with Edun and Jolly, this is particularly pertinent for me…Spreading like wildfire, and sparking a heated, fascinating, much needed debate, this is brilliant campaigning. Not only does the public now know about Kony and his most despicable atrocities, they also know what a huge range of experts think about it, even if they all don’t agree. I salute a strategy that generates this much interest if it¹s targeted towards lasting meaningful solutions owned and directed by the people of the region on their journey from the trauma of these atrocities towards stability and development. Is there an Oscar for this kind of direction? Jason Russell deserves it.”
You can read the full Sunday Times article here:
Bono backs Kony video campaign
U2 singer says YouTube film on Ugandan militia seen by 80m deserves Oscar for highlighting atrocities, writes
Harry Leech: 11 March 2012
Bono, the lead singer of U2, has given his support to the Kony 2012 video campaign which has become an internet phenomenon in recent days. The video calls foraction against Joseph Kony, head of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a violent rebel militia in Uganda accused of murder, child abduction and sexual enslavement.
Bono described the video, which has been seen by almost 80m people on YouTube, as “brilliant campaigning” and saluted its creator, Jason Russell.
“Is there an Oscar for this kind of direction? Jason Russell deserves it,” he told The Sunday Times this weekend. The campaign has drawn several celebrity endorsements, including backing from Angelina Jolie, Rihanna and Oprah Winfrey.
The rock star and human rights campaigner recently returned from Gulu in northern Uganda where he and his wife, Ali, spent time with Jolly Okot, a director of Invisible Children, the charity behind the YouTube hit. Okot features in the Kony 2012 video and is a survivor of LRA violence.
The couple’s Edun clothing brand purchases some of its cotton from a co-operative which is part-managed by Invisible Children.
“Having just been in Gulu with Edun and Jolly, this is particularly pertinent for me,” said Bono, adding that the video was “spreading like wildfire, and sparking a heated, fascinating, much needed debate”.
The video was uploaded to websites YouTube and Vimeo a little over a week ago by Invisible Children Inc, an aid organisation and advocacy group based in theUnited States.
While it garnered only four hits on its first day, by Saturday it had been viewedalmost 80m times and has been discussed extensively around the world in print and on television.
The 30-minute video highlights the alleged crimes of Kony, whose arrest the campaign has called for.
Kony has been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 12 counts ofcrimes against humanity and 21 counts of war crimes.
He has survived repeated attempts to capture him. The ICC warrant states the LRA “has established a pattern of brutalisation of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burnings of houses and looting of camp settlements” and that “abducted civilians, including children, have been forcibly recruited as fighters, porters and sex slaves and to take part in attacks”.
While reaction to the film has been broadly positive, the campaign has attracted criticism, including questions over the amount of money raised that is sent to Uganda, how much was spent on making the film, and whether or not capturingKony is achievable.
The movie has also been accused of attempting to over-simplify a brutal 25-yearconflict, with regional experts pointing out that Kony is no longer in Uganda and is thought to be hiding in the Central African Republic.
Some criticisms are more basic: one Ugandan journalist pointed out that while the country is described as being “in central Africa” in the video, it is actually in east Africa.
Responding to criticism of the campaign, Russell, who directed and starred in the video, said that Invisible Children is “committed to be 100% financially transparent and to communicate in plain language the mission of the organisation so that everyone can make an informed decision about whether they want to support our strategy”.
He asked the public to study the organisation’s website, which outlines its goals, describes its programmes in Uganda, and details where funds are spent.
Not all of the comment has been critical, however. Last week Maria Burnett of Human Rights Watch said: “What it leads to remains to be seen, but the goal to bring pressure on key leaders, to protect civilians and to apprehend LRA leadership is important.”
It’s a view that Bono agrees with. “Not only does the public now know about Kony and his most despicable atrocities, they also know what a huge range of experts think about it, even if they all don’t agree,” he said.
“I salute a strategy that generates this much interest if it’s targeted towards lasting, meaningful solutions owned and directed by the people of the region on their journey from the trauma of these atrocities towards stability and development.”
MDGs 2.0: Why not ask the poor what they really need?
This blog originally appeared on DevEx
With less than 1,400 days until the Millennium Development Goals deadline, global development experts, bureaucrats and talking heads have already begun clamoring for what’s next. It seems that halving extreme poverty and slashing child deaths by two-thirds is yesterday’s news. As if these highly ambitious goals are rapidly becoming passé.
Collectively, we still have almost four years to make them happen – or at least go down swinging. To pull punches now would be a catastrophic failure of ambition, commitment, and courage. It would mean more people stuck in extreme poverty, more children dying of preventable causes, and fewer kids getting the opportunity to read and write. The development community’s attention deficit disorder is extremely disheartening.
Also disappointing is how the MDGs 2.0 intelligentsia is going about their bureaucratic business.
Yet as academics, government officials, activists and international bureaucrats book their flights for the endless onslaught of meetings and seminars, there will be one important voice missing from the conference table. The world’s poorest citizens. Yes, everyone purports to be speaking on their behalf – yet, no one truly does so. How can they? Despite our best intentions, emotional and analytical biases, not to mention the cause célèbre, tend to distort the message. Discussions invariably degenerate into politically charged fights over what we think poor people want. Or worse yet, what we think they should want.
So instead of channeling the world’s poorest citizens through malfunctioning microphones, I am proposing a radical, yet extremely simple, approach. Let’s just ask them. Not through some kind of “inclusive” process where a handful of token representatives have a chance to speak their minds. No, that is hardly better than what’s currently on the table. We should ask the masses directly.
Just imagine how much the dozens of United Nations, World Bank and OECD conferences will cost taxpayers globally. Millions and millions of dollars, euros, and yen. Then imagine if we channeled a portion of that money for innovative public surveys in developing countries. We’d actually have a pretty good idea of what people really want – and what their biggest concerns are.
This is not rocket science, nor is it a money pit. It’s quite straightforward. Organizations like Afrobarometer already do this in sub-Saharan Africa. Their surveys ask households across the demographic spectrum to state their most pressing concerns. And, some of their responses might surprise you. For example, poor infrastructure (e.g. roads and power) is the biggest concern for roughly one in five households in sub-Saharan Africa. Just one in 20 say that health is their biggest concern, while education is even less important. Who would have known? While the Afrobarometer gives us a fascinating insight, we need to build upon these existing efforts with a more targeted survey specifically for the MDGs 2.0 debate – which would be standardized across the developing world.
Fight the ingrained urge to dissect and extrapolate what these households are really saying. Instead, we need to focus on the humility factor – we may not know the priorities of aid beneficiaries in the developing world as much as we thought. So, before we get too far ahead of ourselves with overly inflated good ideas and intentions, let’s all take a pensive pause.
And, commit to bringing the world’s poor to the conference table directly. And commit to thoughtfully listen to what they say.
If the talking heads still want to push their pet priorities afterwards, then at least they’ll be forced to show why they’re right and why millions of the world’s poorest citizens are wrong.
Read more news on Rio+20.
Interview: Equatoguinean human rights activist Tutu Alicante speaks out against corruption
Over the past few months, ONE has become very interested in the government affairs of Equatorial Guinea, a tiny Spanish-speaking country off the Western coast of Africa. The country, home to sizeable petroleum reserves, is one of the richest on the continent — but also has the most uneven distribution of wealth. Approximately 70 percent of the country lives below the poverty line, while those in power are living a life of incredible opulence.
The cause for this disparity is unquestionably corruption, specifically in the extractives (oil, mining, gas, etc.) industry. To learn more about this issue in Equatorial Guinea and beyond, we spoke to Tutu Alicante, an Equatoguinean human rights lawyer and the executive director of EG Justice, an NGO devoted to fighting corruption in Equatorial Guinea. You might recognize his name from our email at the beginning of our extractives transparency campaign, where he expressed his outrage at companies denying millions the chance to escape extreme poverty.
In our interview, he talks about how he got started in the anti-corruption business, EG President Obiang’s crazy antics, and how ONE members can get more involved in promoting transparency.
How did you get started?
I grew up in Equatorial Guinea and witnessed a lot of horrendous things. In 1993, there was an incident in Annobón, my hometown, where two young men were killed and several men were tortured severely. Many of the young men ran into the forest in fear, including my cousin. When the government couldn’t find him, they burned down our family’s house.
I had a conversation with my father when I asked him what we should do, and he said there is nothing we can do. As a young man, those were shocking words, that the government could just do whatever they want — with absolute impunity — and there’s nothing you can do. I came to the US a year after that, thinking I’d become a journalist. But during college, when oil was discovered in Equatorial Guinea, I realized that oil was going to be central to the future of my country. I wanted to know what would happen to the revenues of that natural resource, knowing it would create an economic, political and social fissure. So, I became a lawyer, thinking that the law would give me the tools to advocate for the rule of law, human rights and transparency.
Can you talk to us a little more about the idea of “secret deals” between oil companies and governments? I think for many Americans, this came a bit as a surprise.
When oil is found in a place like Equatorial Guinea, the government signs an agreement with multinational energy companies to explore, produce and distribute that oil. As part of the contract, the energy companies are obligated to make several payments to the government of the host country; including bonus payments, royalties, national income taxes and various other types of taxes.
In countries with an established tradition of rule of law, and checks and balances, these payments are accounted for and done in a transparent manner. In the case of Equatorial Guinea, however, where the president and his family are above the law and make no distinctions between the state and their personal accounts, information about payments is kept secret. So people — including parliamentarians — today don’t know how much oil is being produced, or how much is being collected in revenues.
ONE has been following the antics of President Obiang for some time now. Doesn’t he ever drive you absolutely crazy? Why don’t EG citizens do anything about it?
He doesn’t drive me crazy. I do not let things within my control drive me crazy. Obiang’s government has come to represent secrecy and human rights violations, but those are issues that we in Equatorial Guinea and the global community, know how to solve. EG, as bad as it is, is not the only case is systematic corruption and impunity. Similar regimes in Libya and Egypt have been toppled, and others, like in Burma, appear to be moving in the right direction, and that’s why he doesn’t drive me crazy.
As far as corruption goes, have you seen EG change for the better or worse? Why?
So far, Equatorial Guinea has gotten worse. The reason being when you have a small country, with limited resources, in which most people are poor and corruption is systematic, the amount of damage of that corruption has is comparably small. But, when you have a country with a per capita GDP comparable to that of the UK or Germany, and yet one family mismanages all that wealth, the disparity or inequality soon becomes one of criminal proportion. Corruption in this later context has a cumulative that cannot and should not be ignored.
We’re talking about government officials who are taking millions of dollars through extortion and bribes and assert that the law authorizes it. We are also talking about government officials whose position depends on their unquestionable loyalty to the presidential family. Until we, the people of Equatorial Guinea realize that corruption is hurting us all, the presidential family and their cronies will continue to engage in it.
How can international activists like our ONE members help improve transparency in EG and beyond aside from signing our petition?
We need the global community to pitch in. We can’t solve this problem alone. By far the most important thing you can do is to be vocal in your communities. Government authorities in the US are responsive to you as their constituents and if you make global transparency in the extractive industry a priority agenda for them, then you will be helping to address issues of poverty and inequality in faraway places like Equatorial Guinea.
So, we have more than 130,000 signatures on our extractives transparency petition. How does that make you feel?
Elated, extremely happy. We need all the support we can get to make extractive transparency a cornerstone of international relations, foreign policy and trade globally. I really thank the ONE for picking this issue up, and bringing it to the attention of your supporters around the world.
What is the most interesting thing that people need to know about corruption as a phenomenon?
Corruption is more than about money and lavish lifestyles. It is about human beings. I often tell the story of an sister who died when she was 21, in the central hospital of Malabo—the capital of Equatorial Guinea—without a doctor present, the needed medicine that could have saved her, or electricity. Similarly, a cousin, three years younger than me, died in the same way. Almost every family in my country can tell that story about a relative. And for me, that is a problem with corruption. When money that is supposed to be used to guarantee peoples basic dignity and life is diverted to purchase mansions, private jets and luxury cars, human beings die. Corruption has a tremendous price.
Stay in touch with Tutu Alicante on Twitter at @EGJustice. And take action by asking european leaders to stand up to corporate lobbying against proposed EU laws requiring oil, gas and mining companies to publish payments to foreign governments.
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About the Blog
The International ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with guest contributions from ONE volunteers, members and allies.
The content of each post and each comment represents the views of that author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ONE. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any post expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
TAGS: Agriculture, European Union, Food, ONE, Partners