Oxfam America Blog

Today Danish artists Soren Nielsen, Morten Moller and Mikael Plougstrup Nielsen have been sculpting two huge statues of two Maasai warriors — a  man and a woman holding a baby — out of ice just outside the Bella Center (the venue of the climate talks). The statues, carved on behalf of Oxfam, will melt away over the next two days, just in time for the end of the first week of international climate treaty negotiations.

The process is meant to symbolize the precarious situation of the Maasai tribes of Kenya, which are being hit hard by changes to the climate. One of the worst droughts in living memory has devastated the Maasai’s herds of cattle, and their livelihoods.

Each ice block is about 3 feet (or 1 meter exactly) tall and wide, and come from a river in Sweden. After being stacked three blocks high, the sculptors set to work with chainsaws and enormous chisel-like tools, expecting the entire process to take about 12 hours.

The process might go on a bit longer, however, because the pounding and roaring of the saws and tools was leaking through to meetings underway inside the conference center, forcing the staff to halt the artistic proceedings.

Eventually a compromise was worked out, and the carvers have been able to set to work periodically (presumably when the nearest rooms were not being used).

An activist in Ghana shows a copy of the 2006 Minerals and Mining Act, which allows citizens the right to fair, adequate, and prompt compensation if their land is seized for the purposes of mining. Photo by Chris Hufstader/Oxfam America

Today is International Human Rights Day, when we consider for a moment the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was adopted by the UN in 1948, and established basic rights as universal, a key concept for the world as it moved into a crucial period of post-war rebuilding, Cold War, and decolonization. It is a relatively brief document (as human rights instruments go), just 30 Articles. In the preamble it calls on the member nations of the UN to take “progressive measures…to secure their universal and effective recognition and acceptance.”

I looked around on our web site for examples of people who are claiming and defending their rights, to serve as examples of why basic human rights are still essential to fighting poverty 61 years later. Here are just three:

Read the rest of this entry »

Indigenous leaders at the Copenhagen talks remain guardedly optimistic that the human rights of their peoples will be recognized in an international climate agreement.

They’re just not particularly upbeat that it will happen here.

“Human rights should be an integral part of any climate response: the right to life, adequate housing, food, an adequate standard of health,” said John Henriksen, a Saami of Norway and human rights legal expert.

Along with these rights, Henriksen said, indigenous peoples have internationally recognized rights to live according to their traditional cultures and practices, and need to have these rights acknowledged as well in any international climate agreement.

Henriksen spoke to a packed room on Wednesday, as part of a panel representing indigenous peoples of Kenya, Peru, the South Pacific, the Arctic and other regions.

John Henriksen, a Saami of Norway and human rights legal expert. Photo by Emily Gertz.

The speakers charged that their communities are not consistently included in the deliberations toward a new international climate treaty, even though they are already being affected by the impacts of climate change.

Many of these communities still rely heavily on the world’s remaining forests for their subsistence and livelihoods.

Some of these same forests capture and store massive amounts of carbon that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere; how to place a value on that ecological service is a key pont of contention at the climate talks.

Another divisive issue at the talks is how much financial support the industrialized nations (which are historically responsible for most of the excess greenhouse gases in the atmospere) will provide for developing nations to adapt to changing climactic conditions.

It’s not yet clear how or if indigenous peoples will be included in programs and projects funded by these monies.

Read the rest of this entry »

Christina Ora photo by Emily Gertz / Oxfam America

Christina Ora may have been among the youngest present at the fifth Council of Youth (COY) meeting in Copenhagen this past weekend. But the 17-year-old’s poise when she speaks about climate change would leave many an older person envious.

“I’ve noticed that for big industrial countries, climate change is out there, but the leaders are concentrating on issues within the country,” says the Solomon Islands native, who has come to the Copenhagen climate talks as a volunteer with an Australian-Pacific Island Nation youth coalition called Project Survival Pacific. “What I want the U.S. people to do is to tell the government and the politicians, ‘Don’t put climate change aside. Put it as your first priority.’”

In the Solomon Islands, communities are already being forced to relocate because of changes in the climate. Residents of the low-lying Reef Islands are being forced to move inland to higher ground, she says, because their croplands are being inundated by seawater, their homes battered by fiercer storms and tides, and their supply of fresh water vanishing.

Moving is a complicated matter, Christina says, because it puts communities into conflict for scarce and valued resources. “Back home, land is your identity,” she explains. “You are tied to that land, and your ancestors have been on that land for a long time.”

As she tells it, the Solomon Islands government is mediating a relocation plan between the Reef Island communities and an inland tribe called the Malaita. The negotiations have been difficult, says Christina, to the point that Reef Island elders have told the government to arrange for only their young people — “those people that have a future” — to relocate. She says that the elders are willing to stay behind and go down with the islands that have been their home for generations.

Here in Copenhagen, Christina is one of hundreds of youth activists hoping that the United States will come through with an aggressive plan to cut its greenhouse gas pollution. She also wants the US and other wealthy developed nations to commit to funding the adaptations that developing nations like hers are — and will — be forced to make to the changing climate.

Historically, the industrialized nations are responsible for putting most of the human-propelled heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

“The Solomon Islands is a small, developing state,” says Christina. “The Solomon Islands is one of the least emitters. The US is one of the top three…so when you come to the table” in Copenhagen, she says of the US, “bring something good.

“Our survival is not negotiable.”

Jonathan Coley stands outside the office of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

Jonathan Coley is a CHANGE leader for Oxfam America and a student at Samford University. Here’s his account of a recent visit to Immokalee, Florida, where many of the nation’s tomatoes are grown—and often picked under grueling conditions.

When you’re enjoying your sandwich or burrito at lunch, do you think about the hand that picked your tomatoes?

Despite working in one of the most dangerous industries in the United States, the average farm worker earns just $7,500 a year with few benefits and no overtime pay. Children as young as 12 work in the fields.

I knew many of these facts before I traveled to Immokalee, Florida, recently for the annual gathering of the Student/Farmworker Alliance. However, I was not prepared for the realities I confronted when I walked the streets of this little-known Florida town. Read the rest of this entry »

Corn will be in short supply this winter in many indigenous communities in Baja Verapaz. Photo by James Rodriguez/Oxfam America

As promised, here is an update on Oxfam’s plan to help the people I met in Guatemala described in my last post: You can read about our work with Gloria Gonzalez’s organization ASECSA here.

It will take more than whatever rain fell from the recent passage of a tropical storm to turn around the super-dry conditions in Guatemala. Winter is essentially here, but hopefully next year, in the absence of the El Niño phenomenon, there will be better rains. If we can help these families survive the winter, they will need seeds and fertilizer so they can plant in the spring. With so many families facing food shortages this winter, they will require all their strength and resources to survive.

The resilience of Guatemalans is impressive. After all the wars, discrimination, and tragedy, the indigenous people keep fighting to survive, and they will not succumb to malnutrition without a struggle. Read the rest of this entry »

Farmer Maria Lopez says she has lost most of her corn and beans this year due to lack of rain. Photo by Chris Hufstader/oxfam America

It is hard for visitors to fathom the depths of the tragedy Guatemala’s indigenous people continue to suffer, but a brief look at the museum in Rabinal will certainly get the process started. It commemorates those who died in some of the worst massacres of indigenous people during this country’s 36-year civil conflict.

Gloria Gonzalez, a young program officer at a non-governmental group working in the area, showed me the museum. It consists of two rooms filled with photos of the dead, one of whom was her grandfather, Camilo Mayor. The caption under his photo says “assassinated during the conflict in our community.”

The community of Rio Negro was particularly affected: when they objected to the terms of a forced relocation to make way for the Chixoy River hydroelectric dam, the military claimed they were allied with guerrilla forces and killed nearly every resident between February and March 1982, part of its scorched earth counter-insurgency policy. More than 250 were murdered, including 177 unarmed elderly, women, and children on one day. The Guatemala Truth Commission declared the incident a state-sponsored act of genocide.

Today, the Maya-Achi indigenous people who were pushed up the mountain slopes to make room for the Chixoy Dam are suffering a slow-motion type of disaster, no less deadly. The centuries of racism and discrimination that led to their precarious living conditions are now exacerbated by a long drought and high temperatures that have left most with little corn, beans, and other crops on which they depend. Read the rest of this entry »