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…
Read more
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…
Read moreAdvocacy 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…
Read moreOn 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…
Read moreThroughout 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 moreIn 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 moreSister 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 moreHunger 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
It all started when someone stood up saying, “In Liberia there is private land, public land, community’s land and Government’s land”. Surprised I investigated and I found an amazing answer. I was brought back to when “The statutory tenure system was introduced in the early 1800s by the American Colonization Society (ACS), which purchased land…
Read moreThe tenure of agricultural land is at the core of many disputes and advocacy actions nowadays. The common lands tenure is foreseen as the only way to counteract land grabbing. Such a common tenure, however, was put aside when Roman law Act introduced the concept of dominium and exploded in our modern times with the…
Read more
When asked how a farmer’s daughter who became a Catholic nun ended up as one of Brazil’s most influential refugee advocates, Sister Rosita Milesi, 79,…
Read more
Vusi was an honest man and a hard worker. He had cleared a large piece of moorland and turned it into a beautiful fertile field. He…
Read more
On 24 November, the Solemnity of Christ the King, on the occasion of World Youth Day in the Particular Churches, in St. Peter's Basilica the traditional…
Read more
