CLIMATE BILL NEEDS CHANGE Exasperated campaigners deride absent targets, weak mechanisms and ambiguous definitions.

> CLIMATE PAGE 3

BURMA’S ROCKY ROAD TO DEMOCRACY The recent news from Burma about the beating and arrest of student pro-testers is cause for concern.

> GLOBAL PAGE 4

ARAMARK AND DIRECT PROVISIONThe company has been fiercely criticised by people in the best position to know how it operates on the ground.

> CAMPUS PAGE 3

May 2015 | Published By Comhlámh | ISSUE 96 www.comhlamh.org

From Edenmore To El Alto. THAIS MANTOVANI LASC Researcher

The state of São Paulo, Brazil, is currently expe-riencing 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 con-secutive year of soaring tempera-tures 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

PATRICK BRESNIHANMaynooth University

In February, Comhlámh h o s t e d a F i r s t Wednesday debate

which put the ongoing resist-ance to water charges and Irish Water into a global context of popular struggles for water justice. The even-ing 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

who will benefit from the money we pay for them.

A second struggle that has been at the heart of the Bolivian experience but less so here relates to democracy and power: who decides how our water services are managed and how?

As the documentary ‘Water Rising’ showed, communities without access to water in El Alto have organized themselves to dig wells, lay pipes, maintain water systems and decide how they should be managed and for whom.

Even today, these community-managed water systems refuse to be incorporated within the public water system because they recognize that their power lies in coming together in regular assemblies to make collective decisions about issues that affect

them. This doesn’t mean that these communities ignore the state – which performs important and necessary functions – but that they

refuse to abdicate their power to a single, centralized

entity and in the process reduce democratic participation to an occasional vote.

While there is nothing like this scale of self-government in Ireland, the basic

point remains: decisions over how our water resources are used and managed are not just technical matters to be left up to experts or politicians.

The water justice movement in Ireland should take this important lesson from Bolivia and translate it into a broader effort to reclaim the public good and democratise the political system.

How Water Is Transforming How Politics Happens In Our Communities.

A mural commemorating the 10th Anniversary of Cochabamba Water Wars and a protestor in Rialto. | Photo Credits: Kris Krug and Jamie Goldrick

FOCUSACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE.

“Decisions over how our water resources

are used and managed are not just technical matters to be left up to experts

or politicians.”

What’s Wrong With TTIP?No one is arguing against better trade but this deal doesn’t stop there. BARRY FINNEGANTTIP Information Network.

No 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

their loss in profit? The answer is through a mechanism called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). The purpose of ISDS is to allow corporations to sue states through a special private ‘court’ if they feel they have lost, or might lose money as a result of government policy. It means corporations become independent global actors, able to sue sovereign states in special courts, and not subject to the same democratic court system that citizens are. This allows them to bypass the democratic judicial systems of Ireland, the EU and the USA and is clearly an assault on the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, and equality before the law.

In creating favourable economic forecasts for TTIP integration, particularly for jobs and growth, the Government and the Commission rely on figures generated by the Computable General Equilibrium Calculation System. This system makes a number of problematic assumptions about the labour market. It assumes that free and efficient labour mobility exists across all sectors, that 100% employment is a pre-condition and operates on regulation free conditions for environmental and human health standards. Despite relying on this questionable model, these reports 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,

simply as costs; removing costs is always calculated

as an economic gain. Even though they predict large worker displacement, they do not factor in a financial cost for the

impact of the human and social disruption and

unemployment caused.The plan for TTIP is to make

all EU and US rules and regulations the same (harmonisation), or to promise to respect each other’s rules and regulations (regulatory recognition) not just of food and agriculture and cosmetics (we ban 1,100 chemicals in cosmetics, they only ban 12) and the environment, but workers’ rights too. With ISDS, US companies will be able to do like Veolia did in Egypt recently, and sue the government for imagined unearned future profit “lost” as a result of a rise in the minimum wage. The Egyptian government backed down, and did not raise the minimum wage. One would be naïve to believe, that TTIP is going to do anything except drive down peoples’ pay and conditions of work, block chances of stopping climate change, enforce the privatisation of public services, force US-style, chemical-fuelled food in to our shops, and eradicate the democratic principles of the independence of the judiciary and equality before the law.

THE EU/US TRADE DEAL

Campaigners against TTIP make their point loud and clear at a demonstration at the Central Bank | Photo credit: Monica Manzzi

2 NEWSFOCUS ACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE www.comhlamh.org

FURTHER INFO

“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. ”

“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.

OPINIONS

FOCUSACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE

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

EST.1978

Comhlamh is a signatory to the Dochas Code On Images and Messages. Feedback welcome to info@comhlamh.org

What’s Wrong With TTIP?No one is arguing against better trade but this deal doesn’t stop there.

RORY FOGARTYComhlámh Member

The 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.

3CLIMATE & CAMPUS www.comhlamh.org

This Climate BillNeeds Change.

A protest in Athlone against the Direct Provision system | Photo credit: Caroline Reid

Exasperated campaigners deride absent targets, weak mechanisms and ambiguous definitions.

JIMMY BILLINGS AND AIDAN ROWEUCD Against Direct Provision Campaign

Introduced 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 student-staff 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.

“The bill can be deemed to be aggressively

conservative in its reach. Basically only

re-affirming aims already committed to at an EU level”

People’s Climate Ireland and Young Friends of the Earth Protest | Photo credit: 350.org

4 WORLDFOCUS ACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE

AINE RICKARDComhlámh Member

From positive beginnings, it has become clear that the much hoped-for reform process

has not only stalled, but moved backwards. On 13th November 2010, the news that Aung San Suu Kyi had been released from house arrest in Burma (also known as Myanmar) seemed to mark a true turning point in Burma’s political history.

It added to the release of hundreds of political prisoners, and the holding of the country’s f irst democratic elections in over 20 years, as genuine steps towards posit ive reform in the countr y.

The new government, whilst still largely run by the military, seemed focused on change. Civil society organisations were given more freedom to express their opinions, and some forms of independent media were a l lowed to report from the country.

A s a re su lt , i n 2 012 , the EU and US governments dropped many economic sanctions in place against the previous Burmese junta.

Development aid flooded into the country, with more than €200 million received from Europe. The Japanese have made even stronger commitments, forgiving a colossal $5.32 billion of debt owed to it by the Burmese military, whilst investing hundreds of millions into development projects.

In the last 24 months, there have been four violent conf licts in Burma involving the Burmese authorities. These have killed thousands of people and caused over 300,000 to flee their homes across Kachin,

Shan, Arakane and Kokang regions. There have also been many new laws passed by government which restrict individual freedoms such as the right to bear children and marry freely. There are increased arrests of people peacefully protesting or handing out information f liers about citizen rights.

The peacefu l student march from Mandalay to Yangon this February is a clear example of the refusal of Burmese authorities to allow democratic freedom.

Students marched peacefully to protest a proposed education reform bill which would stif le academic freedom. 140km outside of Yangon in the town of Letpetdan, Burmese police set up road blockages to halt the students’ progress. When students refused to

stop their march, the police and other pro-military forces proceeded to

violently beat protestors along with monks and journalists supporting the students.

Over a hundred people were wrongly arrested, with several students being

severely injured. Some of those arrested still have not

been released, and satellite protests in Yangon and elsewhere

which were started to express solidarity with the students have been similarly repressed.

S u c h t r e a t m e n t c l e a r l y s h o w s that basic democrat ic r ights are not being protected in Burma at present.

EU funding which has been pumped into police training in Myanmar since 2013 has clearly not been effective. Worse still, the UK government has been a key trainer of Burmese police forces, providing riot gear and seconding a PSNI officer to Burma. That same riot gear may well have been used by police in March to beat and refuse Burmese students their right to democratic and peaceful protest.

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.

The Rocky Road To DemocracyIn Burma.The recent news from Burma about the beating and arrest of student protesters reflects the current direction of democratic reform in the country.

“Such treatment clearly shows that basic democratic

rights are not being protected in Burma

at present. ”

Aung San Suu Kyi Trial Daily Protest at Burma Embassy in 2009. | Photo Credit: TotalOutNow

Activists mark the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2007. | Photo Credit: lewishamdreamer

GET ACTIVE.

5GENDER www.comhlamh.org

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or phone 01-6354800 for additional information.

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6 FOCUS ACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE

Language Matters A Red Cross Recruitment Specialist Has Some Tips.LIZ HARRISInternational Committee of the Red Cross

Liz Harris works for the International Committee of the Red Cross as a recruitment

consultant, specialising in languages. here she talks about why the organi-sation wants to attract more Irish staff.

A few weeks ago, I was in Ireland to check it out as a recruiting ground for the ICRC. Although I’ve been in my post in the UK for four years I hadn’t visited before as my focus had been heavily on interpreters of Asian and African languages, which are not taught in Ireland. Now that I’m focusing more on finding other profiles, such as ICRC general delegates and medics, Ireland has become a very attrac-tive destination.

The number of universities offering relevant degrees is quite astounding, all of them well served by excellent careers ser-vices who make life very easy for recruiters like me.

The Irish are known for their international development and solidarity work, travelling overseas to work in all four corners of the world – so I don’t have to do much persuading. But there’s another reason why Ireland is so appealing: the Irish ‘neutral’ passport is pure gold.

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 when working in a given conflict, we don’t send staff from states which are involved in any way on either side.

During the Iraq war in 2003, for example, we would not send anyone from a country which was part of the coalition forces. Given the num-ber of countries that were in it, this presented serious headaches in finding suitable nation-alities with the right experience and languages that we could send. Languages are crucial if you want a job as a general delegate for the ICRC and highly desirable for most of the other profes-sions. With the ICRC working in over 80 coun-tries, we need staff who can work in English and French at the very least. All the better if you

have Arabic or Russian!What I find at ‘careers with lan-

guages’ type events, however, is that students of degree subjects relevant to the work of the ICRC – such as development, conflict studies or international relations – don’t tend to come, even if they do have another language. This

is probably due to the misconception that the only jobs on offer will be teaching

and translation.

VOLUNTEER RECRUITMENT POST-MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

JAMES O’BRIENVSO Ireland

As we approach the end date for the Millennium Development Goals

(MDGs), governments have begun to gather in New York for monthly negotiations on the Post-2015 agenda, including new ‘Sustainable Development Goals’, which will replace the MDGs from the start of 2016. The negotiations will run until July, and the new agenda will be announced at a Summit in September.

Last month I was at the intergovernmental negotiations on the Political Declaration part of the agenda, which will be a new version of the Millennium Declaration. I was there as part of a civil society steering committee which was tasked with channelling the voices of civil society into the negotiations. From a Comhlámh perspective, it is interesting to see how the role of volunteers and volunteering is evolving in the new agenda. We know that the Post-2015 agenda will be made up of four components – a Political Declaration, Sustainable Development Goals, Targets and Indicators, Means of Implementation and a New Global Partnership and Follow-up and review. The place of volunteerism in the Declaration is uncertain. By the end of the February negoti-ations it was clear that there is an appetite amongst member states for a declaration that is concise, simple and inspiring. ‘Concise’ will mean no more than three pages and ‘simple’ will mean that a 13-year old could understand the declaration. As volunteer groups, we should be calling on member states to think about what they mean by inspiring, and what voluntary action we want to inspire people to take in their own lives and communities. Volunteers were not mentioned in the MDGs, but they have been a major part of the implementation of the goals.

From international volunteers to community health workers and home-based carers, volun-teers have been at the heart of extending the reach of essential services beyond what formal government systems can achieve. By working alongside communities and gaining an insight into the needs of people on the ground (and what they’re doing themselves to meet these needs), volunteers have been able to extend services to the poorest and most marginalised people in a way that is locally appropriate.

We should be pushing governments to include volunteerism in the Means of Implementation component – looking beyond financial and technical interven-tions to human resources to people-centred approaches. The Secretary General’s Synthesis Report, published in December, was strong on this point ‘As we seek to build capaci-ties and to help the new agenda to take root, volunteerism can be another powerful and cross-cutting means of implementation. Volunteerism can help to expand and mobi-lize constituencies, and to engage people in national planning and implementation for sustainable development goals. And volun-

teer groups can help to localize the new agenda by providing new spaces

of interaction between gov-ernments and people for

concrete and scalable actions’.

We should be speak-ing directly to the gov-ernments of the countries

where we work about the role that volunteers can play in development, and the

need for a Post-2015 agenda that recognises and supports the role of volunteers. Last October, volunteer groups at the IVCO conference agreed on a set of priorities for the Post-2015 agenda, the Lima Declaration. A good first step is to sign the declaration, and to contact the Post-2015 Volunteering Working Group to find out how you can join other volunteer-involving organisations in pushing for the recognition of volunteering.

6 FOCUS ACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE

James and Disability activist Esther Mkamori pictured together. | Photo Credit: Maria Isabel Rivera

“As volunteer groups, we should be

calling on member states to think about

what they mean by inspiring”

“Languages are crucial if you want a job as a general delegate for the

ICRC.”

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

SIVE BRESNIHANComhlámh Member

Formed 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?

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 first wife there - she was a ‘black panther’ during the civil rights movement and played a big part in his political radicalisation. After that he went back to Nigeria and began to mix funk (James Brown was big at the time) with jazz and the high life. He met an amazing drummer then called Tony Allen who brought in some type of percussion rhythm that nobody had done before. That’s how afrobeat was born.

You know afrobeat when you hear it - you can’t mix it up with anything else. You need a big band to make it – a lot of brass, percus-sion, but it’s not just about that. Fela was a mix of music and political attitude and his lyrics were political. There was a lot of political corrup-tion going on in Nigeria at that time and he sang about that as well as other things. The band played out of his club ‘Afrika Shrine’ and you could say he tried to put some 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

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.

Tell us more about the gig you played for

anti-racism day on March 21st

Music is one of those things where there are no colours and where everyone can get together and have a good time. You can get a message

across pretty smoothly with music. Even if people don’t have the mindset to want it, they can get into the music and the music can convince them. So March 21st was a special gig for us. It was in support of the Anti-Racism Network and organised with

Discotekken. Yankari Afrobeat Collective played, plus Ájo Arkestra, Mixtapes from the

Underground and others. The vibe was good, the music was good. We like to be part of such

things you know. It’s important to us that we stand for stuff that actually matters. Music is the weapon right?

7CULTURE www.comhlamh.org

The Rhythm Of Afrobeat.Fela Kuti’s funky mix of musical styles is alive and thriving in Dublin town.

A look at the demise of civil society, the enviorment and human rights in an oil rich region of Colombia.

Some members of Dublin Afrobeat Ensemble pictured in 2014. | Photo credit: André Sanches

“You can get a message across pretty smoothly

with music. Even if people don’t have

the mindset to want it, they can get into the music and the

music can convince them. ”

GET LISTENING

8SPORT

Football’s Dark Shadow.TOMMY BERGIN Community and Youth Work, NUIM.

The 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 win-ter months of November and December (due to the extreme summer heat of 50+ degrees) for the first time has been grabbing all the headlines, accusa-tions 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 coun-tries 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 work-ing on a £137bn construction spree in the tiny Gulf state. In November the Guardian newspa-per 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 have been vocal critics of the legal, physi-cal, working, and housing conditions migrants have to endure in Qatar. The Guardian article described conditions as “forced labour and conditions amount-ing to slavery” while the International Trade Union Confederation says that if conditions don’t improve, at least 4,000 migrants will die before kick-off.

At the crux of this issue is the sponsorship law, known as “kafala”, which limits the rights of movement of foreign workers in Qatar and has allegedly led to wide-spread exploitation.

The system requires all unskilled labourers to have an in-country sponsor, usually their employer, who is responsible for their visa and legal status. This practice has been criticised by human rights organizations for creating easy opportunities for the exploitation of workers, as many employers take away passports and abuse their workers with little chance of legal 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

persistent criticism of the decision to allow Qatar to host the tournament. Qatar authorities

have responded by promising to implement recommendations made last May

2014 after a report by interna-tional law firm DLA Piper. The

report recommended that Qatar reform its labour laws as well as do more to record and investigate the causes of death among the migrant

population but it has made lit-tle outward progress.

While reform has been promised as of yet nothing of note has

changed with Qatar authorities claiming it will take time to change legislation and they are going to take their time to get it right! With hundreds of billions of dollars at stake the fear is that Qatar and FIFA are only paying lip service to the issue of human rights, making the right noises but doing very little to enact change.

With so many lives at stake, legandary man-ager Bill Shankleys famous quote was never more apt as it is right now.

Shankley quipped “football is a matter of life and death.” In Qatar it’s no joke.

FIND OUT MORE

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

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.

LOCAL & GLOBALCampaigners have been highlighting the lack of migrant rights in the build up to the World Cup. | Photo Credits: Omar Chatriwala

“With so many lives at stake Bill Shankleys famous quote was never more apt as it is

right now.”