Advocacy: Calling for a better world

Around 90 percent of the population live below the poverty line in southern Sudan. Credits: Karen Kasmauski/CRS

Around 90 percent of the population live below the poverty line in southern Sudan. Credits: Karen Kasmauski/CRS

When Caritas speaks, its voice is heard. It is heard by governments, policy and lawmakers, drug companies, the United Nations, other humanitarian organisations. It is a powerful voice, created fromhundreds of thousands of voices around the world. 

Caritas speaks on behalf of the poor and the marginalised, calling for a moral way of living for us all, refusing to accept that it is business as usual with continued economic upheaval and record food prices.

In 2010, Caritas urged action to stop the chance of a lifetime from slipping through our fingers. This chance is enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals, which seek to cut poverty by half by 2015. But without more help to developing countries, we are in danger of not keeping our promises to the poor. Caritas also campaigned internationally on climate change at the Cancun summit, and Caritas Canada (Development and Peace) pressed world leaders at the G8 to think of poor farmers in the global south as well as their own citizens when developing policies on growing bio-fuels.

Climate change and deep poverty often come together to force people, increasingly women, to migrate. As Caritas members from Sri Lanka to Jordan to Mali provided services like safe resting points along the route, Caritas Internationalis brought staff together inWest Africa to discuss better ways to guarantee migrant workers’ rights and lobbied on the global stage for proper legal protection.

As more than 100 Caritas members continued their grassroots work with people affected by HIV and AIDS, Caritas advocates met directly with major pharmaceutical companies to ask them to play their part in making testing and treatment universally accessible. In recognition of its work, Caritas Internationalis was granted full status NGO relations by theWorld Health Organisation.

Voices against poverty
Backing up their work on the ground with advocacy, Caritas Internationalis launched its web-based campaign “Voices Against Poverty” in Australia in September.
Poverty in Europe
Caritas believes it is scandalous that eighty million people live below the poverty line in Europe, a quarter of them children.
HIV and AIDS
At little over half way to Mumbai on the congested National Highway 8 from Delhi lies Aslali, a major transport hub on the edge of the smoggy city of Ahmedabad.
Haart for Children campaign on HIV and AIDS
Children are the focus of one of Caritas Internationalis’ major campaigns: HAART for Children. HAART stands for Highly Active Anti- Retroviral Therapy.
The female face of migration
The Sister* from Caritas Sri Lanka searches for the women migrant workers who’ve returned home abused and traumatised, their dream of saving a nest egg for their families shattered.
Climate justice
In western Nepal’s Syangja district there’s been no snowfall for three years and water sources which used to flow all year round have run dry.
Migration conference in Senegal
In Tinzawaten there’s next to nothing to eat or drink, the houses are roofless shells, it’s freezing at night, scorching in the day, murder and rape go unpunished…
Ending Hunger
Deadly hunger once again stalks Niger. It affects people like Abdoulai and his family in the dry, sandblasted village of Toudoun Jaka.

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