THE
CHALLENGE CONTINUES… NGOs CELEBRATE 60
YEARS WITH THE UNITED NATIONS
60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION
Our Congregation participates in the Augustinian NGO who organised a
‘training session’ to which OSA members came from Mexico, Peru and
Colombia as well as three lay volunteers – two from Argentina and one from
the USA. Franca Sessa and Lyette DesAlliers, who is a member of the JPIC
Commission in Canada, joined the group.
The programme
included:
• Participation in the 60th Conference of the UN
Department of Public Information (DPI) for the NGOs at the UN, from 5 – 7
September.
• Contacts with different UN Departments: visit and
exchanges at the UN Library and Information Centre, with NGO
representatives, at the International Labour Organization, Caritas
Internationalis and with Mgr Auza of the Mission of the Holy See to the
UN.
• Talks by an OSA member helping us to go more deeply into
Church social teaching, in the light of Augustinian
spirituality.
This
session was an opportunity to open up to new perspectives and to a better
understanding of being part of an NGO at the
United Nations. The DPI/NGO section acts as
liaison between the United Nations and the NGOs and other civil
organizations since it was set up in 1947. It promotes a wide range of
information and joint actions of advocacy issues among the representatives
of the UN Member States. This includes weekly meetings for NGOs, workshops
to share grassroots experiences and an annual NGO Conference. This year
the theme of the Conference was:
‘Climate Change: how it
impacts us all’.
There were 1,726 participants
representing over 500 NGOs from 62 countries, including many Catholic
institutions and religious congregations. It is a two-way process: the UN
uses the field knowledge that NGOs bring from their grassroots experience
in health services and schools, with farmers, refugees, migrants, HIV/AIDS
sufferers and women’s groups In exchange, NGOs disseminate new knowledge
and initiatives with the peoples they serve. In this way they can
strengthen their support for advocacy actions in their own countries.
Seven round tables analysed various approaches to countering the effects
of climate change. NGO workshops focused on the link between poverty and
environmental degradation in the context of desertification,
deforestation, threats to biodiversity and extreme weather events,
including droughts, floods and rising sea levels. The effects include
increasing scarcity of water and food supplies, changes in patterns of
disease and faster extinction rates for plants and animals. Legislation
and strategies to reduce the impact of human activities on the environment
and to increase the capacity to forecast natural phenomena are already
under way in some countries but are out of reach for peoples of the
southern regions of the planet. These are the ones who have contributed
least to climate change and yet are in greatest danger from it.
The real challenge is to protect the environment and sustain
development. Experts say that effective action is possible: averting
climate change need not cost the earth! It could be as little as 0.1% of
the average annual growth over the next 30 years, but only if we
act now.
Indigenous peoples were also
present at the Conference. They asked that their diverse cultures, ways of
life and environmental knowledge be respected. We could learn from them
how to change our behaviour and reduce climate change s caused by human
activities.
The UN is one of the arenas
where big questions of humanity are addressed. International agreements,
often requiring years of preparation, are drawn up with the help of
experts,. When signed, the Member States agree to take on the
responsibility to fulfil the basic promise of a better world for
tomorrow’s generations. This demands a big effort whose success depends on
action by Member States to implement in their country what they agreed to,
and is often frustrated due to the lack of political will. The NGOs act
both in the UN and at the grassroots level. They have the role of
supporting the empowerment of the people ‘without a voice’, locally and
globally – whether by being in solidarity with them so that they be
heard in the UN and influence decisions there or by bringing pressure to
bear on Governments to implement the agreements they signed.
That is the reason why
we commit ourselves as a Congregation with the Augustinian NGO. Our new
challenge is to persevere in our search and in the sharing of our
grassroots mission with others, bringing a global aware¬ness to it.
One with the poorest, we have the power to be a significant
voice. Scripture calls us to: ‘Act justly, love tenderly and
walk humbly with our God.’ (Mi 6:8)
Franca Sessa and Lyette DesAlliers