Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation

From awareness to empowerment.

Chicago 29.01.2017 Jean Paul Pezzi Translated by: Jpic-jp.org

Advocacy is about politics and change, values and beliefs, consciousness and knowledge. It is about influencing the powerful on problems that concern people. At the end, its aim is to empower people to defend their own rights and interests through legal and nonviolent means. Social organizations or a community itself -thrusted to do so by threads- can promote this process. This is happening in the Eastern Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where local communities plan actions to free themselves from the exploitation they endured for generations in oil palms plantation.

Advocacy is about politics and change, values and beliefs, consciousness and knowledge. It is about influencing the powerful on problems that concern people. Advocacy aims to bbuild strong democratic organizations to hold those in power accountable, expanding citizens’ skills and understanding of how power operates. At the end, its aim is to empower people to defend their own rights and interests through legal and nonviolent means. Social organizations or a community itself -thrusted to do so by threads- can promote this process. This is happening in the Eastern Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where local communities plan actions to free themselves from the exploitation they endured for generations in oil palms plantation.  

Oil palms are native to the forests of Central and West Africa. For thousands of years, local communities relied on them for food, textiles, medicines and construction materials: palm oil was therefore part of their cultures. The European colonizers only saw in oil palms a source of wealth and began taking over oil palm groves and tearing down forests to set up plantations. The British Lord Lever was one of the pioneers in the region: he took over palm groves from communities and turned extensive areas of the Congo’s forests into slave plantations. His company expanded throughout West and Central Africa as further as Southeast Asia and provided the foundation of Unilever, a multinational corporation, one of the world’s largest food companies.

The Congolese communities living next to and within Unilever’s plantations were amongst the poorest in Africa and oil palms plantations brought them nothing but more poverty. Unilever stopped running oil palm plantations about a decade ago, but the land did not return to their inhabitants: it was sold off to domestic and foreign and multinational companies, among them Feronia, a Venture Exchange based in Toronto, Canada.

On 2015, the UK development finance institution CDC, Feronia main shareholder, issued a statement, affirming that Feronia was improving the lives of workers and the local communities and it was in full compliance with national and international laws. The communities felt outraged by these claims. In October of the same year, their leaders from the Equatorial and Eastern provinces of DRC, feeling under pressure and threats, gathered in Kampala, Uganda, to plan their response. At the end, they issued a statement making clear the reality that their communities lived in and calling the claims of Feronia and CDC as “lies”. The life of their communities had deteriorated since Feronia took over the plantations in 2008. Their homes, schools, clinics and roads were in awful condition, and Feronia did not built any new infrastructure or worker homes. The average salaries of plantation workers, whose rate was down to US$1.5 per day, were frequently not paid. The alleged “bonuses” given to workers was unknown on Feronia’s plantations. The leaders challenged the CDC to see for itself what Feronia was doing to local people. “The money you give to Feronia does not reach the workers,” they stated and concluded: what the communities want, more than anything, is to get their lands back from the company. They have suffered long enough, and they are tired of false promises. At the close of the meeting, the leaders established a new alliance and pledged to work together to advance their demands.

In 2015, Feronia produced 6,700 tons of Palm Oil. In January 2016, CDC Group with 233,724,566 of shares (67.37%) became the major Feronia owner. Several European development banks –from Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands-, through their investments in the African Agricultural Fund, have a part in Feronia capital. IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development), co-sponsored by the Italian Development Corporation, United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, manages Feronia Technical Assistance Facility. Once again, colonialism returns, justifying its exploitation as “development”. Notwithstanding, nowadays the DRC Communities are more and more aware of the reality and are taking actions to free themselves from this new colonial exploitation. The European governments should support the communities in their demand to have back their lands and to ensure a self-reliance for their food and cultural way of life.

See more information here: http://www.pambazuka.org/land-environment/drc-communities-mobilise-free-themselves-century-colonial-oil-palm-plantations and here https://www.grain.org/article/entries/5220-agro-colonialism-in-the-congo-european-and-us-development-finance-bankrolls-a-new-round-of-agro-colonialism-in-the-drc

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