Afri PEACEMAKER 2011 is now available!

The 2011 Peacemaker is now available here. The Peacemaker covers the highlights of 2011 including the Possibilities Civic Summit held in April and attended by the Dalai Lama, Mary Robinson and community activists such as Rita Fagan and John Monaghan from Rossport, as well as reports on our regular events such as the Féile Bríde, and the Famine Walk. We also include updates on our recent campaign. Please contact the Afri office if you would like to receive a hard copy of the publication.

Impressions from Hedge School 2011: Climate Change, Conflict and Famine

Saturday, 1 October 2011, Kimmage DSC, Dublin 12

The 2011 Afri Hedge School took place in Kimmage Development Studies Centre (KDSC) in Dublin for the second year running.  You can watch a short film of the highlights from the day, made by Dave Donnellan, by clicking here!

The theme was Climate Change and how this has impacted on developing countries resulting in famine and wars. Abjata Khalif, a pastoralist from Kenya, spoke about how climate change has affected pastoralists in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, and in particular how the current famine in the Horn of Africa has caused great hardship for many, resulting in a surge in refugees and other social problems.

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Afri Hedge School 2011

The programme for the 2011 Afri Hedge School includes a talk by Kenyan Pastoralist, Abjata Khalif, on famine, climate and conflict in the Horn of Africa, followed by an examination of how we can tackle the problem of climate change in Ireland by climate scientist John Sweeney.

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Draft declaration from UN DPI/NGO Conference in Bonn

The 64th Annual United Nations Conference for Non-Governmental Organizations associated with the Department of Public Information took place in Bonn, Germany, on the 3rd to the 5th September.

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Annual commemoration of Hiroshima, Saturday 6th August, Cork and Dublin

The annual commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima will take place on Saturday 6th August, the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. This year we are pleased that two ceremonies will take place, one in Dublin and one in Cork,

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Famine Walk 2011 – “Planting Seeds of Food Sovereignty”

Famine Walk Leader Gary Whitedeer. Photo by Derek Speirs

Famine Walk Leader Juan Carlos Contreras. Photo by Derek Speirs

Justine Nantale. Photo by Derek Speirs

Afri would like to thank the brave one hundred and fifty people or so who joined us on the stormy Saturday, 21st May to complete our Annual Famine Walk! Thanks also to all those who supported us by getting sponsorship or by giving a donation.

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Irish-Choctaw Famine Link

Gary Whitedeer, Choctaw, is an internationally known painter, tribal chanter and dance leader who has represented the Irish-Choctaw link on many occasions.

The Irish-Choctaw Famine Link originated when the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma’s donation was given in 1847 and reported in the Arkansas Intelligencer. The amount was $170 and is acknowledged as having been received by the Irish Relief Committee, New York (a branch of the Society of Friends (Quakers), on 19th May 1847.

What makes the Choctaw donation so remarkable is the fact that just 16 years earlier they had been forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in Mississippi to a reservation in Oklahoma.

The Choctaw were the first of the south eastern Native American Indians to be forced onto what became known as ‘The Trail of Tears’ and during the removal they lost almost half of their people.

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Events organised by AfrI in Co. Mayo

Afri organised two events on the 21st and 22nd of May  in Co. Mayo that addressed fundamental issues of economic and political justice in the world today.

The first was the annual Famine Walk from Delphi to Louisburgh, on Saturday 21st, commemorating the death of Irish people during the ‘great famine’ of the nineteenth century and highlighting the reality of hunger and food insecurity in the world today, the causes of which include war and obscene levels of military spending. This year the Famine Walk  focused especially on the question of food sovereignty, including the threats to it from increasing corporate control of the food chain and the treatment of food as just another commodity to be bought and sold. The theme of corporate power also dominated at the second event, a public meeting in Erris on Sunday 22nd, where activists from India exchanged their stories of oppression by multinational companies (especially Union Carbide and its devastation of Bhopal) with the tales of local campaigners against Shell’s unwanted and dangerous Corrib Gas pipeline.

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Impressions from Féile Bríde 2011: Seeds of Change

Saturday, 5 February 2011, Derby House Hotel, Kildare Town

The theme of Féile Bríde this year was food and it addressed some of the key concerns linked to food security: globalization, sustainable development and, in the words of Michael Kelly of Grow It Yourself, how we can take “control of the garlic situation”!

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Féile Bríde 2011 – Seeds of Change

Photo: Irish Seed Savers Association

Saturday, 5 February 2011, Derby House Hotel, Kildare

The symbolism of Brigid giving her father’s sword to a poor man seeking alms is ever more relevant in a world where the annual arms budget exceeds $1,500 billion. That spending represents food taken out of our mouths, particularly those of the poor. And food was the focus of this year’s Féile.

Though food may be a hobby or a profession for some, securing enough to feed a family is a matter of life and death for many more. Remarkably, the constant reality of a billion people hungry in our world has failed to trigger a response similar to that in the banking crisis, where billions of Euros were instantly found for a ‘bail-out’!

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