|
|
Speech by Sylvia Borren, Oxfam International, Director of NOVIB, the Dutch Oxfam
Porto Alegre, Brazil, 23 July 2004
|
TRADE UNION AND NGOs,
Two months ago, in May this year, 350 young people, between 12 and 20 from all over the world were to meet, in Florence, Italy, Kailash the Indian NGO leader from the Global March against Child Labor and present chairman of the Global Campaign for education organized the event. All the children/young people are survivors (as they like to call themselves) from child labor. After a year of preparation, hundred and fifty children from Africa and Asia were suddenly refused visas ten days before the event. The ICFTU lobbied its way to the top of the Italian government, but got nowhere.
"Security" was the only reason given.
The 200 children/young people who did make it prepared a declaration, the declaration of Florence, and spoke to sixty world leaders, thirty ministers, people fro the World Bank and UN organizations. Their arguments are well known to us here:
113 million children in the world today receive no form of education, and are working, often in dirty and dangerous jobs, sometimes in forms of modern slavery including the sex-industry.
246 million children are working part-time, receiving little education. Two third or more of these children are girls.
Yet an educated girl is seen as a key to development, for her family and community.
Many times world leaders have promised to change this reality: most specifically at the Social Top in Copenhagen and at the UN Women's conference in Beijing in 1995, and of course again in underwriting the millennium goals.
The promises are simple: all children to school, equal educational opportunity for girls and boys.
The costs are not high - estimates range up to ten billion dollars a year. Just for the comparison: 3% of the unfair agricultural subsidies paid yearly by developed countries, leading to dumping practices.
Maybe ten days military spending in Iraq.
Therefore the money is available.
The young people in Florence brought two new elements into these familiar arguments.
Firstly URGENCY. They themselves have been released from child labor - too late, and often after much abuse. They are fighting for all those other children. Their claim is very simple. Every day in child labor is one too many.
Secondly LEADERSHIP. They were asking the world leaders, civil society leaders, they are asking us as we sit here, they are asking all adults of this world: HOW CAN YOU LET THIS GO ON. YOU HAVE IT WITHIN YOUR POWER TO SOLVE THIS. SO SOLVE IT. Many of these children ask three standard questions:
- do you know about child labor?
- Are you doing anything about it?
- Can you do more?
I am convinced that we can do more: as adults, as NGO's, within my own
international Oxfam group, in our cooperation with trade unions.
Of course we have cooperated successfully. To mention but a few: in Kosovo, in The Global March, in the Education for All campaign. And yet: are we showing enough urgency. Enough leadership? Can we do more?
Yes we can.
We can get beyond our suspicions, our own institutional interests, our preconceived ideas about each other, our tendency to compare our own good practice with the bad practice of the other, our little and bigger power struggles amongst ourselves.
How often have I heard teacher union representatives say that NGO's are amateurs, providing inadequate education, allowing themselves to be used as cheap privatized subcontractors by states not prepared to pay fair teachers wages. Governments should not be let off the hook, should simply train and pay sufficient teachers.
But this is too simple a description of reality, because it leaves children out of the equation.
Believe me, we agree wholeheartedly that good, free public education should be provided for all children by well-trained and well-paid teachers in every country and every outback rural area in the world.
But should BRAC, the biggest NGO in the world, have waited these last thirty years for the government of Bangladesh, and not provided education for 8 to 12 year olds, in more than 30.000 one classroom schools, four hours a day, 70% girls?
Should Tin Tua in Burkino Faso not have started working on functional literacy with mothers, to ensure that they would become passionate about sending their girls to school - a system that is now to be copied in Benin?
Should Prathan in India not be working with young mothers who pick up illiterate children in their own neighborhood, to home-teach them basic reading and writing before helping them back into state schools?
I hear you thinking - yes ok, these are good examples of good NGO's, good cooperation, but there are also shoddy ones. True. I agree. I am sure you are all good teachers, connected to good schools - but there are also shoddy ones. School environments can sometimes be rigid, or negligent, even violent.
So let us learn to be open and critical of each other. Checks and balances. Let us all improve our transparency, our performance, our leadership and our cooperation. Let us, as the Florence declaration demands of us, do more.
For surely we need to cooperate, firstly in advocacy, to fight to have the millennium goals honored. To organize public pressure locally and globally until governments have to provide the education and health services that they have promised.
But we should cooperate also in direct practical ways. Can schools and NGO's work together towards what are called 'child-friendly villages' and 'human rights cities' which are active against child labor, and violence -and for more participative democracy in the schools and in the local governments?
Can we face the aids-crisis more pro-actively as teachers unions and NGO's together, looking for ways to discuss sexuality, to fight violence and genital mutilation, to work on the empowerment of girls - but also to provide medicines, to support child-headed households, to fight stigmatization and organize community support?
Can we organize together an extended school environment where communities and teachers learn to face and respect their diversity, to work together towards supportive environments and to learn to solve problems and mediate conflicts?
Can we - and this is perhaps the key - learn to define our identity (organizationally or personally) not as something static which divides us, but as something dynamic which gives us a basis from which we reach out and cooperate and learn from each other?
Let me give some personal examples:
As a woman I would like to see dynamic women's movements working together with teachers unions and education systems to create really gender-sensitive schools, where girls and boys receive equal opportunities, and where children learn how to defend themselves against violence and rape.
As a lesbian I would like to see much stronger gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender NGOs, working with schools and unions, encouraging all teachers to be out about their sexual orientation, and creating safe school environments where pupils can develop and discover who they are without fear, or self-hatred.
As a Dutch New Zealander I would love to see the lessons and mana of the Maori language and cultural revival be used to encourage indigenous peoples - in this continent too. But also be used to discredit the dismal repressive political policies in the Netherlands these days, about refugees, migrants and diversity.
As OXFAMS we fight for a just world without poverty. We support and work together with many social movements and NGO's. We support and cooperate with unions, such as Education International. Let us see each other as good friends should: open, constructive and critical. Ready to learn from each other. It is in this spirit that Fred van Leeuwen has asked me to speak here, and I thank him for that.
But let us listen to the young people in Florence.
We can increase our sense of urgency, and our leadership. We can do more.
|
|
