West Africa Advocacy Page

PEACE PROCESS IN LIBERIA See Walking with Liberia website at: http://www.elca.org/liberia/ FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS The US and other industrialized nations are moving forward aggressively on international trade agreements that work to the detriment of Africa. In particular, African efforts to protect community rights and traditional practices against the strategy of multinationals to patent life forms need to be supported, and we seek to partner with African civil society efforts to have their governments adopt draft legislation that counters the dominance of intellectual property rights over justice and human need. For information on North American church’s views on trade agreements, see the Declaration made by members of Church World Service at http://www.churchworldservice.org/pdf_files/trade/Declaration-JustTradeAgreements.pdf For action packet on trade, see: http://www.woaafrica.org/Trade1.htm To take action, see: http://www.e alliance.ch/keyresources.jsp DEBT CANCELLATION In 1999 many wealthy nations agreed to cancel the debts of countries that met the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative criteria. This was controversial and fell far short of complete debt cancellation. The burden of debt remains quite heavy. Many sub-Saharan African governments still spend more on debt repayments than on health care and education combined. Obviously the effect has severe repercussions on Africa’s human development. In particular the debt burden has undermined the efforts of African nations to deal with the AIDS pandemic. For information with suggested actions, see: http://churchworldwservice.org/FactsHaveFaces/africafact.html For more information on what you can do to help contact: Lutheran World Relief, www.lwr.org or Jubilee USA Network, www.jubileeusa.org HIV/AIDS Increased funding to address the AIDS pandemic in Africa, is needed, minimally $1 billion annually, and advocacy for US trade policy that accepts the need of African nations to obtain affordable medicines for both AIDS and opportunistic infections. For ELCA information, see: http://www.elca.org/dcs/aidsin.html#topofpage For additional information, see: http://www.lwr.org/advocacy/africa/aids.asp http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/mission/ehaia-e.html For information from Church World Service, see: http://www.churchworldservice.org/pdf_files/CWS Policy Threads1.pdf For action packets, see: http://www.aidsalliance.org/ngosupport/ http://www.woaafrica.org/AIDS30.htm For recent articles on HIV/AIDS in Africa, see: http://www.africafiles.org/aids.asp To take action, see: http://www.e alliance.ch/hivaids.jsp CONFLICT DIAMONDS Meaningful legislation and enforcement of controls preventing the marketing of diamonds whose sale funds conflicts throughout Sierra Leone, Angola and the Congo is needed to reverse the history of diamonds bringing corruption, strife, destruction and violence and to establish transparent and just diamond production and marketing systems which are so rewarding that smuggling will become a thing of the past as diamonds begin to feed real economic growth and social empowerment. For information, see: http://www.africaaction.org/docs00/sl001.htm http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa-diamonds.htm For action packet on diamond conflict, see http://www.woaafrica.org/DiamondEdMaterials.htm For action, see: http://www.peacediamonds.org/ For information on advocacy issues regarding other natural resources, see: http://pacweb.org/e/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=55 For news about Africa, see: http://allafrica.com/ For information on advocacy on issues related to Africa, see: http://www.woaafrica.org For information about Stand with Africa, see: http://www.standwithafrica.org/homepage.html For Stand with Africa projects, see: http://www.standwithafrica.org/hiv_aids/index.php For information on contact with Congress, see: http://www.elca.org/advocacy/federal