Welcome to the final 2013 edition of the Joining Hands Newsletter. We invite you to share this with friends and members of your community, so that more people will join us in our effort to address root causes of hunger and poverty in the New Year and beyond. Once we join hands together, it is amazing how the world changes to resemble God’s vision for hope and for healing and an end to brokenness.

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Food and Land

We Are Women Farmers; We Deserve More!

More than 1000 Haitian women marched on the International Day of Rural Women, in Jérémie on the coast of the southern peninsula of Haiti, to shed light on the region’s needs to strengthen the role of women in agriculture and society, both locally and regionally. 
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World Food Day March Demonstrates Unity for Food Sovereignty in El Salvador 

Thousands marched in El Salvador on World Food Day to demand food sovereignty in El Salvador.  First, this huge popular movement made it clear that food sovereignty is now a matter of public discussion; second, it has set an important precedent of unity in the people's movement around the food sovereignty agenda; and lastly, this symbolic day was used to present the bill on Food Sovereignty, Security and Nutrition.  Read More

The Struggle of Sri Lankan Plantation Communities for Land

While the tea plantations serve as the highest contributor to the national economy in Sri Lanka, plantation laborers continue to suffer from low wages, poor working conditions and deplorable living situations.  Plantation communities are now fighting for their rights to land, education, housing and basic needs for a dignified life. 
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Saving Seeds, Saving Life: Farmers in India Gear up for a Second Freedom Struggle

Small and marginal farmers in South India, faced with increasing pressures from corporate seed and food monopolies, are working to ensure the livelihood rights of small farmers while protecting biodiversity and safeguarding India’s food sovereignty. Farmers are focusing efforts on saving traditional seeds and campaigning against Monsanto and its local affiliates as well as government policies which favor corporate seed monopolies. Read More

Perspectives on Partnership: Ties Bind Joining Hands Amidst Egyptian Turmoil

Members of the Joining Hands networks in the Presbytery of Des Moines and Egypt reflect on what their partnership has meant before and after the Egyptian Revolution. Read More

Extractives and Water

Cameroon EITI Compliant Status Masks Unresolved Transparency Challenges

In October 2013, Cameroon was declared an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) compliant country by the EITI Board of directors. While the country has made some progress concerning government disclosure of revenues generated from the exploitation of oil, there are still important extractive revenues governance challenges. Read More

Trade Reform

Addressing Root Causes of Poverty: Think Globally, Act Locally...or Vice Versa?

In the context of grossly unequal wealth distribution in the United States, the question has been posited, "Why work to alleviate hunger abroad when there is great hunger in the U.S.?" Our trade reform campaign identifies how in both the contexts of fighting hunger in the U.S. and abroad, we are often addressing the same root causes and are in effect at a loss if we are not working globally while thinking locally...and vice versa. Read More

The Struggle for Life: Reflections on the International Peacemakers Program

Wilhelm Piérola Iturralde, the President of UMAVIDA, the Joining Hands network in Bolivia, reflects on his time in the U.S. as an International Peacemaker with the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program. The peacemakers come from many different countries, some in permanent violent conflict where rights to life are violated daily, and where human beings have become objects to be thrown away. Read More

Resources and other news

Cameroon:  Greenpeace and the Oakland Institute–Cameroon, Herakles Land Lease Signature Is an Alarming Development AllAfrica
Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions The Guardian
Building Community Resistance Against Land Grabbing PANAP.  Praja Abhilasha partner NAFSO wrote the Sri Lanka case study “Looting of sustenance lands: Kalpitiya Islands case study”
Sri Lanka’s Climate of Fear The New York Times
Monitoring Local Content and Fiscal Obligations of Mining Companies in Cameroon: Case of the Diamond Mining Project  RELUFA
Conflict or Consent?  The oil palm sector at a crossroads FPP, Sawit Watch and TUK Indonesia