Our Areas

We focus on four areas: climate change, migration, poverty and war. Find out more below.

Climate Change - Pollution doesn't stop at the border so why should accountability?

Those least responsible for climate change are paying the highest price. Rising sea levels in Bangladesh are already creating climate refugees. Lower rainfall in Ghana is causing extreme poverty through reduced crop yields. It is high-polluting countries that are causing these problems yet there is no way to make them accountable.

Pleading with rich country politicians to do more is not enough. It is demeaning and accepts a priori their right to decide for everyone else. As long as we keep pandering to this system we are reinforcing it.

The UN COP process is a farce. Everyone knows it's the big polluters who decide. International media blamed China and the US alternately for the failure, but either way - 75% of the planet's people don't live in those countries. Until those affected by climate change have equal say to the big polluters, we will not have a chance of stopping climate change.

Migration - don't judge me by the colour of my passport

Every year millions of people migrate around the world for reasons ranging from persecution to tourism.

But it's what papers you've got not who you are that decides where you can go.

People from rich countries have more freedom of movement than citizens of poor countries.

This is discrimination, in the same family as racism and apartheid.

Migration controls affect sending populations as well as receiving populations, migrants should be included in this decision-making process.

Poverty - the hand that giveth and the hand that taketh away

However you look at it, there is no way to see our present situation as just. A child dies every six seconds because of hunger, even though we have enough food for everyone (Source: WFP).

In the last century, the biggest steps taken against extreme poverty within countries was through political change. Giving equal political voice to rich and poor opened the door to redistribution in the form of healthcare, education and housing.

Expecting the massive global inequality to be redressed through aid is a sticky plaster approach that doesn't deal with the cause.

It shouldn't be for rich countries to decide how much aid to give, who to give it to, and what conditions to attach to it. We don't do that on a national level, so why do it on a global one? The only equitable, just and sustainable way of addressing poverty is involving everyone affected equally.

If we really want to combat poverty we need to ditch the donor-recipient model. People want empowerment through political equality. Only then will we be able to come up with just and sustainable solutions.

War - if the people got to decide what would happen to war?

In today's world, it's the world's biggest arms traders - China, France, Russia, UK and US - who decide when war is "legal". As the five permanent members of the UN Security Council they have a veto over any resolutions. Relying on the UN as the world's arbitrator of peace in this context is plain mad.

Even the Iraq war, widely seen as lacking a UN resolution and legal backing, was defended by the UK Attorney General on the basis that a previous UN resolution was still valid.

Who do these five countries' politicians represent? How did they come be seen as the world's representatives?

If we want to have a fair basis for deciding on the legality of war it has to include everyone affected. We cannot accept a system that judges only poor countries. Partial justice is not real justice.