Seeker

http://www.blogactionday.org/ Blog Action Day this year has the theme of #Raise Your Voice. The idea is for bloggers to celebrate people  "who raise their voice when faced with censorship, threats, and violence." Today I want to celebrate journalists who keep on reporting the facts in areas of the world where that is a really dangerous thing to do. In some places, to be a news reporter is to risk your life or your freedom. Last year 2014 nearly 100 media workers were killed directly because of their work. In 2015 so far 22 have been killed and 160 imprisoned.  These figures are from Reporters Without Borders , a non-profit organization founded in France in 1985 but now international. The quote below, from their website explains why freedom of information is so important: "Freedom of expression and of information will always be the world’s most important freedom. If journalists were not free to report the facts, denounce abuses and alert the public, how...

A bit late in the day and no time to do much, but I'm determined to stick with a daily post in Lent following the Christian Aid 'Count Your Blessings's calendar. Today the focus is on some of the effects of the conflict in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory which has continued to affect the most basic of Palestinian human rights, such as freedom of movement. I would love to write a lot about this, but time and energy don't permit this - another time perhaps. So maybe this photo of the West Bank barrier wall can speak for itself. I'm off to bed to nurse my cold. Christian Aid suggests giving 20p if you have a passport and 10p for every trip out of Britain you have made in the last 12 months. I have a passport and have made one trip out of Britain in the last 12 months, so that's 30p. Doesn't seem much in gratitude for the freedoms I enjoy. Image: West Bank Barrier: Wikimediacommons

The Rio Cuango is one of the richest sources of gem diamonds in Angola, a country where in spite of its rich natural resources including oil, most of the people are poor. The focus of Christian Aid's ' Count Your Blessings' calendar this week is peace and reconciliation. Nowhere is that more needed than in places like Angola after decades of conflict and a civil war that killed and brutalised so many. Christian Aid's partner agencies there work on pressurising the government to protect human rights and invest in essential infrastructure,  HIV prevention and awareness climate change adaptation for secure livelihoods You can read more about this through the links on this page of Christian Aid's website In the UK I have never faced feeling forced to bribe an official in order to get access to a service or something I need. In the last year one in three people in Angola faced such a demand.  Christian Aid suggests today giving thanks for our government a...

It's a week for children in Christian Aid's Count your Blessings Lent calendar, starting today with 'education'. This  photo from Wikimedia Commons shows secondary schoolgirls in Iraq. Since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights , education has been recognised as a basic human right. Sadly, it remains only an aspiration for many of the world's children. For example, Christian Aid tells me today that only 10% of children in south Sudan finish primary school. According to the Right to Education Project  69 million children in the world are still out of school. More than 700 million can't read.  The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child listed 32 categories of vulnerable children who are particularly likely to be excluded from education. As quoted here these are:  " abandoned children; asylum seeking children; beggars; child labourers; child mothers; child prostitutes; children born out of wedlock; delinquent children; disabled childre...

Day 4 of Christian Aid's 'Count Your Blessings' calendar  focuses on the situation of the poorest people in India and what some of them are doing collectively to improve things.  Ekta Parishad  is one of Christian Aid's partners. It is a people's movement whose aim is for India's poorest people to gain some control over resources for living, especially land, water and forest. It is dedicated to social action based on non-violent principles. 'Ekta' means unity. 'Parishad' means forum or space. Marginalized people are brought together to remind the government that it is its constitutional role to provide all the people with basic human rights and freedoms. Ekta Parishad is currently campaigning for the government to hold to its land rights promises. The campaign's climax, starting on 2 October 2012 will be the Jan Satyagrah March  when it is hoped that 100,000 landless peoples will walk together from Gwalior (near the Taj Mahal) to New De...