A look at the successes Grassroots International and our partners have had in 2018 — including a dramatic increase in our solidarity and impact.
The real costs of the industrial food system on people’s lives and the planet are as extensive as they are hidden. The article below by long-time Grassroots International friends, Beverley Bell and Tory Field of Other Worlds, offers a thought-provoking summary of those costs—all of which challenge small farmers in the Global South on a daily basis.
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The True Costs of Industrialized Food
Nearly 30 years ago the world was shocked by images of famine and hunger in the Horn of Africa. Those images inspired a tremendous outpouring of generosity among ordinary people everywhere, and spurred a generation of activists working to end hunger. We learnt a lot from that experience, but not enough -- especially in the halls of power, whether those be in Washington, various European and African capitals or in places like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The same man-made policies inflicted on Ethioipa and other countries then, have been inflicted on Somalia and its neighbors now. As economist Amartya Sen has shown, many, if not almost all, famines are man-made.
A public lecture on “Human rights in Eritrea: why do they matter” was held at the University of Pretoria on the 15th of January 2008. The lecture was organized by Eritrean Movement for Democracy and Human Rights (EMDHR) and the Center for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria. It aimed at raising the awareness of international actors in general and African youth in particular about the growing human rights violations in Eritrea.
The guest speaker was Dan Connell, a lecturer in Journalism and African Politics at Simmons College, Boston, USA [and founder of Grassroots International].
The Horn of Africa has become the source of much disturbing news. Mogadishu has become Africa’s Baghdad. There is genocide in Darfur, there are bombings in Ethiopia, and there is unremitting repression in Eritrea.
Grassroots International founder and current board member Dan Connell teaches journalism and African politics at Simmons College, Boston.
For more than 20 years following its founding in 1983, Grassroots International worked with both Eritrean government ministries and nongovernmental organizations, supporting alternative development, health-care initiatives and empowerment projects for women and youth. That program was closed in January 2005 to protest the suppression of democracy in Eritrea under its current president, Isaias Afwerki.
By Dan Connell
Eight months ago, Grassroots International ended its longest-running overseas aid program–that in Eritrea. The decision was an agonizing but necessary one. The story of how Grassroots arrived at this point closely tracks my own evolution as a writer and an activist for social justice.
Thirty years ago I set out with a back pack, a notebook, a few pens and a small wad of cash and travelers checks to explore Africa. Several months into it and spurred on by reports of a fierce but largely unreported counterinsurgency, I hitched into Eritrea to witness the massacre of dozens of civilians by Ethiopia's U.S.-supported military regime.
