wfn.org | Forced migration tops human rights violations list says CWS

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Forced migration tops human rights violations list says CWS

NEW YORK CITY, DEC. 9, 2009 - As the world greets the sixtieth
International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10), increasing waves of forced
human migrations are being cited by international humanitarian agency
Church World Service as a major violation of human rights in the
twenty-first century.

CWS Executive Director and CEO John L. McCullough says the increase in
large groups of people being forced from their homelands and dispersed
"is by and large the result of human actions, whether due to conflict or
climate change."

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates
that there are more than 25 million people displaced worldwide and that
13 million of them are displaced within the borders of their own
countries.

CWS cites several factors contributing to large numbers of people being
forced to leave their lands, from climate change-related disruptions in
normal weather patterns that destroy crops to shrinking water resources
that force entire communities to abandon areas that can no longer
sustain life.

Other factors that cause migrations are conflicts and intensive
commercial agriculture practices that deplete soil or that increasingly
encourage the use of farm land for biofuel agriculture--land that
formerly was used by indigenous peoples and poor rural farmers to grow
food for their families and communities.

McCullough acknowledged, however, that some countries are now beginning
to come to the fore in countering runaway monoculture and biofuel
agriculture, in response to environmental and small farmer and rural
food security concerns, but he says "much more needs to be done
quickly."

The emphasis this Human Rights Day, he adds, should be on the need for
governments to strike the right balance between commercial needs and
human needs.  "Even as countries tend to their need to develop
economically, they also must also take care to prevent the acceleration
of forced human migrations by protecting the basic right of people to
food, water and security.

â??The vision of ending poverty by the year 2015 is rapidly
dissipating.  If the international community does not find the resolve
to act with a sense of urgency and fundamental fairness we will once
again see levels of human despair that mirrors the post World War II
era, and that should be frightening for all of us.â??

During their combined Nov. 11- 13 General Assembly, CWS and the
National Council of Churches approved a resolution
http://www.churchworldservice.org/site/DocServer/A_Renewed_National_Religiou s_Call_-_2008fnl.pdf?docID=863

calling on all member churches to observe the 60th anniversary of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://un.org/Overview/rights.html
on Sunday Dec.14 and to renew their commitment as Christians to the
advancement of human rights.

In a letter

http://www.churchworldservice.org/site/DocServer/CWS-NCConHumanRightsDeclara tion.pdf?docID=861
to church leaders, McCullough and Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of
NCC, acknowledged that the declaration has been criticized for "being
too western" and "too focused on individual rights," but urged churches
"not to overlook what an astonishing achievement" the Declaration is
with its "affirmation of human dignity and of harmonious relationships
among people."

International Human Rights Week is December 10 - 17.

Media Contacts

Lesley Crosson, (212) 870-2676, media@churchworldservice.org
Jan Dragin - 24/7 - (781) 925-1526, jdragin@gis.net