The Privilege of Making a Difference

Baroness Caroline Cox, an Anglican laywoman and former deputy speaker of Great Britain’s House of Lords, is a champion of human rights for the weak and defenceless. Due to her vigorous personality, she has also been described as a “British Joan of Arc” for our times, incarnating the noblest spirit of chivalry for her staunch anti-slavery campaigns. She is the founder and CEO of the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), which works to provide lasting change for those suffering oppression and persecution but are largely neglected by the international media, through aid and advocacy. On Tuesday 12 October 2010, Baroness Cox addressed The Sydney Institute to talk about HART’s work and vision.

THE PRIVILEGE OF MAKING A DIFFERENCE

CAROLINE COX

Our Mission is to provide appropriate aid to those who are, or who have recently been, suffering from war, conflict, oppression and/or persecution. The Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART) continues to focus on “forgotten people in forgotten lands”. We work with people who are unreached, unhelped, unheard and who are often trapped behind closed borders. They may be in active conflict zones (Plateau and Bauchi States in Nigeria; Burma); post-conflict areas still devastated by war (Nagorno-Karabakh; Timor-Leste; Southern Sudan; northern Uganda), or areas where people have been marginalized and oppressed for social and political reasons (religious minority groups in northern Nigeria).

Our principles are the 4 A’s:

Authenticity: a commitment to HART personnel going in person to gather first hand evidence of humanitarian needs; assessing priorities for aid and monitoring the use of resources.

Aid – providing the most appropriate type of relief.

Advocacy – making known the needs and concerns of those who are suffering.

Accountability – to those for whom HART speaks, to ensure that our reports are accurate and sensitive to their situations, and accountable to those who support our work, informing them of the way we have used the resources they have given.

We are increasingly committed to a policy of genuine partnership, for these reasons:

• it maintains the dignity of local people;
• it avoids upsetting the local economy;
• it avoids the “aid dependency” syndrome;
• it enhances, not diminishes, local leadership and authority relationships;
• It enables us to celebrate the achievements of our partners – and enables them to take pride in those achievements, enhancing their self-respect and consequent sustainability of their projects.

For HART, the choice of aid programmes is generally in response to a request for help from local people or their representatives in exile.

We recognise a primary responsibility to provide aid to people in need who are generally not being served by major aid organisations. Such situations occur because many organisations, such as those working under the auspices of the UN, or other major aid organisations, such as the Red Cross, can only go to locations with the permission of a sovereign government. If such a government does not give them permission, they cannot go to those areas to take aid to people in need. For HART, the choice of aid programmes is generally in response to a request for help from local people or their representatives in exile.

We believe in asking local people to identify their own priorities – giving them the dignity of choice. Then, through co-operation with our local partners who have demonstrated that they have the requisite vision, knowledge, skills, integrity and commitment, we provide resources which help them to develop appropriate aid which is sensitive to their cultural values, and which is replicable and sustainable.

HART is committed to channelling the maximum amount of funds possible to our partners abroad. We streamline our running costs by keeping no teams of expatriate staff permanently “on the ground”.

HART is currently working with local partners in the following countries and regions:

• Nagorno-Karabakh;
• Eastern Burma: The Shan and Karenni peoples;
• North-west Burma: the Chin people;
• Timor-Leste;
• Nigeria: Plateau, Bauchi and Kano States;
• Sudan: Yei, Bahr-El-Ghazal and the Nuba Mountains;
• Northern Uganda: Patongo in Pader District;
• India: Bangalore [Temple Prostitutes: project to be initiated November 2010].

We are aware that our commitment to working with partners in these locations inherently involves an element of risk, and, in many cases, there is a danger that their programmes may be vulnerable to disruption by renewed conflict.

Our partners are working in education, health care, human rights, care of orphaned and abandoned children, women’s empowerment and agricultural development.

We are aware that our commitment to working with partners in these locations inherently involves an element of risk, and, in many cases, there is a danger that their programmes may be vulnerable to disruption by renewed conflict. However, we believe that this is a positive reason for our support – as our mandate is to provide aid and advocacy precisely for people who are vulnerable and who have often been abandoned or neglected by others. Also, support for people in such vulnerable situations may help to reduce their vulnerability by helping them to rehabilitate their shattered lives and infrastructure, as well as supporting their endeavours to promote democracy and the institutions of civil society.

We are also committed to providing help for partners who may have had difficulty obtaining support from other donors in view of a lack of ‘track record’. Given their circumstances of innovative programmes in conflict or post-conflict situations, they have usually had no opportunity to develop such work in recent years. However, we witness the sincerity, purposefulness and competence of their initial endeavours and have confidence in their ability to use effectively the resources we provide. We have not yet been disappointed. One supporter has endorsed this policy as “charitable risk venture investment” and many have admired the “multiplier effects” of their creative use of very limited resources.

The “Multiplier Effect”

One of the many advantages of working with dedicated local partners is the way in which they multiply the inevitably modest funds we supply, far beyond anything we could ever anticipate. The dissemination of comprehensive therapeutic techniques and repertoires throughout several countries in the southern Caucasus by Vardan Tadevosyan, Director of the Rehabilitation Centre in the war-torn country of Nagorno-Karabakh, is just one example of this “multiplier effect”. His town, Stepanakert, which had been an epicentre of death and destruction, has become beacon shining a light of hope and healing far beyond its own region.

We believe that advocacy, combined with aid, is essential for people suffering oppression.

Advocacy has a fundamental role to play in bringing the evidence of oppression to the attention of the international community – making known the needs of victims of human rights violations in order to try to promote concerted action on their behalf and targeted pressure on their oppressors. In 2009, we used international platforms for advocacy including:

• the UK House of Lords and All-Party Parliamentary Groups;
• the Foreign Minister and other members of the Australian Parliament;
• Ambassadors and High Commissioners representing their countries in the UK;
• in-country advocacy initiatives, such as meetings with the Presidents of Armenia and Timor-Leste;
• meetings with Secretaries of State, Ministers and Civil servants at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.
• representatives of the UK government abroad in Embassies and High Commissions

In the field of human rights violations, one of HART’s priorities is to campaign on issues of contemporary slavery, including chattel slavery and slavery as a weapon of war [Sudan]; sexual slavery and rape as a weapon of war (Burma); other forms of illegal servitude, including forced labour (Burma) and the use of child soldiers (northern Uganda; Burma).

A book highlighting the extent of contemporary slavery was published in the year commemorating William Wilberforce’s parliamentary achievements in abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire. This Immoral Trade: Slavery in the 21^st Century by Caroline Cox and John Marks[i] raised awareness of the appalling fact that there are still 27 million men, women and children suffering form some kind of slavery in the world today. There are also three chapters with stories of people whom I have met who have been slaves, which bring alive the human tragedies behind the statistics; and their voices speak for those whose voices we cannot hear, because they are still enslaved.

Among the challenges facing the Armenian people, stricken by earthquake and war, has been the problem of helping victims suffering from injury and disability. “Rehabilitation” was a virtually unknown concept in the former Soviet Union…

Nagorno-Karabakh

Armenia became an independent republic in 1991 following the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Man and nature appear to have conspired to inflict suffering on the Armenian people. In 1915, 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered by the Turks and western Armenia was annexed by Turkey. Then, in the 1920s, Stalin, with his “salami” policy of ethnic divide and rule, cut off part of eastern Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and established it as an autonomous enclave within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.

In 1988, a catastrophic earthquake hit central Armenia, ushering is a new era of hardship and suffering. The development of the post-Communist economy has not been helped by blockades imposedby two of the four neighbouring countries, Turkey and Azerbaijan, and the war between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh from 1988 to 1994 has left a grievous legacy of widespread devastation. The war ended in a ceasefire agreement in 1994 but to date there is no formal peace treaty and Azerbaijan continues to propagate hostility, with threats of renewed military offensives and a massive build-up of military capacity.

Among the challenges facing the Armenian people, stricken by earthquake and war, has been the problem of helping victims suffering from injury and disability. “Rehabilitation” was a virtually unknown concept in the former Soviet Union: people stricken with disabilities at any age tended just to be “warehoused” and often died within a couple of years from pressure sores and infections.

The Rehabilitation Centre in Stepanakert, capital city of Nagorno-Karabakh, is the only example of its kind in the region. The inspirational and deeply dedicated Director, Vardan Tadevosyan, and his team of Rehabilitation Therapist Nurses, together with a variety of staff teaching many skills, such as sport, art and information technology, have transformed the original bomb-damaged building into a Centre of Excellence.

Foreign specialists from the UK and America who visit the centre claim that it has achieved “world class” status and an American former military doctor, who has established his own wound clinic in the USA, advised us that Marietta, the Tissue Repair nurse at our clinic, provides as high a standard of care as his staff achieve in USA – except it would take twenty of his clinicians to perform what Marietta does on her own!

Vardan is now disseminating innovative practices for the care of people with diverse disabilities and special needs as far afield as Georgia, Abkhazia, Chechnya and  Ossetia, bringing new hope and healing far beyond the confines of the little country of Nagorno Karabakh.

Ethnic national groups comprise 40 per cent of the population of Burma and they face an invidious choice: collaboration, resistance or exile.

Burma

The brutal military ruling military junta with the Orwellian name of State Peace and Development Council [SPDC] continues to carry out systematic violations of human rights, including forced labour and abduction of boys to form an army with the largest number of child soldiers in the world: 70,000. Ethnic national groups comprise 40 per cent of the population of Burma and they face an invidious choice: collaboration, resistance or exile. Resistance is met with sustained military offensives by the Burmese Army, and widespread human rights abuses including the systematic rape of women, and the conscription of civilians, including children, for military service or forced porterage.

Nevertheless, resistance is the choice taken by the Karen, Karenni and Shan peoples. During the past year, tens of thousands of Karen and Shan villagers have been forced to flee from their villages and to hide in the jungle as Internally Displaced People [IDPs]. Their plight is desperate. Unable to build permanent dwellings, or even to light fires for fear of detection and attack by SPDC troops, they live in the jungle as exiles in their own land.  Others are forced to flee across the border to seek refuge and join hundreds of thousands of others who have already been forced to flee to overcrowded camps in Thailand.

Among the newly displaced Karen, driven across the border into Thailand in 2009, was Rainbow, a school teacher whose school inside Karen State we used to visit, with gifts for the pupils, including musical instruments and sports equipment – as it is important that the children have some of the happy experiences of childhood. Rainbow always welcomed these gifts and we were always humbled and inspired by the quality of the school he managed to maintain in the harsh conditions inside Karen State. But, sadly, we have heard that the conditions in which he now has to live and work in the overcrowded camps in Thailand are very depressing.

He also described how they have to pitch their hammocks low – for four reasons: to be below the bullets, in the event of an attack by the SPDC … ; to be below shell blast; to be a little less cold; and – it is less far to fall if the hammock breaks!

HART continues to support the work of Shan Women’s Action Network [SWAN] with two projects for health care and women’s empowerment. Last October, a HART delegation visited one of the clinics we support. We were very impressed by the standard of maintenance of the clinic and the professionalism of the staff.

SWAN are among the largest recipients of financial support in the HART portfolio. We recognise them as a priority because the predominantly Buddhist Shan people  are relatively under-served by the large consortium of aid organisations comprising the Thai Burma Border Consortium [TBBC], which focuses predominantly on supporting the Karen and Karenni ethnic groups. HART’s contribution is clearly significant – and we hope to be able to maintain it, as the Shan people fit directly into our remit of working for people who are suffering oppression and are largely “off the radar screen” of many major aid organisations and the international media.

Our Karenni partner is a very dedicated and courageous young man, Doh Say. He works with the cross-border mobile medical teams who risk their lives to take medical care to the IDPs hiding in the jungle. Doh Say came out from Burma to meet us last October, when we gave him the funds he needs to continue his work. He described the conditions in which he and his team live in the rainy season: they are constantly wet, always cold and have to sleep in soaking wet sleeping bags.

He also described how they have to pitch their hammocks low – for four reasons: to be below the bullets, in the event of an attack by the SPDC [they also have to be constantly ready to run within a three minute warning]; to be below shell blast; to be a little less cold; and – it is less far to fall if the hammock breaks! He also confessed his fear, saying “If I didn’t pray, I could not go in.” The money HART provides is used for the purchase of essentials – such as food, heavy duty backpacks and hammocks, medicines and sleeping bags.

West Burma: Chin State

The villagers of the Hill Tribes living in remote parts of Chin State often have no health care and those in need of treatment may have to be carried for up to five days over mountains.

As the people of Chin State have signed an agreement with the SPDC, they are not being subject to military offensives. However, they therefore suffer all the problems of occupation by SPDC troops, with units of soldiers in most villages. The local people are consequently always vulnerable to violations of human rights, including extra-judicial killings and arrests, rape, theft of land and livestock, forced labour. They are also denied education beyond Grade 10 and the right to speak or teach their own language in school. The Chin are predominantly Christian and there are many reports of the destruction of churches and crosses which the local people often build on the mountains or at crossroads. The cumulative effect is a fear cultural genocide.

The villagers of the Hill Tribes living in remote parts of Chin State often have no health care and those in need of treatment may have to be carried for up to five days over mountains, through jungle and across rivers to reach a township. On arrival, there are many reports that they will not be given treatment unless they can pay.

Dr Taing Sang [known as Sasa] grew up witnessing the suffering of his people and was determined to train as a medical doctor. At great cost to his villagers, and after much personal hardship, Sasa completed High School in Rangoon, pre-clinical qualifications in India, and his medical qualifications in Yerevan, Armenia in June 2009 – with distinctions in Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology. I met Sasa in Armenia and invited him regularly to the UK where he has met many people who deeply admire his dedication and manifold abilities, as well as the price he has paid to qualify as a doctor in order to help his people.

As soon as he qualified, Sasa returned to his people and HART is helping to co-ordinate the various resources being made available to him as he has immediately established a comprehensive programme to train 317 villagers who have come from villages deep inside Chin State to train as Community Health Workers [CHWs].

The local people gave him the land for his project and built superb facilities, including a large meeting hall, men’s and women’s dormitories, kitchens and an administration block.

Sasa arranged for 340 copies of the seminal textbook Where There is No Doctor, already translated into Burmese, to be transported to this remote location and HART personnel together with other supporters were privileged to attend the Opening Ceremony of “Health and Hope” in November 2009. The first month of the training programme was completed before the trainees returned to their villages for Christmas and to spend some time undertaking a Health Survey of their own districts, before returning for the second part of the course in January.

We are deeply grateful to Jersey Overseas Aid Commission for their generous grant of £56,815 for Sasa’s programme, as well as many other supporters who make this very important training program possible.

HART is also pleased to report that, following our advocacy the previous year on behalf of people suffering from the “mawta” – an acute shortage of food caused by a rat infestation associated with the cycle of flowering of bamboo – the Department for International Development had made available a grant of £600,000 for food relief in 2008 and subsequently made a further £200,000 available in 2009. This is a good example of the use of advocacy to generate aid.

Nigeria

Northern Nigeria and Plateau State continue to suffer from outbreaks of intense violence. During the spring of 2009, Bauchi State saw outbreaks of manifestly religiously motivated violence, with over 100 people, mostly Christians, killed or still missing, presumed dead, and many churches destroyed.

In November 2009, further violence erupted in Jos, Plateau State, and the violence has continued into 2010, with several hundreds of civilians killed, hundreds of homes and businesses destroyed and many more churches attacked and burnt.

Contrary to media reports, which describe the violence as “politically motivated” and associated with issues to do with land ownership, it is clear to anyone who has seen the evidence that these attacks are typically initiated by militant Islamist extremists targeting churches and Christian homes and businesses. There have also been well documented cases where the bodies of Christians killed early in the violence have been taken to mosques where they have been photographed, creating the impression for the world’s media that these are Muslims who have been killed by Christians.

Advocacy by HART has been effective in attempts to put the truth on the record – through the media, including articles in both the religious and secular press, as well as though parliamentary initiatives.

Consequently, much of the international media coverage has created the impression that this violence is symmetrical, with “tit-for-tat” retaliation between the Muslim and Christian communities. Not only is this a serious misrepresentation of the truth. It also has dangerous implications as it may stimulate further violence in other places where Christians are living as minorities in Islamic dominated regions in Nigeria [or further afield] as they may become vulnerable to violent retaliation for alleged aggression by Christians against Muslims.

It is true that, sadly, Muslims have also been killed, sometimes by Islamic militants for opposing communal violence or sectarian extremism. In other instances attacks have been undertaken by Christians either in self-defence or occasionally in retaliation, but these deplorable incidents represent a clear minority of cases.

Advocacy by HART has been effective in attempts to put the truth on the record – through the media, including articles in both the religious and secular press, as well as though parliamentary initiatives. HART gave some funds as an emergency response to assist victims of violence in Bauchi and Plateau States and has continued to support educational and health programmes in Plateau and Kano States.

St. Andrew’s School, Ganawuri, near Jos, continues to expand and benefit from the creativity of a dynamic headmaster, who has his feet firmly on the ground. For example, when HART offered to support the school with funding for a borehole, he resisted some local advice for an electrically operated pump and insisted on opting for a traditional manual pump – cheaper and more reliable.  He also creates ingenious, imaginative and attractive teaching aids out of local materials, and is inspirational in his vision for the school as a centre of excellence, providing top quality education for pupils from some of the more elite families who can afford to pay fees and other local children for free.

HART has also supported The Christian Institute in Jos, which trains men and women for Ministry and runs courses in maternal and child health. The 2008 HART donation contributed to the building of a building to be used as a residence for women and for teaching purposes.

In 2009, the number of pupils in the school had consequently expanded from less than 10 to 147; and the numbers have increased again in 2010.

In Kano State, which is subject to Sharia law, the minority Christian community suffers from systematic discrimination in employment, and in access to education and health care.  In the rural area of Bari the villagers were extremely poor, unable to obtain paid employment. Consequently, they could not afford education or medical treatment – possibly having to sell their last goat or pair of trousers in order to buy medicine for a child. HART has been providing funding for the local school, paying the salaries of three teachers. In 2009, the number of pupils in the school had consequently expanded from less than 10 to 147; and the numbers have increased again in 2010.

Our new HART partner, the dynamic Bishop of the newly created Diocese of Bari, has moved into the village, establishing a brick-making factory in the heart of the community. This has generated funds for many developments, including the expansion of the school buildings and the Primary Health Care Clinic which HART has been supporting, with funds from Trusthouse Charitable Foundation.

Reconciliation: HART is currently putting forward a proposal to the UK Government to support an interfaith initiative to promote reconciliation and reconstruction, similar to the International Islamic Christian Organisation for Reconciliation and Reconstruction, which I helped to establish in Jakarta, following massive intercommunal violence in Maluku a few years ago. The former President of Indonesia, the now late Abdurrahman Wahid, was the Hon. President of IICORR and the British Government funded an interfaith delegation to visit the UK, to work out principles and policies of reconciliation and reconstruction away from the conflict zone. This proved very successful: when the group returned to Ambon, incipient conflict was quickly contained, due to the good faith which had been developed between the community leaders.

Sudan

In Yei, HART has been continuing to support the development of Primary Health Care Clinics – and we are pleased to report that the operation of one of these has been taken over by the County as promised in the original agreement.

Our partner, Bishop Elias Taban, is now considering the location of a sixth clinic, and is contemplating the possibility of establishing one near Darfur, to provide much-needed help for Darfuri refugees driven from their own lands by war and continuing violence.

Successful harvests of maize and sorghum allowed reinvestment in further agricultural developments as well healthy food and other resources for the orphanages.

Two of the clinics serve orphanages, which HART originally supported – thus providing health care for children who also benefit from education in the holistic programmes developed by the staff for children who have lost one or both parents and who would otherwise be destitute.

The agricultural program initiated two years ago continues to flourish. Successful harvests of maize and sorghum allowed reinvestment in further agricultural developments as well healthy food and other resources for the orphanages. Profits have also been used to promote other initiatives, such as the health care projects and women’s empowerment programmes.

In Bahr-el-Ghazal, there is an urgent need for schools, as a ‘lost generation’ of children could not receive any education, due to constant aerial bombardment. HART has been supporting a new school, Marol Academy, in a remote area. In January, we celebrated the success of a British teacher, Naomi Pendle, from Wellington College who had travelled with HART to Sudan. Naomi won a Vodafone “World of Difference” Award and is now on a year’s placement, developing a teacher-training programme in this region of Sudan, where there is an acute shortage of qualified teachers.

In the Nuba Mountains [Southern Kordofan], HART enjoys working in partnership with the Nuba Mountain Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Organisation [NRRDO], an interfaith Muslim and Christian organisation. When we asked what would be their priority for humanitarian assistance, they identified the needs of widows, who are suffering severely in the aftermath of war. HART has provided funding for the establishment of three widows’ co-operatives, designed to provide psycho-social support and opportunities for entrepreneurial initiatives. In February 2010, we visited two of these centres and we were deeply impressed by the quality of the buildings, the effectiveness of the financial initiatives [for example, the production of pasta, fruit juices and preserves and weaving of mats] as well as the high morale and emotional support associated with co-operative activities.

The people of the Nuba Mountains are in a very invidious political position. Under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement they were placed under overall administrative control from Khartoum and they claim that this has had serious effects on the provision of humanitarian aid, arguing that the northern administration discriminates against them – particularly against the Christian communities.

Moreover, during the war, they had been able to receive humanitarian aid from neighbouring countries to the south – especially Kenya and Uganda. The humanitarian situation is now so serious that they claim to be worse of now in a time of “peace” than they were during the war. Given the ferocity of military offensives unleashed against them during the war and their suffering under aerial bombardment from fixed wing and helicopter gunships, that is a very grave assessment of their current situation.

The provisions of the CPA, while giving the south of Sudan a referendum and an opportunity to opt for independence, only give the people of the Nuba Mountains recourse to “consultation” – the terms of reference for which have not been clarified. There is therefore deep unhappiness and anxiety about their future and a need for advocacy.

Many children in Timor-Leste do not make it to their fifth birthday and nearly 50 per cent of children suffer from some degree of malnutrition

Timor-Leste [East Timor]

The people living in this little land fought a bitter war against foreign occupation and paid a high price for their freedom and democracy. They now live in a war-devastated country in which virtually all the infrastructure was destroyed in the conflict, with the loss of essential health and welfare facilities, such as schools and clinics. There are also acute problems of unemployment, poverty and dislocation.

Many children in Timor-Leste do not make it to their fifth birthday and nearly 50 per cent of children suffer from some degree of malnutrition. Serious problems include:

• poor childcare practices;
• traditional beliefs and superstitions resulting in inappropriate food taboos;
• ignorance and lack of knowledge of nutrition combined with poor hygiene and sanitation practices;
• inaccessibility of health services;
• poor utilization of available health facilities;
• low incomes and high unemployment.

The situation on neighbouring Atauro Island, which is part of Timor-Leste, is even more serious.

HART has the privilege of partnering with a highly professional organisation – Hiam Heath Clinic. HART’s visionary partners, Rosaria Martins da Cruz and Jill Hillary have developed an innovative programme designed not only to provide nutrition and health care but also to achieve a change of attitudes, knowledge and practice, which will enable local people to avoid malnutrition. Food resources are in fact widely available, but not used because of ignorance of their nutritional value or because they are the subject of cultural taboos.

The idea is to educate local people to enjoy food that had previously not been used, so that when they return to their villages, with well-nourished, healthy children, they will serve as role models and educators

Rosaria, Jill and their team in Hiam Health have built a superb residential centre. Children who have been treated in hospital for severe malnutrition are referred to the Centre, together with family members, where they will receive nutritional and medical care, and the families will be taught how to grow and use food locally available – “from the ground to the table”.

The idea is to educate local people to enjoy food that had previously not been used, so that when they return to their villages, with well-nourished, healthy children, they will serve as role models and educators, encouraging local people to avoid malnutrition by using the food resources readily available but previously neglected. It is hoped that this will achieve lasting attitude and behaviour change and thereby reduce or even eradicate, in due course, the problem of malnutrition in Timor-Leste.

HART had provided the original funding for the purchase of the land and now supports an outreach nutrition programme to Atauro Island, which is so remote that it has been seriously underserved by aid organisations.

Uganda

Although much of Uganda is relatively peaceful and comparatively prosperous, northern Uganda continues to suffer from the aftermath of a 20-year onslaught by the cult-like Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). This rebel army displaced more than 1.6 million people and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed or kidnapped. Caught in the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels and the Ugandan government, 95 per cent of the population had been driven from their homes to live in relative security (but horrendous conditions) in grossly overcrowded camps. The United Nations estimates that the LRA also abducted at least 20,000 children and forced them to become soldiers through a process of dehumanization and brutalization.

HART first visited northern Uganda while the LRA were still active, creating widespread terror and displacement. When we asked the local people their priority for aid, they asked HART to help them to establish a home for some of the orphans who were at risk of dying from malnutrition. In traditional African societies, such children would be adopted into an extended family. But with the dislocation of communities and the conditions of acute deprivation in the camps, there was no one to take these children into their care and there were no adequate facilities to provide for their needs.

The Paorinher Home was founded by local people, who gave land and labour with HART support. This provided a lifeline for orphaned infants and very young children, providing for their physical needs, and involving widows and grandmothers as surrogate mothers who give them love and hope.

More recently, successes by Ugandan Government forces have forced the LRA to re-locate much of its activities to Sudan and Congo, where they pose another security threat, and the danger remains of future LRA insurgency in Uganda itself. Peace talks with the LRA have been sporadic, but the relatively improved security situation has enabled many local people to return to their villages and HART employed a community worker to find for many of the children, as it is obviously better for them to grow up in a natural ‘traditional African’ environment than in an orphanage – however loving this may be.

Many of the children still return to the familiar environs of the home to retain their relationships and for pre-school education. But there is a small number of orphaned and vulnerable children (OVCs) who are HIV positive, who cannot leave, as they need to remain in the home for compliance with treatment requirements.

HART has achieved funding for the development of the Centre, based on the present home and adjacent clinic, to serve as a Regional Centre for holistic care and treatment of children with HIV/AIDS and their carers. This will also provide continuity of care for the small number of OVCs who cannot be cared for in their own communities.

In India, the stigma of [HIV] also makes a person “Untouchable” – so these people were doubly stigmatised and reduced to a miserable condition of marginalisation and deprivation.

India

HART had been making a small contribution to a project undertaken by Operation Mercy Charitable Company [OMCC] in Tamil Nadu, providing health care for Dalits [those regarded as “untouchable” in India’s caste system]. The OMCC programme included the establishment of holistic care for Dalits who were HIV positive. In India, the stigma of this condition also makes a person “Untouchable” – so these people were doubly stigmatised and reduced to a miserable condition of marginalisation and deprivation.

The OMCC project has made good progress with the establishment of a well-developed Health Care facility. HART’s financial support ceased in 2009, but our commitment to the plight of the Dalits continues, through advocacy. It is estimated that over half of human trafficking in the world is internal trafficking within India, and that 90 per cent of Indian victims are Dalits.

We have recently asked our partner in India, Dr. Beryl D’Souza, whether there are any other humanitarian needs being met by OMCC, which HART could usefully support. Dr D’Souza highlighted an emerging programme to rescue and rehabilitate ‘Temple Prostitutes’ – young people given to temples, usually by poor families, for a life of ‘service’. When they reach puberty, they are vulnerable to sexual abuse and all the associated trauma and disease. OMCC is beginning to establish a safe haven for those who can be rescued, where they will be able to receive treatment, rehabilitation and the opportunity to make a new life for themselves.

Russia

Until 2007, HART financially supported the “Our Family” foster-family care program for orphaned, abandoned and disadvantaged children, which operates two model foster-family care centres in Moscow and which works for the replacement of institutional care with fostering.

“Our Family” is now self-sustaining, and although HART is no longer supporting “Our Family” financially, we remain willing to continue to provide advocacy, political support and assistance through coordination with relevant organisations or individuals, as and when appropriate.

HART has a motto which reflects our commitment to the privilege of making a difference, through helping people in some of the most challenging parts of the world to make a difference for their own people.

HART-Australasia

An excellent Board has been established in Australia under the leadership of Dr Martin Panter, a very experienced medical practitioner who has worked over many years in different capacities with HART personnel, especially in Timor-Leste and with the Karen, Karenni and Shan peoples in the Thai-Burma borderlands.

Conclusion

In 2009, all these programs of aid and advocacy, together with the core costs of staff salaries, office accommodation and overheads, were accomplished within a budget of c. £431,000. Our partners always magnify the support HART provides in ways beyond we can ever imagine. They are true miracle workers!

HART has a motto which reflects our commitment to the privilege of making a difference, through helping people in some of the most challenging parts of the world to make a difference for their own people.

Sometimes, when we in HART look around the world and see the extent of need and then look at the size of or budget, we can feel overwhelmed – even almost paralysed. Then we remember our motto:

I cannot do everything.

But I must not do nothing.

If, together, we all do something, then, together, we really can make a difference.

If, together, we all do SOMETHING, then we really can “make a difference” – and what a privilege that is!

Endnote

[i] This Immoral Trade: Slavery in the 21^st Century, Caroline Cox and John Marks, Monarch, 2006.