Save Zimbabwe From Mugabe

From AVAAZ

"Violence, intimidation and murder have won the day in Zimbabwe."
- Moses Moyo*

In elections this March, the people of Zimbabwe sent a clear message: Morgan Tsvangirai, not Robert Mugabe, should lead their government.

Since then, through a campaign of violence, fraud, and intimidation, Mugabe's government has undermined any hope for a legitimate run-off on June 27. The MDC has, appropriately, withdrawn. But this is not a concession of victory -- it is an acknowledgment of reality.

Now, the world's eyes turn to the leaders of Southern Africa -- without whom even Mugabe cannot retain power. Please sign on to this message to Thabo Mbeki and other Southern African leaders, and Avaaz will deliver it this week in newspaper ads throughout the region.

• See a mock up of the Ad
• Take 2 minutes to sign the Avaaz petition
• Learn More about it

* Moses Moyo is the pseudonym of an independent Zimbabwe-born journalist based in Harare, who is reporting exclusively for The First Post

Marion rocks ACF campaign

Tess Taheny-Penna - The Body Shop Marion - South Australia.

Our store was very successful with the recent Tell Kevin You Care ACF campaign. As of yesterday I think we had nearly 600 postcards signed, I think this was a great effort as we have not been particularly busy in the last few weeks.

I think we were so successful due to having a 'motivation' night a few days before the campaign started. We watched An Inconvenient Truth and spoke about how we all play a part with our carbon emissions. This meant that every staff member approached the campaign feeling very confident with how to speak to customers (especially the slightly difficult ones).

The target of a 30 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 that we advocate for the Australian Government to adopt is reasonable and modest. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists found that if wealthy countries reduce emissions by 25–40 per cent by 2020, we’ll give ourselves a 50/50 chance of keeping global warming below two degrees. That’s a real gamble. To improve our chances of avoiding the worst climate impacts, we would need to make bigger reductions by 2020.

UN classifies rape a 'war tactic'

From the BBC


Photo: More Altitude

The UN Security Council has voted unanimously in favour of a resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war. The document describes the deliberate use of rape as a tactic in war and a threat to international security.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said violence against women had reached "unspeakable proportions" in some societies recovering from conflict. The UN is also setting up an inquiry to report next June on how widespread the practice is and how to tackle it. Human rights group hailed the resolution as historic.

'Silent war'

The BBC's Laura Trevelyan said China, Russia, Indonesia and Vietnam had all expressed reservations during the negotiations, asking whether rape was really a matter for the UN security council. But the US-sponsored resolution was adopted unanimously by the 15-member Council.

It described sexual violence as "a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group". The document said that the violence "can significantly exacerbate situations of armed conflict and may impede the restoration of international peace and security".

During the debate in the Council, Mr Ban said: "Responding to this silent war against women and girls requires leadership at the national level." "National authorities need to take the initiative to build comprehensive strategies while the UN needs to help build capacity and support national authorities and civil societies," he added. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the world now recognised that sexual violence profoundly affected not only the health and safety of women, but the economic and social stability of their nations.

Other speakers identified the former Yugoslavia, Sudan's Darfur region, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Liberia as regions where deliberate sexual violence had occurred on a mass scale.

Deterrent?

The former commander of the UN peacekeeping force in eastern Congo, Major-General Patrick Cammaert, told the BBC he personally witnessed its impact. "It's a very effective weapon, because the communities are totally destroyed," he said. "You destroy communities. You punish the men, and you punish the women, doing it in front of the men."

In the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, some 40 women are raped every day, our correspondent says. Sometimes women are even raped by peacekeepers who are supposed to be protecting them, she adds. The question is whether those in conflict zones who use rape in war will be at all deterred by the new measures, she says.

Learn More:

• Amnesty International's Stop Violence Against Women campaign
• Related UN News Centre Article

Stop Bridgestone Tyres from using child labour!

By Adam Valvasori - Values Manager

To mark the recent World Day Against Child Labour (15 June), The Body Shop Australia calls on Bidgestone Americas Holding Inc the makers of Bidgestone and Firestone tyres to make concrete changes on their rubber plantation in Liberia to ensure an end to child labour.

According to the International Labour Rights Forum :

Firestone workers must tap trees in order to extract the latex necessary for making rubber tires. The rubber tappers must meet a daily production quota or their already low wages will be halved.

By Firestone Natural Rubber Company CEO Dan Adomitis’ own admission on CNN (transcript), it would take over 21 hours to meet the quota. As a result, tappers are forced to bring their children and wives to work. Children are forced to carry two 70 pound buckets of rubber on their shoulders for miles. In addition, tappers and their children must apply toxic pesticides without protection.

From their website, it looks like the Firestone Natural Rubber Company should be congratulated for doing a lot for local communities in Liberia, in terms of jobs, education and healthcare. However, it's time for Firestone to change its pay structure to a living wage and enforce their own "zero-tolerance policy against bringing children to a work site". The reality is that changing the quota system is the only way of stopping child labour.



The Solutions:

• After a long struggle, the workers on the plantation finally have democratic and independent union.
  
• The union is negotiating their new collective bargaining agreement with company management right NOW.
• The biggest demands for the workers is to switch from a task-based pay system to a fair, daily wage. Note: the current adult wage is only $3.19 a day!
• Firestone can honour World Day Against Child Labor by agreeing to end the quota system, but they need pressure from you!

Activist action The Body Shop has taken:

• The Body Shop Australia is immediately boycotting Bridgestone / Firestone tyres for all of our company vehicles until they end the quota system in their rubber plantations in Liberia.
• Talking to the International Labor Rights Forum about how we can best support their campaigns to stop this human rights abuse.

Activist action you can take:

• Read more about the issue and download campaign materials from www.stopfirestone.org/about
  
• Use your ethical purchasing power to only support tyre manufacturers that do not use child labour.
• Use this form to email Firestone and demand change!
• Help spread the word by joining the Stop Firestone MySpace or Facebook group.
  

~ Adam

Join the mass online protest against whaling in the Southern Ocean

By Deb Baxter -The Body Shop

Create your own electronic whale out of virtual origami paper, and send it "swimming" with a personal message to the Prime Minister of Japan.

In just over a month, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meets in Chile. Japan will be pushing hard for approval to resume full-scale commercial whaling. Greenpeace will be delivering all the origami whales to the Japanese embassy in Canberra, highlighting them in the media, and showing them to IWC delegates in Chile. Meanwhile, Greenpeace has released explosive evidence of corruption in the whaling program - where whale meat is being stolen and sold on the black market. The scandal - resulting from a 3-month undercover investigation by Greenpeace - has made the front pages of newspapers across Japan and brought the entire whaling program into further disrepute. Increasingly, the Japanese public is concerned about their taxes subsidising an aging whaling fleet conducting fake science to justify a hunt for whale meat few want to eat. Now is the moment to increase the swell of international outrage about whaling with "Origami whales" and bring Japan into the fold! Click to make your origami whale today!

Photos from our ACF Campaign

Outside The Body Shop Bourke Street Store















The Body Shop Bourke Street Team














The Body Shop Melbourne Central Team

Be Humankind

By Adam Valvasori - Values Man



Oxfam UK has re-branded... Be Humankind. I like it... check out their website. I especially love the interactive mapping in the Reshaping Our World section. See how the world really looks in terms of global education, population, poverty, hunger, HIV and trade. The above video is a tad cheesy but as a cartoon kid I love the sentiment. Ordinary people can be superheros if they just speak up (or even vomit fire) on injustice.

Have a great weekend everyone!

~Adam

Obese wealth

By Adam Valvasori - Values Manager

'Nice ad placement' by Aaron Suggs

Today, Jacques Diouf, the head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, placed part of the blame for rising worldwide food prices, related unrest and famines in developing countries on Western obesity.

"The excess consumption by the world's obese costs $20 billion annually, to which must be added indirect costs of $100 billion resulting from premature death and related diseases," he said.

It makes our fears of paying $1.60 for a litre of petrol seem somewhat petty when we're talking about potentially nearly 1 billion people who won't get enough to eat, in no small part thanks to unfair trade policies of the U.S, Europe and other wealthy nations.


'Reality' by Mike BG

More than 1 in 6 people in the world have no choice but to choose the one on the right.

They don't have access to safe drinking water.

In developing countries, about 80% of illnesses are linked to poor water and sanitation conditions.

Over one-third of the world's population has no access to sanitation facilities.

My question is will individuals, businesses and Governments ever stop to realise how obscene our relative wealth has become? Will we ever become bigger than our own greed and prioritise wealth redistribution to the truly hungry, thirsty and sick people of our world who are dieing in the shadow of our gross wastefulness?

What can you do? Heaps!

• Stop to think about things you don't need to buy for yourself. Save that money and help to lift someone out of the despair of poverty. Eg: Kiva. It will be a lot more rewarding.
  
• Don't waste food.
• Make Poverty History
• Learn about the Millennium Development Goals
• Throw your weight behind Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign
  
• Ask your local MP about the Government's timetable to increase our overseas aid contribution to it's own target of 0.5% of GNI and then ultimately the UN target of 0.7% of GNI (currently we're at 0.32% the equivalent of 32cents for every $100 in our economy)
• Join the 'Kevin .7' campaign on Facebook!
  

We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected. - Millennium Declaration

~ Adam.

MTV EXIT

Cassie Monahan - TBS Trainer

The other day I was watching MTV when what can only be described as the most amazing yet confronting ad I have seen for a very long time was shown.

The ad, a collaboration between Radiohead, MTV and USAID raises awareness about child trafficking. It depicts the parallel lives of two young boys, one living a happy life the other living a life of horror. Watch it now!




After watching the ad I wanted to know more about child trafficking, according to MTV EXIT the UN estimates that worldwide about 2.5 million people are victims of trafficking and over half of these people are in Asia and the Pacific. This is the equivalent of the combined populations of the ACT, South Australia and Tasmania. Trafficking is also the second largest crime after drugs and the UN estimates the total market value of trafficking to be around $32billion

MTV EXIT aims to increase awareness and prevention of human trafficking through tv programs, online content, live events and partnerships with anti-trafficking organisations.

Child trafficking and trafficking in general is an issue that needs more awareness and I applaud MTV for taking an innovative stance towards raising awareness on the issue. It certainly makes you think twice about trafficking and child labour and how products that we purchase our produced.

Take Action

Find out how you can help, go to MTV EXIT and read more about the issue, then help to raise awareness by telling your friends and family to make them more aware.

~ Cassie

Kevin, I Care About Climate Change!

By Adam Valvasori - Climate Change Campaigner

Today we're excited to be launching our third* campaign partnership with the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF): Tell Kevin You Care About Climate Change.

This campaign asks the Rudd Government to improve our response to the threat of climate change by setting a reasonable, national target to reduce greenhouse pollution by 30% by 2020.

A lot has been said about the dangerous impact climate change will have on every one of us. It does however also present huge opportunities for Australia. By dealing with climate change boldly, we can change from one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases per capita, to a world leader in renewable energy, creating new jobs and new clean technologies for export.

I found it very bemusing to hear that Germany has ten times the number of solar panels as Australia, but only half as much sunlight!

Take Action:

• Visit one of our stores or attend an At Home party and ‘tell Kevin you care’ by signing a postcard. By including your postal address, ACF will post you a free Climate Change Action Kit, full of tips to reduce your environmental footprint. We aim to get at least 86,000 postcards signed by the end of the three week campaign!
• Read / Watch Government urged to boost solar incentives from the ABC's 7:30 Report
• For more campaign details, talk to our friendly 'greenies' in your local The Body Shop store or go to www.acfonline.org.au

*Other values campaigns we've run with ACF...

1995 Stop Woodchipping Old Growth Forests

Distributed a postcard focusing public pressure on Prime Minister, Paul Keating, to stop wood chipping in 1300 areas of high conservation value. 35 000 postcards were sent to the PM asking him to protect the threatened forest areas and to announce a timetable for placing the areas in a system of parks and reserves. Representatives of The Body Shop also took part in three way discussions between the government, the forestry industry and the Green movement.

2007 Spoil Yourself Not The Planet

Provided customers with an opportunity to educate themselves about climate change and reduce their impact on the environment. 6,500 customers were encouraged to sign up for a free climate change action kit from the ACF. We also sold 10,000 shower timers (at cost) to show a practical way we can all reduce our impact on the environment.



~ Adam

P.S: A big thanks to Michael Fogarty, Sara McMillan and everyone at ACF who helped to pull this campaign together.