This year’s annual Global Campaign week was launched on Sunday 13th October 2018 at the UN square in Geneva, Switzerland with a huge procession in the European city. The launch of the campaign, also known as the Week of Peoples Mobilization, was attended by representatives of the Global Inter-Parliamentary network, affected communities, movements, trade unions and other networks and organizations. The campaign will run up to 20th.October 2018.
Friends of the Earth International groups across six continents are mobilizing to highlight the climate emergency, fight dirty energy and false solutions and to call for a people-led transformation of our energy system. The actions of the activists coincide with the launch of the IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways.
“We only have a few years left to prevent runaway climate change. We must act together to fight this climate emergency. People Power will enable us to demand much-needed system change”, note FOEI on their official website.
National Association of Professional Environmentalists, Nape’s David Kureeba says dirty energy is a fight everyone in the world should embrace. “Together we can make this work so easily. Our first target should be those that facilitate and promote dirty energy”, explains Mr. Kureeba. Kureeba is the Coordinator Friends of the Earth, Africa.
NAPE and Friends of the Earth Uganda are being represented at the Global Campaign week by Community Green radio Station Manager, Julius Kyamanywa.
The Global Campaign to Reclaim Peoples Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity (Global Campaign) is a network of over 200 social movements, networks, organizations and affected communities resisting the land grabs, extractive mining, exploitative wages and environmental destruction of transnational corporations (TNCs) in different global regions, particularly Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Campaign is a people’s global structural response to unaccountable corporate power. It provides facilitation for dialogue, strategizing, exchanging information and experiences and acts as a space to make resistance visible and deepen solidarity and support for struggles against TNCs.
At the same time the Campaign proposes an International Peoples Treaty which provides a political framework to support the local, national and international movements and communities in their resistances and practices of alternatives to corporate power and the TNC model of the economy. It also participates in the campaign for UN Binding Treaty to regulate TNCs, stop human rights violations, end impunity and ensure access to justice for affected communities.
The Week of Peoples Mobilization in Geneva (13 – 20 October 2018), also coincides with the 4th Session of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group mandated to develop a UN Binding Treaty on Transnational Corporations and other business enterprises with respect to Human Rights (OEIGWG).
Story Compiled by Julius Kyamanywa in Geneva