FRANCAISComité catholique contre la faim et pour le développement - History
1980-1989
-From 1980, Nicaragua: through Managua’s Central America Institute, in which some members openly claim their support to a strategic alliance between religion and socialism, the CCFD does not hide its likes for the 1979 Sandinista revolution. In the 1980s, for instance, the CCFD backs the peasant review El Machete, in which people are taught, amongst other things, how to handle a Soviet AKM 7.62 machine gun. In February 1990, the situation changes dramatically: the Sandinistas loose power and President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro is elected while the armed opposition cools down. Following the Swedish Diakonia, the German Brot für die Welt, the British Oxfam, the CUSO (Canadian University Service Overseas) and, most important of all, the Dutch agencies ICCO (Interkerkelikje Coördinatie Commissie voor Ontwikkelingsprojecten) and HIVOS (Humanistisch Instituut voor Ontwikkelingssamenwerking), the CCFD then starts to grant funds to the ASOCODE (Asociasíon de Organizaciones Campesinas Centroamericanas para la Cooperacíon y el Desarrollo), a grouping of peasants organisations launched in Managua in December 1991 to restructure the agricultural sector in post-war Central America. This federation is first under the influence of the Nicaraguan UNAG (Uníon Nacional de Productores Agropecuarios Asociados), the strongest peasant union in the region, which had already tried to set up a similar co-ordination structure two years ago in order to break down the diplomatic isolation of the Sandinista regime. Joined by Guatemala in 1993 and run by Wilson Campos, a peasant leader from Costa Rica, the ASOCODE, whose office is one block away from the one of UNAG in Managua, opposes neoliberal economic policies and competes with its equivalent in business, the FEDEPRICAP (Federación de la Entidades de la Empresa Privada de Centroamérica), which organises a rival CACI (Comité Centroaméricano de Coordinación Intersectorial) in 1994. But the end of the Sandinista revolution, in which internationalism was subordinated to the party, gives greater autonomy to peasant unions like UNAG. The ASOCODE becomes institutionalised and does not allow its members to openly criticise poor human rights record during its second Congress, which is officially inaugurated by Guatemalan President Ramiro de León Carpio in December 1993. Before the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the lobby elaborates for the European Union and the World Bank specific proposals on access to land, credit, commercialisation and sustainable land use. It also advocates economic regional integration and tries to revive the Central American common market that had fallen apart during the crisis of the late 1970s. Together with several other networks of labour unions, co-operatives and NGOs, it co-ordinates in 1994 the launching of an initiativa civil para la integración Centroamericana which will later be joined by human rights committees, women’s organisations and indigenous people. Yet regular meetings with governments does not lead to any change in agricultural policies. The ASOCODE, which criticised foreign aid agencies for funding peasant unions through intermediary NGOs, transforms itself into a new supranational organisation with separate projects, luxury offices and a growing budget, from USD 200 000 in 1992 to 1,5 million in 1996. The forum soon shows the same problems as NGOs: bureaucracy, inefficiency, lack of internal democracy, monopolising relations with funders, domination of men while women constitute one third of the peasant workforce and do not have any representative in the Regional Commission before 1994… In 1995, Wilson Campos is accused of misusing ASOCODE’s funds for personal ends and is replaced the following year by a Nicaraguan, Sinforiano Caceres. The forum eventually becomes “a chicken with golden eggs”, as Kees Biekart calls it, and decides to share 60% of its income between the national associations, while the initial agreement was that the regional co-ordination structure would be financed by the payments of its members.
-1981-1987, France: Gabriel Marc becomes the president of the CCFD, while the socialists come into power with the elections held in May 1981. Member of the French bishop’s committee Justice and Peace, former administrator of the INSEE (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) and leader of the ACI (Catholic Action of Independent Circles) between 1971 and 1977, Gabriel Marc publicly favours the independence of New Caledonia and supports Jean-Marie Tjibaou, a former priest, in his struggle. In June 1985, the CCFD is accused by the weekly magazine La Vie catholique of backing the FLNKS (National and Socialist Kanak Liberation Front) and has to give up the edition of a Kanak newspaper, Bwenando, which eventually receives money from the Revolutionary Communist league. During Gabriel Marc’s presidency between 1981 and 1987, the CCFD also backs research bodies such as the CEDAL (Centre of Development Studies in Latin America), created in 1977, and the INODEP (Ecumenical Institute for Peoples’ Development), founded in 1970 by Paulo Freire, then presided from 1977 by Jacques Choncol, a former minister for agriculture in Salvador Allende’s socialist government in Chile, a refugee in France after General Augusto Pinochet’s coup, and the director of the Institute of Latin America Studies in Paris. Considered to be a kind of “ideological laboratory” for the CCFD, INODEP wants to raise people’s conscience and to liberate the masses from the forces of oppression.
-1981-1987, Portugal: the CCFD backs the CIDAC (Amilcar Cabral Centre of Documentation and Information), which supports liberation struggles in Latin America and in the former Portuguese colonies after the 1974 Revolution in Lisbon. Directed by a former priest, Luis Moita, the CIDAC, whose name pays a tribute to the leader of the anti-colonial insurrection in Guinea Bissau, encourages in particular the Polisario Front in the Western Sahara, the EPLF (Eritrean People’s Liberation Front) in Ethiopia, and the Fretilin (Frente Revolucionaria de Timor Leste Independente) in Indonesia. Among the CIDAC’s friends are also political parties coming from liberation movements: the MPLA (People’s Liberation Movement of Angola), the FRELIMO (Liberation Front of Mozambique), the PAIGCV (African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde), the PAIVC (African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde) and the MLSTP (Liberation Movement of São Tomé e Principe).
-From 1981, Cuba: after a meeting with the governmental Comité Estatal de Colaboración Económica during a UNESCO meeting in Paris in May 1981, the CCFD starts a specialised education programme for physically and mentally handicapped people. From 1987, the Committee also supports coffee culture in a mountainous region, which helps Fidel Castro to get round the American embargo and to import farm equipment as well as small power stations.
-From 1982, Namibia: the CCFD starts giving aid to the SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation), struggling against the apartheid with the support of the USSR and of Cuban troops in Angola. In Paris, on the 11th of March 1989, Le Figaro Magazine weekly newspaper denounces the involvement of the CCFD in the Namibian refugee camp of Kwansa Sul where SWAPO recruits guerrillas under the Soviet-Cuban control in Angola. In a book of interviews with the journalist Frédéric Lenoir, the secretary general of the CCFD between 1984 and 1992, Bernard Holzer, specifies that the so-called Namibia Refugee Project consists above all in building small houses, and in teaching young people how to read and write. But he compares that programme to that of the University of Namibia, backed by the United Nations in Zambia, and aimed at training “judges, professors and police and army officers the country will need when it is independent”.
-From 1982, Afghanistan: the CCFD supports the activities of AFRANE, the Movement of Solidarity with the Afghan People’s Resistance, and the French Association of Friends of the Afghan People and Afghanistan. However, Bernard Holzer, secretary general of the CCFD, refuses to purchase weapons for the Mujaheddin, who fight against the Red Army and who ask him to do so.
-March-December 1982, Poland: thanks to its links with the Polish Church, the CCFD sends food, clothes and medicine, while the state of war has been imposed by general Wojciech Jaruzelski’s junta in December 1981.
-June 1983-June 1987, France: along with CIMADE, the CFCF, FDH and Terre des Hommes, the CCFD creates in June 1983 an Investment and International Development Society, the SIDI, which takes shares in third world companies, assists the projects of African migrant communities, and supports local businesses. The Committee also launches a mutual fund, Faim et Développement, whose income finance humanitarian programmes. The CCFD’s public utility status, recognised in June 1984, does not prevent from being criticized. On the 13th of April 1985, the Committee is accused by the Figaro Magazine of using its funds exclusively according to liberation struggles and to the socialist character of its beneficiaries. On the 25th of October of the same year, the Figaro Magazine releases excerpts from a book written by one of its journalists, under the pseudonym of Guillaume Maury, and published by a very conservative students union. The issue keeps being discussed in the national press with articles in the Figaro and the Quotidien de Paris on the 25th of March 1986. On the 17th of April 1986, the Famille Chrétienne Review publishes an unrequested report from a former president of the social chamber of the Cassation Court informing against the subsidies the CCFD gave to Chilean organisations which promote “the alliance of the Church with Marxism”. On the 15th of May 1986, in a more progressive Christian magazine, La Vie, the CCFD replies by discrediting the author of the report, as he would not have really consulted the Committee’s partners in Chile. But in 1987, the CCFD loses its trial for defamation against the Figaro Magazine. As the cofounder of a research group in Paris, DIAL (Diffusion of Information on Latin America), which received funds from the CCFD, Father Charles Antoine then publishes a book denouncing a right-wing propaganda, without giving explanations on projects that may have backed guerrillas or leftist dictatorships. As for Gabriel Marc in his autobiography, he complains about a denigration campaign and doesn’t dwell more on the political commitments of its partners in the third world. As less funds flow in after the Figaro Magazine’s attacks and the end of the mobilization for the victims of the Ethiopian famine in 1984, the CCFD has to lay off sixteen employees in June 1987.
-1984, Turkey: the CCFD backs the DISK (Devrimci Isçi Sendikalari Konfederasyonu), a communist trade union banned by General Kenan Evren’s junta.
-1986, Ethiopia: along with FDH, CIMADE, the CFCF, Emmaüs International, Solidarités Internationales, Terre des Hommes and Peuples Solidaires, the CCFD forms a collective body, “Hope-Ethiopia”, which charters a boat of food and medicine supplies to rescue the victims of the 1984 famine. But, unlike MSF, which is expelled from the country in December 1985, the CCFD capitalises on compassion and does not inform against the crimes of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam’s junta, especially the military diversion of aid and the forced transfers of population to the south. In an interview published on October 10th 1986 in the Nouvel Observateur, a weekly newspaper, the philosopher André Glucksman accuses the CCFD of ignoring its donors: “the CIMADE and the CCFD must say where the money goes. They must explain that they are not working in the field themselves and that they are donating a large part of their funds to governmental organisms. They must tell their donors that they have taken part in financing the war effort in Ethiopia, villagization, the destruction of mosques, the murder of mullahs and the rape of women…”
-26th of June 1986, France: the CCFD signs with the French episcopate a protocol that compels it to realise its projects in agreement with the local bishop or after consulting the pontifical council Cor Unum or the Vatican’s Justice and Peace Commission. In some countries of Latin America, the CCFD had been working without informing the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
-From 1987, Guatemala: with the peace negotiations, the CCFD supports the return of the retornados, refugees who had fled to Mexico, mainly Mans, Canto Bals, Jacaltec and Quiches Indians. In the north, the Committee also assists the internally displaced people, especially farmers from Peten, Sierra and Ixcán who, to escape military violence, had hidden in the forest and had gathered in co-operatives called CPR (Comunidades de Población en Resistencia).
-1988-1989, France: René Valette, a socialist professor in the Catholic university of Lyon, becomes the president of the CCFD in January 1988. As it does not share the political involvements of the organisation, the Secours catholique leaves the Committee in October. That month, the governmental National Commission on Communication and Liberties vetoes an advertisement that the CCFD wanted to broadcast on television. In February 1989, the Audio-visual High Council (CSA) refuses once more that the Committee go on air, arguing that the organisation’s reasons for wishing to do so are not only humanitarian but also religious.
-Since 1989, Lebanon: the CCFD supports a local charity, Najdeh, which helps women in Palestinian refugee camps. During the civil war, the Committee also supported the Lebanese Social Movement of Grégoire Haddad, a Catholic Greek bishop in Beirut, who was then appointed to Tyr as the ecclesiastical hierarchy disliked his militant character. Other CCFD partners were the Salvatorian Basilians of Salim Razal, who organized professional training programmes in order to facilitate the militiamen’s demobilisation.
