>
Catholic Committee Against Hunger and for Development
>
History

Comité catholique contre la faim et pour le développement - History



1990-1999


-1992-1999, France: at an international forum bringing together over 60 000 persons at Le Bourget in the outskirts of Paris in June 1992, the CCFD launches the idea of a Fondation Terre d’Avenir (World of Hope Fund) to finance development education and information projects. With the Crédit Lyonnais, the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, the Crédit coopératif and the Dexia Bank, the Committee also launches a Sicav (Société d’Investissement à Capital Variable, or Variable Capital Investment Society), Eurco (Europe Cooperation Solidarity), which aims to help the creation of companies in Eastern European countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The CCFD, which counts at the time over a hundred employees, tries to professionalize its activities, opens itself up to the business world and hires new people since Church networks can’t supply enough qualified personnel. Thus is created the post of secretary general with a profile which is much more administrative than militant. Through public relations counselling, the CCFD, which is recognised as a “main national cause” in 1993 and coordinates the French campaign for the cancellation of third world debt in 1999, hopes to develop its fund raising capacity; from 1987 onwards it switches the focus of its advertising campaigns from the victim to the donor; from 1989 onwards it commissions an annual survey of the international solidarity of the French conducted by the opinion poll firm Lavialle.
 
-Since 1993, Brazil: in a country where it has been working for almost twenty years, and to which at least one quarter of its activities in Latin America is dedicated, the CCFD, which supported the campaign against hunger of the Movimento pela etica política in 1992, backs the INESC (Instituto de Estudios Socioeconomicos), which lobbies members of parliament about various social issues, from the delimitation of the Indian territory to the struggle against poverty. In the Ceara, a State in the Nordeste, the CCFD encourages the CETRA (Centro de Estudos do Trabalho e de Assessoria co Trabalhador) to supply legal aid to community-based and union organisations. Until 1994, the Committee supports a project of the national trade union CUT (Central Unica dos Trabalhadores) aimed at training small-scale farmers in the Sudeste, the so-called minifundists, and the rural leaders of the Nordeste in the sugar cane, cacao and fruit sectors.
 
-From 1996, Burundi: with the Flemish Broederlijk-Delen and the Canadian Développement et Paix, the CCFD starts to back a local institute, INADES-Formation, which first tries to reorganise the coffee production, then the cotton industry in 2001. The subsidies of the Committee constitute about one half of a yearly budget of €100,000 only in 2000 and 2001. Created in 1967 by the social and research centre of the bishops of Rwanda and Burundi, recognised as an independent association in 1975, INADES-Formation in Bujumbura is the national branch of a panafrican NGO which was founded in 1962 and whose headquarters is in Ivory Coast. After a temporary closure because of the fighting within Bujumbura and the forced departure of its employees in 1993, INADES-Formation could resume its activities when the coup d’Etat of Pierre Buyoya stabilises the situation in the capital city in 1996. It is officially in charge of the organisation of coffee planters within the framework of a governmental agency, the OCIBU (Burundian Office for Industrial Cultures), and the World Bank, which wants to liberalise the economy, to reduce the involvement of the state and to incite peasants to invest in a privatised agriculture since 1991. The programme is fraught with difficulties, as the rural provinces are torn apart by the civil war. Because of the embargo of neighbouring countries against the regime of Pierre Buyoya, coffee has to be smuggled and exported at a higher price by plane. Moreover, the rebels want to destroy the plantations or to tax peasants in exchange for their “protection”. Coffee is a strategic asset because it brings 80% of the income of Burundi in hard currencies, even if its proportion in the state budget decreases because of a decline in the production and the market prices. To resume agricultural work, INADES-Formation has to reconcile the Hutu who sought refuge in the hills and the displaced Tutsi who went into the valleys under the supervision of the army. Amongst the Hutu, it has also to manage land disputes between those who stayed in the plantations and those who left them. The conventions signed with the OCIBU in 1996, 1998, 2001 and 2002 plan the establishment of peasants associations in the provinces of Kayanza, Ngozi, Muramvya, Mwaro and Gitega, then of Kirundo and Muyinga in 2003. INADES-Formation thus follows four main objectives. First, it defends the rights of petty farmers cheated during the weighing of their harvest or the distribution of insecticides, which are deducted from the purchasing price of the coffee but which are often sold on the black market instead of being released to planters. Secondly, it provides fertilisers for food production and tries to support income generating activities (cotton, beekeeping, mushrooms, goats and cows raising) in order to reduce the dependency on the coffee monoculture. Thirdly, it wants to empower women and take care of the environment, for instance by reafforesting nurseries. Fourthly, it aims at improving the savings capacity of planters who all need capital at the same time, according to agricultural seasons, and who usually borrow money to usurers because they don’t have access to formal banks. In the future, the idea is to propose micro-credits. Meanwhile, the mutual aid fund set up by INADES-Formation only covers the sick and its turnover is quite low, some € 20,000 in 2003. As a matter of fact, the impact of INADES-Formation is rather limited in general. It focuses on the North and the West of Burundi, where most coffee plantations and development projects are since the environment is relatively secured, except in the province of Bujumbura-Rural. Moreover, only the members of planters associations can benefit from INADES-Formation’s programmes. Under the supervision of a national confederation, the number of grassroots organisations (329 in 2001, 360 in 2002 and 923 in 2003), communal unions (39 in 2002, 69 in 2003) and provincial federations (1 in 2002, 4 in 2003) rose. But very few are effectively operating: only twenty according to the annual review of INADES-Formation in Abidjan in 2002. Indeed many planters associations lost members who refused to pay the fees that were supposed to involve them into community projects. Anyway, membership (15, 104 in 2001, maybe 50,000 in 2003) represents a tiny fraction of the 700,000 or so coffee planters in Burundi. According to OCIBU and Pascal Baridomo, INADES-Formation is a small NGO and “can not cope with the demand”.
 
-From March 1997, Colombia: in the region of Uraba, the CCFD through farming projects starts to support the rural “peace communities” who sign neutrality agreements with the combatants, committing themselves not to be armed, not to feed or help either of the two sides nor to divulgate useful information to them. The programme is conducted with the CINEP (Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular), an organisation set up by the Jesuits in 1972 after the CIAS (Centro de Investigación y Acción Social) in 1962. Before, the CCFD also backed small businesses and community projects implemented to facilitate the social reintegration of 3,264 former guerrillas from the M19 (Movement of the 19th of April), the PRT (Partido revolucionario de los trabajadores), the MQL (Quintin Lame Mouvement), the EPL (Ejercito popular de liberación) and the CRS (the Socialist Renewal Group, a dissidence from the Ejercito de liberación nacional).
 
-1998, United States: the CCFD gets a consultative status in the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.
 
-1999, ex-Yugoslavia: in Kosovo, the CCFD starts working with the Centre for the protection of women and children, founded in 1993 and presided over by Svedije Ahmeti, a woman who is awarded a human rights prize by HRW (Human Rights Watch) in 2000. On the Serb side, the Committee supports the Republika newspaper, the Centre of Human Rights in Belgrade, Rom community-based organisations in Kraljevo, inter-ethnic friendship clubs in Most, and Group 484, which assists traumatized children and teenagers coming from Kosovo.