Justícia i Pau

Currently two and a half million people live on less than two dollars a day, and more than a million of them do not dispose of even one dollar a day. Eight hundred million people go hungry and over a thousand million do not have access to water treatment facilities. While 20% of the world’s population controls 80% of global wealth, 50% have never made a telephone call. Three hundred thousand million dollars a year would be enough to move all the planet’s poor out of poverty  while one thousand million dollars are spent on armies and weapons. The citizens of the rich countries are not even aware of these inequalities.

In light of the situation, the Committee on Globalisation and North-South Relations formed in 2005 with the goal of contributing to making the fight against inequalities and poverty a political priority worldwide. The group provides Catalan society with information about inequalities between North and South and applies political pressure in favour of policies aimed at correcting inequalities: more fairness in trade, cancellation of the external debt of poor countries, transparency, improvements in the quality and quantity of official aid to development.

Among the social movements that this situation has produced, the Committee was born with the intention of gradually defining the Justice and Peace’s position, as well as doing the organisation’s consciousness raising and political pressure work on these issues. Among the activities are

• Organisation of chats, seminars, and conferences, media appearances, publication of materials on globalisation and its problems, inequalities between North and South and the policies necessary for combating them.
• Promotion of Justice and Peace’s campaign on economic relations between North and South. This is the fourth phase of the “For a more just globalisation” campaign started in 2002, aimed at achieving broader public knowledge of the processes of globalisation, their effects and what institutional reforms, public policies, personal attitudes and commitments on the part of citizens could have a positive effect on the process of globalisation. The objective of this fourth phase is to draw attention to North-South political and economic relations and the structures that generate poverty and dependency in poor countries (see campaigns section).
• Participation in the activities of the Catalan Federation of Development NGOs. 
• Monitoring of policies of Catalan government institutions on cooperation.
• Participation in coalitions, campaigns and groups working in these areas: Who Owes Whom? Zero Poverty, Let’s Make It Everyone’s World.
• Analysis of the processes of globalisation in terms of mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion in relations among and within countries: migrations, pockets of poverty in rich countries, etc.