Issue 66 December 1998
The Right Livelihood Award Foundation
The Right Livelihood Award Foundation
The Right Livelihood Award, which will this year be presented at a ceremony in the Swedish Parliament, Stockholm, 9 December, is shared by. international Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), Professor Samuel Epstein, of the Cancer Prevention Coalition (CPC, Juan Pablo Orrego and Grupo de Accion por el Biobio (GABB), Chile and Katarina Kruhonja and Vesna Terselic, workers for peace, Croatia.
The aims of the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize, (founded in 1980), are "to honour and support those offerings practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today". The idea came from a Swedish philatelic, Jakob von Uexkull, who sold his stamp collection to set up the fund. Approximately US$230,000 is each year shared by the Award recipients.
Phone (08) 7020340 Fax (08) 7020338 (international code +46) e-mail: ; PO Box 15072, S-10465 Stockholm, Sweden
INTERNATIONAL BABY FOOD ACTION NETWORK (IBFAN)
This was the name taken by a small group of organisations who came together in 1979 at the end of a WHO/UNICEF meeting on infant feeding. IBFAN was the first international, single-issue network of its kind – to be followed later by Health Action International, the Pesticide Action Network and others. Institutionally it is remarkable for having maintained a horizontal and non-hierarchical structure despite periods of rapid and substantial growth. it has no headquarters and no executive director.
IBFAN brought together the non-governmental Organisations which were addressing infant feeding and infant health and United these organisations in a common aim: improving breast feeding rates, reducing dependence on industrial artificial milk Products, and protecting families' freedom of choice based on full, unbiased information and support.
Key to this campaign was the regulation of marketing of infant feeding products, by of the International Code of Marketing of Breast milk substitutes, which was adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1981. In the face of the enormous power of the multinationals which dominate the world infant baby food market, IBFAN has continued to find means to mobilise people effectively to press their governments for action, to undertake citizen monitoring of compliance with the recommendations of the World Health Assembly, and to stimulate self-reliance and effective action at the grassroots level. (The international boycott of Nestle for breaches of the WHO/UNICEF Code is perhaps the campaign for which IBFAN is best known).
Monitoring) the International code and pressing government and industry to adopt it in full has remained a central and ongoing struggle for IBFAN. Twenty seven governments have so far translated it into national law; another forty eight have enacted portions of it or have laws in draft form and twenty one have implemented the International Code as a voluntary measure. IBFAN have organised training courses for government officials and legal advisers to help them write their national legislation. This year they have also published a new, 360-page Code Handbook with all the information needed to formulate – or press for – appropriate laws.
Address: International Baby Food Action Network, A]Alison Linnecar, c/o GIFA. P.O. Box 157, 1211 Geneva 19, Switzerland. E-mail: philipec@iprolink.
SAMUEL EPSTEIN, CANCER PREVENTION COALITION (CPC), USA
Samuel Epstein was born in England in 1926, graduated as a doctor and rose to work as a consultant pathologist at major institutions and hospitals before emigrating to the US in 1960. He has worked at the Children's Cancer Research Foundation and later in 1976 he became Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois in Chicago where he set up the first laboratories of toxicology and carcinogenesis in the United States. Epstein has emerged as the leading international champion of cancer prevention, and of winning the war against cancer by preventing avoidable exposures to environmental carcinogens in air, water, food and the workplace. Epstein is Chairman of the Board of the Cancer Prevention Coalition (CPC), which is proposing a comprehensive strategy on outreach, education and advocacy to establish prevention as the nation's top cancer policy. The "Right to Know" programme is based partly on a book, "The Safe Shoppers' Bible", co-authored by Epstein, which evaluates some 3,500 consumer products for undisclosed carcinogenic ingredients and contaminants. The "Bible" is to be published in a new edition in 1999. Epstein notes that "several global industries have since reformulated their products which are now safer.".
Address: Professor Samuel Epstein, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health (M/C 922), 2121 W Taylor St., Chicago, IL 60612-7260, USA. Website: www.preventcancer.com
JUAN PABLO ORREGO, CHILE
He was born in 1949, has an MSc. in environmental studies and is also a composer and singer. In 1991 he helped to found the Grupo de Accion por el Biobio (GABB), to save the Biobio river in Southern Chile, which is one of South Americas most spectacular rivers and of great ecological significance. It is also home to the Pehuenche Indians.
Since the 1960s, there have been plans to build a linked series of six dams on the Biobio:. The ecological damage would be great and the disruption would probably destroy the indigenous culture. The scheme is now being actively promoted by ENDESA, Chile's near-monopoly energy company. ENDESA was 100% privatised in the last days of the Pinochet regime, with some of Pinochet's prominent backers being the major beneficiaries. ENDESA wields enormous economic and political power.
GABB has two main thrusts to its work: campaigning against the dams amongst the general population, and impl ementation of alternative development projects with the Pehuenche.
Despite GABB's campaigning, the Pangue dam was inaugurated in April 1997 by President Frei. However, the campaign puts light on the public agenda, issues that no one had raised before: issues of energy policy, environment, indigenous people's rights, ENDESA's monopoly and the country's overall development goals. Orrego and some 400 Chilean citizens also made complaints to the.World Bank Inspection Panel for their handling of the project and the Bank subsequently agreed to commit itself to strengthening its environmental and social performance. Recent environmental legislation in Chile that ENDESA is having to follow a much more rigorous approval process for Ralco, the second dam, than when it started the Pangue dam.
Orrego sums up the slow-burning Ralco crisis in these words: "The situation is extremely complex because the Biobio situation ... involves so many 'hot' aspects and issues of Chile's difficult present reality. Just the combination of the indigenous and environmental issues in one cause in Chile today is 'explosive'. If you add the issues of energy policy, ENDESA's monopoly, citizens' participation and the imperfection of Chile's democracy – issues which are all in question around the Biobio situation - then you will understand why the Biobio cause is so, important as to be called emblematic by many."
Address: Juan Pablo Orrego, c/o GABB, Ernesto Pinto Lagarrigue 112, Recoleta, Santiago, Chile. Fax: +56 2 777 6414.
KATARINA KRUHONJA and VESNA TERSELIC (CROATIA)
Vesna Terselic, born in 1962, was largely responsible for founding the Croatian Anti-War Campaign (ARK) in 1991 and has been for sane years its National Coordinator.
ARK brings together people from different social movements (environmental, human rights, women, peace and spiritual). Its charter, which has been signed by 90 organisations and 500 individuals from all ex-Yugoslavs republics and other countries, states:
Whatever resolutions are found for today's conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia, people here will continue living together. We have the same interests; war and violence are an injury to us all... we will keep up our communication and cooperation regardless of.different political positions. . .We stand for freedom, justice and prosperity for all."
Katarina Kruhonja was born in Osijek in 1949. She is Director of the Centre for Peace, Non-violence and Human Rights in Osijek in the East Slavonia region of Croatia. She is a physician and until recently, when she temporarily gave.up the practice of medicine to concentrate on peace work, was the senior, nationally. recognised, specialist in nuclear medicine in Osijek hospital. The Centre was founded in 1992, and was initially part of ARK. It became formally independent of ARK in 1993, but is still a 'collective'.
ARK is now a network of about 15 local and specialised organisations, a peace movement that is also the strongest and most active part of emerging civil society in Croatia. The work reaches out across the borders into Serbia and Bosnia where possible, and both Terselic and Kruhonja give workshops abroad regularly. Through her educational work Terselic has – organised more than 200 workshops for psychologists, teachers at all levels of education and pupils. Largely as a result, elements of non-violent conflict resolution and non-violent communications have been introduced into a large number of elementary schools and more than 4000 teachers have been trained in these fields.
Terselic has also facilitated courses in peace-building and conflict transformation in Croatia and – the first to do so after the end of the war – in Bosnia, as well as recently in the very troubled area of Eastern Slavonia. She has led courses in women's studies, and several in women's leadership.
As a result of work facilitated by Terselic and Kruhonja, in March 1996 three organisations from Serbia and eight others from Croatia came together to form the 'Coordination of Peace organisations for East Slavonia, Baranja and West Sirmium'.
The commitment of these two women, and -the many organisations and activities which they have helped to inspire, has significantly increased the prospects for a transition in the Balkans from war and ethnic division to democracy, justice, non-violence and peaceful cohabitation.
Addresses:
Vesna Terselic, Anti War Campaign of Croatia, Gajeva 55, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia, and
Dr Katarina Kruhonja, Centre for Peace, Nonviolence & Human Rights, Kersovanijeva 4, H-31000 Osijek, Croatia, Fax: +385 31 123 218.
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