The Johannesburg summit has placed a renewed focus on the developing world - where women's role in family survival and the future of society is increasingly seen as vital by development agencies. Three Irish women who work with African women in the third world talk to Anne Dempsey.
Mary Sweeney, with Trócaire
'When I was 12, I saw pictures of the famine in Biafra and I decided I was going to go to Africa. It was a very deep knowing and there was no question of anything else."
Mary Sweeney (41) has worked in development throughout the world for 20 years, and is now Trócaire's Southern African programme officer. Based in Ireland, she is frequently abroad.
A diploma in Farm Home Management offered skills which transferred well to her first posting as a Concern volunteer in Tanzania. "I went for two years, stayed for nine and got to know the women. We have a saying in Trócaire, 'the farmer and her husband'.The women are the backbone of the economy, they reminded me of the women in rural Ireland in earlier days, generating a bit of income with the egg money, saving the children's allowances for the kids' shoes.
"As a 21-year-old, I thought I had all the answers. I had to unlearn and listen. That is the only way we should be working in development, drawing out the inner knowledge of the people we work with, accompanying them, not telling them, that's where it's all gone wrong, They need ownership of the decisions. Being with women in African villages has influenced me as a woman. There was a real meeting of hearts and minds and out of it came a synthesis of what is important in life and what is not. My formation was in Africa.
"In terms of more equality, we need to change the hearts and minds of the people in the West to the realisation that people of the developing world need solidarity, not charity."
She accepts the reality of third-world corruption. "I was in Zimbabwe for the recent elections and returned home deeply traumatised. We must acknowledge there is poor governance in many countries and there is selfishness - 'take what you can for your cronies as long as you're in power'. This is widespread and very distressing.
"We are responding with New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) which aims for a link between aid and good governance. South African president Thabo Mbeke recently spoke of the need for moral regeneration, and there is a growing recognition among some African leaders that if they are to be taken seriously by the West, there must be a link between human rights, due legal process and aid.
"You can't be apolitical. All this is deeply political, but you are caught between a rock and a hard place, because while ethical solutions will take years, do you deny aid while you wait? If I ruled the world, I would cancel Third-World debt because at present we get four to five times in debt repayments what we give in aid. If there is any point to the Johannesburg summit, it would have to be truthful in what it intends to do. Many people are very good at talking the talk, but are not prepared to walk the walk. In Trócaire, all initiatives now must have a crosscutting agenda which takes in the gender dimension - involving women in all decision making, capacity building - making people stronger and better at what they do, and human rights - everyone's basic need for food, clean water and shelter."
Nuala Ryan, with the Irish Red Cross
'I always wanted to do it, and went to get it out of my system," says surgical nurse Nuala Ryan from Broadstone, Dublin, who, in 1997, joined the International Committee of the Irish Red Cross, exchanging Cavan General Hospital for more difficult terrain.
"What draws me are the ordinary people trying to live their lives, but totally disrupted by war in which they are the victims, not the main players."
Since then, she has worked most of each year in conflict or post-conflict situations including Tajikistan, Rwanda, Nepal, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia. "Unfortunately, land-mine victims are very often women or children herding cattle, going to the river for water or collecting firewood. It's very sad to see children who will never be able function properly, and young women who have little chance of marrying after they've had a limb amputated."
In recent years, she has worked as part of a multi-disciplinary team bringing food and medicines to people in conflict. She deals mostly with women, children and older people, as men of military age may be gone - dead, missing or fighting. "This strain can put a huge extra burden on a woman who has to provide for home and family. In some countries, sons as young as 12 or 14 years old become the head of the household, which is very tough on them as well.
"You deal with people on an individual basis. You have a woman sitting opposite you, telling her story, you listen and truly empathise. I think it helps a little if someone feels heard. While our work is crisis management, there are development issues, because when the infrastructure is poor, the impact of conflict is greater. As a team, we assess what is wanted - whether it be drugs, food, clean water, sanitation - ask for it, and receive it from our own people. Generally, I find the ordinary people most resourceful. In the developed world, we could learn from their courage and kindness. They are not just being nice, but have a genuine depth of feeling. Though this might seem a foolish thing to say when people are killing each other, I think working as we do, we see the core of good that is in most people.
"The Red Cross is non-political and totally impartial; we don't take sides. Both sides have victims, both need help. I like it that we don't get involved politically as it allows us to focus more clearly on people in need.
"My attitude towards Johannesburg is both negative and positive. It's good that issues are being highlighted. On the other hand, according to the UN, the cost of universal access to basic education, health, food and clean water is $40 billion a year, which is less than 4 per cent of the combined wealth of world's 225 richest people, which makes you think.
"If I ruled the world, I would take all the laws and treaties and decisions made in the name of humanity and see that they work.
"You have the Geneva Convention, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, many more, but what is the point of them if they continue not to be implemented?"
Ann Marie O'Donoghue, with Goal
Ann Marie O'Donoghue, a new volunteer, is programme manager in a food distribution project in hungry southern Malawi. She lives and works in a colonial-style house about 5 kilometres from Blantryre, Malawi, rented by the charity Goal.
"We are one of a consortium of 12 non-government organisations who literally carved up the country, each of us taking an area. We moved here on April 1st, and distribute a 50 kilo bag of maize per family per month under the World Food Programme. The Irish government funds our nutritionist programme, providing special rations for under-fives, pregnant or breast-feeding mothers. We recently got a consignment of beans through Irish aid, which gives a bit of protein with the maize.
"We do a monthly summary of what's needed. Even giving to the poorest of the poor, we can help only one in five families. People have been selling their livestock for food, it's meant that the price of chickens has dropped completely, so they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. They had their harvest in April, but as current stocks dwindle, things will get worse.We hope the government will fund a seeds and tools programme; families need a hoe, seed, fertiliser. It's four times cheaper to grow than import, and makes them more self-sufficient as well."
Malawi's food crisis is mainly the result of a four-year drought. Food aid is administered through village relief committees. "They have a 50-50 representation of women and men, a consortium decision. We have had no trouble here, but in other programmes, they had found if food control stays with the men, they can use it as a bargaining tool for sex, whereas the women will make sure that the kids and those that need it will get it."
Like much of Africa, Malawi is wracked by AIDS, which takes out parents and breadwinners. "Over 25 per cent of people in Malawi have HIV/AIDS, and it's 38 per cent in the south. You have grandmothers looking after half a dozen kids. If they are 12 or 13 when the parents die, they may be left in the village with an adult in the community to keep an eye on them. But it's heartbreaking to see it, and we make sure that they have food so that they continue going to school, otherwise they would have to work for food."
Ann Marie O'Donoghue, who is 33 and from Nenagh, Co Tipperary, worked in the property market in Hong Kong until last year. "If you sell property in Hong Kong, you can sell snow to Eskimos. I earned about £50,000 a year, the same again in bonuses, drove a Porsche, went to Bangkok for the Christmas shopping, and yes, it was the good life.
"But I used to help out in an orphanage, and realised I wanted to do something more useful. I came home, applied to an Irish third-world agency, and feel very lucky to be accepted.
"Now I work for no salary, but get a great deal of satisfaction, and I know the experience is changing me.
"I am amazed at the people here. In the Asian society I moved in, you were valued by what you earned.
"Here, they have almost nothing and the one in five families that receives, shares with the others. I met one woman the other day; Ulema Banda, a 29-year-old widow with four children. Her sister and brother-in-law have died from AIDS and she has adopted their three children. She has nothing, no money, no food and no possibilities, but she has a big heart."
