Avaaz, a global civic organization launched in January 2007 that promotes activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict, recently launched about a campaign to "stop rage and murder".
The campaign's purpose is to raise sufficent funds to give Mayan villagers in Guatemala, victims of recent brutal evictions of security forces of Canadian mining company HudBay, access to "the same legal firepower as HudBay’s corporate machine" in order to win their lawsuit against the company. Avaaz argues a verdict in the villagers' favour could "force HudBay and other multinationals to clean up their acts abroad".
In light of this campaign and the recent funding decisions taken by CIDA, The Canadian Association of International Development Consultants (CAIDC) must wonder: Is this what CIDA, along with Canadian mining companies and Canadian NGOs want to get involved with?
Mining is Canada's biggest business abroad. We are in a global village now where everyone knows the business of everyone else. Perhaps good development knowledge, well-heeded, and paired to the investment of our mining companies abroad could help to avoid making such awful headlines in the future.
More to come.
- CAIDC
