Emelia Amoateng speaking to a delegation from Oxfam America in the church in her village, Teberebie. Photo by Neil Brander/Oxfam America.

The first time I met Emelia Amoateng she introduced me to the members of the Teberebie Concerned Farmers’ Association. The farmers had recently been moved off their land by the Iduapriem gold mine, and were contesting the compensation they were offered by the company. “According to our law, no one should take anything away from you by force, but that is what happened here in Teberebie,” she said to me.

Teberebie’s fields are now buried under massive piles of grey waste rock. The farmers live in modest concrete homes the company built, and have to walk long distances (15 kilometers round trip) to their new fields where they grow oil palms, cocoa, pineapples, and other crops in the rich tropical soil. They live close enough to the mining operation that their homes crack from the blasting in the mine pit, but few of the people have been able to secure employment there.

When I first went to Teberebie in 2007, Amoateng and the others in the Association were in the early stages of what has become a 10-year legal battle. With help from Oxfam’s partners the Center for Public Interest Law and the human rights and environmental group Wacam, the farmers maintained their struggle, despite having little income as the case dragged slowly through the courts.

Oxfam America’s partner Wacam trains activists in the rights protected under Ghana’s Minerals and Mining Act. Photo by Chris Hufstader/Oxfam America

The case is now on the verge of being settled in court-ordered arbitration, so it is particularly tragic that Amoateng, 38, passed away earlier this month. Despite chronic asthma, she was an inspiring and dedicated leader, tirelessly defending the rights of her neighbors when innocent community members were shot by police, and documenting chemical spills so the community could get appropriate compensation for damages. When the proper authorities failed to do their duty to protect the lives, livelihoods, and property of her community, Amoateng reached out to the media and led demonstrations to call attention to the injustices being perpetrated against Teberebie. She did all this while taking classes to finish her secondary education, and raising two children.

“Our constitution says that if someone comes for your farm, they should negotiate and compensate you before they carry out a project,” she told me, showing me her copy of Ghana’s 2006 Minerals and Mining Act. Her training helped her hold the government and AngoGold Ashanti Mining company accountable for their actions.

Emelia Amoateng in 2007. Photo by Chris Hufstader/Oxfam America

I found out that Emelia passed away last week when I was in Senegal, driving from the eastern region Tambacounda back to Dakar. We stopped for lunch and I took advantage of a wi-fi connection to get my email, and I read a statement from Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, one of the founders of Wacam: “Emelia Amoateng, the great warrior of Teberebie and an icon of Wacam, has gone the way of all mortals. She died carrying high the resolve of Wacam to fight against irresponsible mining.”

As we’ve posted here  and written in our magazine (p. 7), Ghana civil society organizations have gained substantial ground in collaborating with their government to promote transparency in oil revenue. They can now see what taxes, royalties, and other payments the government collects, and monitor where that money is spent.

Here at Oxfam we have worked hard to support the work in Ghana to build a culture of transparency and good governance. We’ve complemented this work in Ghana with our advocacy in the US for the payment transparency provisions in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (p. 8). These provisions are under threat in a law suit by the American Petroleum Institute (the lobbying arm of the US oil industry), which is seeking to block that entire section of Dodd-Frank, legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Obama.

What are the oil companies y trying to hide? This is the question posed by Boakye Dankwa Boadi in a video we released last week. The efforts of Mr. Boadi and others in Ghana to promote transparency and responsible governance are under threat. He sees legislation like Dodd-Frank as a measure that will help them check the money coming in to the government with payments reported by the companies themselves. He says this will help Ghana “cross the path of poverty” to becoming a more developed nation.

The court heard oral arguments last week, and we anticipate a decision in the coming months. Oxfam is calling for oil companies to publicly disassociate themselves from the API suit, and we’re asking you to sign a petition to support this.

This blog post was written by Erin Gorman, CEO of Divine Chocolate, a 100 percent fair trade company owned in part by the farmers of the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative in Ghana. Oxfam America is partnering with Divine Chocolate for this year’s International Women’s Day celebration.

Christiana Adusei. Photo:Sophi Tranchell

Christiana Adusei, a 58-year-old cocoa farmer, sits with me in the cooperative’s meeting room in Kumasi watching the Ghana Black Stars play in the Africa Cup of Nations.  In two months she will be coming to the US, her first trip out of Ghana, to speak to consumers, businesses, and politicians about her life as a woman cocoa farmer.

Christiana, like so many women in cocoa, ‘’has it all” – all the household duties, the cooking, the cleaning, the farming of foodstuffs. They ensure children go to school and their health is looked after. They farm cocoa and do the drying and fermenting of beans.

Unlike most women in cocoa, Christiana is a member in her own right of a fair trade farmers’ cooperative. She joined Kuapa Kokoo with her husband 11 years ago, because she heard from other farmers that the organization was democratic and fair and that farmers received bonuses and a cutlass, which is among a cocoa farmer’s most prized tools.

About eight years ago she started as the secretary to the village recorder, the person who is elected by the village society to purchase its cocoa for Kuapa. She started training farmers to dry and ferment their cocoa properly so that it met Kuapa’s standards of good cocoa.

“I saw that I was a good teacher and that I could keep good records, and I decided that I should become a recorder myself,” Christiana said. At the elections she stood against the recorder, a man, and won. “Kuapa trained me that as a woman I could be a recorder and could be a leader in my society,” she said.

Cocoa farming is hard and to earn extra income Christiana raises grasscutters, a large rodent prized for its high-protein meat. The youngest of her seven children is still in school and Christiana wants to help her finish her education so the extra income helps. “I hope she will become a nurse and get a good job so she can help me in the future,” Christiana said.

Even though there isn’t a women’s group in her village, Christiana and other women still benefit from regional women’s empowerment trainings offered by Kuapa’s Gender Program. Kuapa instituted the program in 1998 as a response to the challenges so many women cocoa farmers face. The program trains women to take part in the cooperative leadership. Women learn skills to generate additional income, and can then access loans through Kuapa Kokoo’s credit union.

The three-pronged approach of building women’s confidence, skills training, and access to credit has hugely shaped Kuapa. Today 30 percent of the members are women farmers and the president of the cooperative is a woman.

We have a long way to go to make policy and practices work for women in small-scale agricultural production. Members like Christiana show us why it’s important to start trying to do more.

Take action to support women cocoa farmers around the world. Tell Mars, Mondelez, and Nestlé: The women who grow and pick cocoa deserve better.

Photo: Anna Fawcus/Oxfam America

Emanuel Gygmah (left), a representative from Simpa village on the local legislature, talks with women traders at a new market facility built there with money from Ghana’s mining royalties. Gygmah says Simpa is not directly affected by mining, but still deserves to enjoy some benefits. People in Ghana are asking their government to use mining and oil revenues to benefit all people in the country, so Oxfam America is working hard to support Ghanaians through the transparency provisions in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The law requires mining and oil companies to declare their payments to governments. This will help citizens to encourage their government to use their national wealth to fight poverty.

Right now US oil companies are suing to block these transparency rules in Dodd-Frank; you can send a message to urge oil companies to drop their support for the suit.

To stay abreast of Oxfam’s work to promote resource revenue transparency, “like” our Right to Know, Right to Decide Facebook page.

Philomena Addo

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Addo, 54, a widow and mother of three, lost her farmland to a gold mine and became an activist order to represent her community in negotiations with the mining company. Photo: Jeff Deutsch/Oxfam America

Since today, December 10, is international Human Rights Day, I am just reading over a short history of the drafting of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted on this date in 1948. Despite the fact that the UDHR is a “declaration” and not a formal binding treaty, it has served as the foundation of the modern human rights movement: Every time a country references one of its articles in a constitution, or cites it in a legal decision in a court, the UDHR continues to gather strength and move the world to a place where there are no excuses for violations of basic freedoms.

The notion of basic rights is behind our work at Oxfam, so I am also thinking about those people we work with who are fighting for their own rights, and those of others, every day. Here are just three examples that stand out:

1. Philomena Addo, a local political representative in a small town in Ghana, told me last year that she is negotiating with mining companies from a position of strength, now that she understands her basic right to be consulted: “Now they know if they want to work here they need to come and ask for our consent. Now they recognize we know our rights, and that is why they are respecting us.”

2. Ines Santizo, working in Guatemala to help women survivors of domestic violence to understand their basic rights to live free from violence. She told me that she tries to teach women three things about themselves: “Who I am, what I am worth, and what I am capable of doing.”

3. The courageous people and organizations involved in Oxfam’s worker’s rights program in the US: Some of the most basic rights in the UDHR do not apply to farmworkers in the US, such as the right to a basic minimum wage, for example. The right to form a labor union (Article 23) is also routinely denied.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the US representative on the UN committee that wrote the UDHR, she said that in the field of human rights “to stand still is to retreat.” This is one of the reasons Oxfam places the basic rights of people at the center of our work, and why we won’t stop working on them.

James Bogoloh (right), an elected member of the District Assembly in Jomoro in western Ghana, talking with Solomon Kusi Ampofo, who works with Oxfam's partner organization Friends of the Nation. Photo by Anna Fawcus/Oxfam America.

Out in Jomoro district in western Ghana, James Bogoloh is looking at what passes for a road through dense forest between two villages near his home in Takinta. He pronounces it “deplorable.” “If it rains it is just not passable,” he says, as a motorcycle carrying two men, one holding a machete carefully off to the side, bounces and sputters past. Bogoloh shows us a concrete structure meant to bridge a low, wet area, and says that the contractor is about to start grading the road surface.

Bogoloh is an elected representative and a volunteer community monitor who is working with Oxfam’s partner Friends of the Nation to teach local people how to ensure that government money from oil and mining revenues is used to improve their lives. His efforts in Jomoro are complemented by a national coalition advocating for better laws to promote transparency of resource revenues, so citizens can see where their national wealth goes.

They are making significant progress, but the track to transparency has its ups and downs: Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I read a great blog post by Alexis Okeowo of the New Yorker: “The Ten Biggest Positive Africa Stories of 2011.” With drought and conflict affecting many of Africa’s fifty-plus countries, no one can say this has been an easy year. But “with all the gloom and doom,” writes Okeowo, “it’s easy to forget the strides the continent’s residents make every day in business, art, technology, and politics.” From the independence of South Sudan to Liberian women winning the Nobel Peace Prize, it’s refreshing to hear about some of Africa’s triumphs instead of its tragedies.

Inspired Okeowo’s blog, here are three more positive stories from Africa in 2011—worth a mention even if they’re not necessarily the kind that make headlines.

Ethiopian farmers embracing change. Hit hard by drought, 1,981 Ethiopian farmers in Tigray who bought weather insurance through an innovative program received a payout this November—the first in the project’s history. Launched by Oxfam America and a host of partners, the risk management initiative now has more than 13,000 participants and is set to expand into three new countries.

And in southern Ethiopia, where drought is making it difficult for herding families to earn a living from their livestock, some took a risk and tried a new approach: irrigated farming. As noted in the video below, true change takes time. But families now tapping the Dawa River for water are working hard to transform their lives for the long term:

Read the rest of this entry »

Mary Amo, 33, is a community volunteer trained by Oxfam's partner Wacam to negotiate on behalf of her community with the international mining company AngloGold Ashanti. Photo by Jeff Deutsch/Oxfam America.

In a small village in Ghana called Anwiam, Mary Amo shows us her house, or what’s left of it. A massive outflow of waste water from an underground mine shaft had submerged her neighborhood, washing away the entire back of her house. She and her mother and sister had taken some sections of metal roofing to build a make-shift wall, but did not have the resources to properly rebuild.

Amo had an opportunity to attend a workshop with Oxfam’s partner in Ghana, Wacam, about two years ago. She learned that having half your house washed away was a violation of her basic right to live in a safe environment, and how to engage in dialogue with the international mining company responsible for the outflow, AngloGold Ashanti. Before she and her neighbors understood their basic rights, Amo says “no one respected us here.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Jeff Deutsch is the manager of Oxfam America’s design and production team. Part of his job is to pay close attention to the images Oxfam uses to portray its work, often relying on pictures shot by others. On a recent field visit to West Africa, he photographed some of that work himself.

Trained as a graphic designer, Deutsch talks about what he captured with his camera—and why. In this third and last audio and photo blog, the familiar becomes strange and he finds beauty at every turn:

Watch Part I.

Watch Part II.

Jeff Deutsch is the manager of Oxfam America’s design and production team. Part of his job is to pay close attention to the images Oxfam uses to portray its work, often relying on pictures shot by others. On a recent field visit to West Africa, he photographed some of that work himself.

Trained as a graphic designer, Deutsch talks about what he captured with his camera. In this second audio and photo blog, he visits some of the communities in Ghana affected by large mining operations, and meets local people who are speaking out about it:

Watch part I.