Tom Stoddart began his photographic career in a local newspaper in the North-East of England before moving to London in 1978. He has witnessed and photographed many international events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of President Nelson Mandela and the siege of Sarajevo, to name but a few. More recently, he has published and exhibited extensive work on the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

Usually it is the photo that does the talking. In this case Tom wrote a message that accompanies his photos and his experiences and is a poignant reflection on the dilemmas that haunt all photojournalists:

It is sad and unnecessary that any of these photographs exist.

Most of the events chronicled here can be attributed to mankind’s greed, intolerance, prejudice, inhumanity, lust for political power and sheer stupidity.  The siege of Sarajevo, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, famine in Sudan, AIDS in Africa, devastated post 9/11 New Yorkers – generations of lives needlessly wasted.

The people portrayed in the preceding pages are heroes. Real heroes, unlike those shallow icons from the worlds of cinema, fashion or football, so carefully manufactured to sell movies, newspapers, cars and sunglasses.

Innocent people trapped and battered by circumstances beyond their control. Ordinary humans in extraordinary situations, displaying immense courage, sacrifice, dignity and determination to survive what has befallen them and their loved ones.

So don’t feel sorry when you look at these pictures – feel angry that we need to be reminded of such folly.

It is sad but necessary that these photos exist.

Stoddart’s images and message pose some questions about our responsibility in using these stark, difficult images of poverty and conflict. In using them, are we trying to humanise poverty and underdevelopment? Are we respecting the dignity of the people concerned? Or are we potentially perpetuating a stereotype through inaccurate representations?

The Dóchas Code of Conduct on Images and Messaging was created for this very reason. Upon signing the Code, Development NGOs commit to a set of principles to ensure that they avoid stereotypical or sensational images. All information on the Dóchas Code of Conduct on Images and Messaging is available on their website. 

To see some of Stoddarts work, visit his website here or see our photos section with a collection of his work

Consumption is a reoccurring theme for us (and on this blog!) as it relates to what we consume, how it is produced, who produces it and the impacts it has locally and globally. We are pleased to continue sharing projects that explore the causes as well as some solutions to the state of consumption in the world today.

GOOD and Oxfam give some background to the infographic:

Around the world every night, one in seven people go to bed hungry—that’s almost one billion people. People are hungry not because there isn’t enough food produced but because our food system is broken. In fact, 80% of the world’s hungry are directly involved in food production. We can address this hunger if we support small-scale food producers, tackle climate change, and reduce food waste.

Click on the infographic below to view it in full, or follow this link to view it online as a zoom-able (flash) page. It presents plenty of themes and statistics worth looking at further, such as food waste, climate change, food prices, hunger and producers of food.

Those familiar with this website will not be surprised by the topic of our new animation – on consumption.

It accompanies the ethical consumption and hunger modules for teachers and educators, as well as general readers, plus previous blog posts, new resource annotations and the ecological footprinting project work.

Let us know what you think of it!

Is there anything in it that shocks you?

What about the distribution of resources on the planet?

What about the ratio at the centre of the animation, 32:1, and its impact?

Is “catching up” a fair and realistic argument to encourage, on its own?

Feel free to share the video, comment below or contact us to share your views.

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Credits | animation and illustration work by Tom McDermott | produced by 80:20 and Gush Design

Clifton Rooney, the teacher involved in the project, explains how the group are going to use the mural they created to inform others in the school on the issue of child soldiers:

The mural was painted last month [April] in the school here and is going to be used as a starting point to teach other students about the issues. We plan to hold two hour workshops with students to explore the issues using a variety of teaching methodologies. The students that created the mural will present the workshops. There were about fifteen students involved and they have been involved since October. All of the lessons which we initially had were outside of school time. It was in these lessons that the students learned about the issues in great detail with sources from about 8 books on child soldiering, websites and videos.

Lewis Hayes, one of the students involved in the project wrote an article to accompany the mural itself. Below is an extract* from his article.

The contentious film ‘Kony 2012’ – now being described as the most viral video in history with almost 100 million views in less than a week – highlighted Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony’s atrocities and the claim that his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) recruited at least 30,000 child soldiers. This number may be shocking, but it has been estimated that there are anywhere up to 300,000 child soldiers in the world at any one time. Child soldiers lose their childhood because of war. Their lives, often from birth, have been shadowed by the disgrace of anger, violence and death. Every child soldier in the world is being denied their rights; rights that should be observed and respected.

While some child soldiers are born into child soldiering, being the offspring of other soldiers, many are captured or recruited. The capturing of child soldiers is a horrifying event for the children to experience as they often witness family members and friends being tortured and houses being burnt down. They are drugged, more often than not, by the rebel groups to brainwash them into joining the rebel army and committing unthinkable acts of violence.

The children are often recruited by measuring their ability to kill. Some children are disorientated having been drugged and then forced to kill their own family or community members. When they come to, it is difficult to morally come to terms with what they have done. For many, there is no going back.

No child should ever have to experience the battlefield, they shouldn’t know or have to worry about the phrase “kill or be killed” which they must live by as members of a rebel army. They witness brutality, fear and the death of others. Sometimes, because of being heavily drugged, they do not feel pain and carry on fighting even when shot or wounded. They must witness their friends being blown to pieces by grenades, and carry on. They carry on because they have to remain alive, otherwise they could be shot by their leaders. They are psychologically manipulated to make them think that all of this is necessary for some sort of cause. Children are forced to use machetes and guns. The physical weight of the guns they use has hugely decreased, compared to the weight of weapons in the past. This ‘development’ has facilitated the use of child soldiers. Children can now easily use these weapons and remain mobile. Furthermore, access to such weapons seems to be getting easier and cheaper.

There has been huge debate and controversy over the recent ‘Kony 2012’ video but my purpose is not to address this debate specifically. Whether or not Joseph Kony is still actively recruiting children is, for me, not the problem. Child Soldiering is not a unique phenomenon and it is simplistic to suggest that by capturing Joseph Kony, we will end the issue for good. We must look more deeply at its causes in the current global context and explore preventative measures.

*Lewis Hayes’ article will be published in full (along with more details of the project) in our new Taking Action section (coming soon).

It’s hard to get permission even to go to the bathroom,” said Yuliani, a 23-year-old seamstress told the Independent. “If you’re forced to go, the pile of work becomes so high that you get shouted at by the production line leader. They call you a dog, brainless, uneducated. Sometimes we have to sacrifice our lunch break to reach the target.”

LOCOG – The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games demands that all suppliers to Olympic licences comply with the ETI – Ethical Trading Initiative – base code. It claims in its “Playfair Agreement” that:

We firmly believe in working with our suppliers and licensees to raise standards and improve conditions for all. All our commercial partners, suppliers and licensees must comply with our sustainable sourcing code and our complaint and dispute resolution process is designed to assist us fulfill our commitments.

However, the Independent reveals that some unions are not given bargaining rights by Adidas’s Indonesian suppliers.

With the demands for ever more profits, sweatshop labour to manufacture clothing is not uncommon. According to BehindTheLabel there are estimated to be some 2 million people working in clothes sweatshops to produce clothes just for the U.S. market!

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Explore more…

• Exploiting Indonesia: Adidas for London Olympics 2012 by Pratap Chatterjee | CorpWatch | April 16 2012

• To learn more about the issues visit our ethical consumption module

In the post-KONY2012 viral video era, here’s a challenging and timely video from the Stop the Pity campaign (by Mama Hope) that draws attention to education, gender and western stereotype issues about African men.

We’re talking to you – shirtless Matthew McConaughey!

That Africans could be sitting on a huge fresh water reservoir is desperately needed good news for the many millions of people who have lived through the effects of climate change, prolonged drought and stark weather fronts over the past 20 years.

Scientists have for the first time been able to carry out a continent-wide analysis of the water that is hidden under the surface in aquifers. Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London (UCL) have mapped in detail the amount and potential yield of this groundwater resource across the continent.

Across Africa over 300 million people don’t have access to safe drinking water. The new findings show the volume of water available underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface – water which could be tapped to meet the need.

Large scale land acquisitions and commercial development projects have dominated the debate over ‘water wars’ and conflicts arising as a result of scarcity of resources. Transboundary water resources pose serious geopolitical problems. Water shortages contribute to conflicts of varying intensity and scale. Although these may appear localized, they have wider effects, such as displacement, mass migration, disruption of livelihoods, social breakdown and health risks, all of which leave their mark on the global community.

Millions of dispossessed famers and land workers have experienced the human dimension to this global problem for many years across Latin America, the Asia-Pacific and Africa as governments and corporations continue to ‘develop’ land and resources on a planet of scarcer resources:

Poorly regulated foreign investments in lands that could be otherwise used to feed local populations, could potentially have devastating consequences on the fragile state of food security at the national level.

UN World Water Development Report 4, p.216 (2012)

While designed to be read on a regional or a continent-wide scale, the maps carry the caveat that they cannot be used for national planning, according to the report’s authors. As many aquifers are not being filled due to a lack of rain, the scientists have told BBC News that they are worried that large-scale borehole developments could rapidly deplete the resource.

Even if this is the case, the potential for fresh water reservoirs under the feet of most Africans is an incredible opportunity for the continent.

But important questions over the future and fallout of this new discovery will have real and lasting implications: Who will perform the extraction and how will it be managed? What methods will be used? Will they harm the local environment and local communities? What about beneficiaries – will they be local, regional or foreign? Will they mostly be large companies with the lions share of water being shipped out for sale on to foreign markets? What about environmental justice, distribution issues and the needs of Africans?

One has to wonder within the context of Africa’s recent history since the turn of the 20 century whether the abundance of maps, resources and foreign financiers have had a fair, even or positive long term impact for the peoples across its 56 countries (for example, see the Niger-Delta 1. & 2., Somalia and Sudan).

Will water become the new oil of Africa?

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Explore more…

• More information, debates and implications of these issues can be followed through our online module on Water & Sanitation.
• Who benefits from Africa’s oil? by Antony Goldman | BBC News | 9 March 2004
• Water: a fundamental human right or a commodity? by Shadrack Tjiramba | The Namibian | 07 August 2009
• Nigeria: subsidy report – A Looting Bazaar Uncovered by Edegbe Odemwingie | allAfrica | 21 April 2012

On the 100^th anniversary of the fateful voyage of the most ambitious unsinkable ship of its time, Cameron amasses the brightest and deepest thinkers on Titanic all studiously focussed on gleaning the most comprehensive story of her demise on record.

Some have claimed that this update to Titanic’s story is nothing more than a jaunt in epic forensic wizardry. This is largely true – and utterly engrossing.

But where typical documentaries typically stop, Cameron keeps on going. In a wonderfully crafted metaphor, Cameron concludes the story by reflecting on it as a microcosm of all of the ills, ambitions, inequalities and arrogance’s that human societies manifest.

Source: David Horsey for the Spokesman-Review

While iceberg production is up by 60%, fewer and fewer are making it south from Greenland to the spot where Titanic sank due to the changes in temperature. This would have been good news in 1912, but not in a world where, as the Climate Change Team at the World Bank warn, we are now passing close to a long list of irreversible climate change tipping points, such as ocean acidity and coral die-off; drying the Amazon rainforest; run away growing fossil fuel use; loss of ice sheets; large scale melting of permafrost and “the biggest tipping point of all” – our inability to come anywhere near an agreement limiting global GHG emissions and warming. [For more see Dan Hoornweg’s blog post Be afraid. Be very afraid.]

James Cameron challenges the climate change sceptics, denialists and the conspiracy theory camp head on: are ‘tipping point’ collisions avoidable, or are we doomed to hit them due to our submerged arrogance?

Cameron’s final word on the Titanic:

Part of the Titanic parable is of arrogance, of hubris, of the sense that we’re too big to fail. Well, where have we heard that one before?

There was this big machine, this human system that was pushing forward with so much momentum that it couldn’t turn, it couldn’t stop in time to avert a disaster. And that’s what we have right now.

Within that human system on board that ship, if you want to make it a microcosm of the world, you have different classes: you’ve got first class, second class, third class. In our world right now you’ve got developed nations, undeveloped nations.

You’ve got the starving millions who are going to be the ones most affected by the next iceberg that we hit, which is going to be climate change. We can see that iceberg ahead of us right now, but we can’t turn.

We can’t turn because of the momentum of the system, the political momentum, the business momentum. There too many people making money out of the system, the way the system works right now and those people frankly have their hands on the levers of power and aren’t ready to let them go.

Until they do, we will not be able to turn to miss that iceberg and we’re going to hit it, and when we hit it, the rich are still going to be able to get their access to food, to arable land, to water and so on. It’s going to be poor, it’s going to be the steerage that are going to be impacted. It’s the same with Titanic.

I think that’s why this story will always fascinate people. Because it’s a perfect little encapsulation of the world, and all social spectra, but until our lives are really put at risk, the moment of truth, we don’t know what we would do. And that’s my final word.

The film tells the story of two young girls, living in a rural town as they try to run their way to a different life. It follows their highs and lows over three years as they try to become professional athletes. Through their struggle, the film gives a unique insight into the ambitions of young Ethiopians living between the traditional and modern world.

For more information about the documentary, screenings, stories from the town of Bekoji and the runners themselves, see http://www.townofrunners.com/index

Source: ironic anti-Zuma poster found in north western suburbs of Johannesburg prior to the 2009 election, by Christo Doherty

Monkey still working. Baboon gotta wait small: Muyatwa Sitali presents his pick of recent election slogans from across Africa.

Podcast of the week: The Guardian’s global development podcast: spotlight on the battle against global poverty

Confessions of a banker: Why I am leaving Goldman Sachs. It’s not everyday that a former executive director of one of the most successful firms in the investment banking industry accuses their former employer of having a ‘toxic and destructive’ environment or reflects on ‘decline in the firm’s moral fiber’ in an open letter to the New York Times. Ouch!

Most boring headline of the week:

$500m of US food aid lost to waste and company profit, says Oxfam

Surely the swirling deadline-bound fast paced newsrooms of The Guardian could have packaged the alarming waste in money and trading opportunities for Third World workers with the kind of concern that the situation demands?

Here are some examples of the kinds of headlines that could (or should?) have been used:

•       Tied-aid holds poorest countries to food ransom
•       US protectionist food aid programmes subsidises unjust financial and human costs Congress must stop profit-driven food aid schemes before it’s too late!
•       Timely Oxfam report reveals the state of unfair tied food aid economy

Feel free to come up with your own news headline for this report.

Should we celebrate a decline in global poverty?

Do criticisms matter on the findings of antipoverty World Bank progress?

The World Bank’s Martin Ravallion ruefully ponders the fate of researchers on poverty – someone is always going to object to your findings:

There have also been signs of a “political cycle” in the critiques. When our up-dates (at three-yearly intervals) [of global poverty numbers] find little (or seemingly modest) progress against poverty, some of our more right-leaning critics come up with some argument as to why we are systematically underestimating that progress. The left-leaning critics are more accepting at these times. By contrast, when we find progress, such critics come up with arguments as to why we are over-stating that progress. We don’t get much critical attention from the right at these times.