Our Washington
office of AFJN has given itself two main jobs:
- Keeping
track of the legislation which directly or indirectly affects
Africa.
- Contacting
the membership (about 200 Catholic religious organisations and
500 individuals) with a newsletter and "action alerts"
urging members to put pressure on their representatives regarding
specific issues that are being considered for legislation and
likely to affect Africa, in order to promote adjustments for
favourable legislation.
We have developed
a coalition of some thirty non governmental organisations (Advocacy
Network for Africa - ADNA) who collaborate with us to lobby on
legislation and other issues affecting Africa.
Lobbying
in all its forms has to start with an accurate information base.
We need to know:
- what exactly
is the piece of legislation or policy which is being considered
and who is the person sponsoring it?
- how this
is going to affect countries in Africa?
Once we have
an issue analysed as to its effects on Africa, we start the actual
lobbying.
The object
is to contact all the legislators (directly or through their staff
members), who may have an influence on the outcome, and to do
it 'en masse'. After this we can follow up with phone calls.
Legislators
and members of the administration call press conferences when
they are sponsoring a piece of legislation for which they want
to get publicity. We attend these conferences when they relate
to Africa and we can ask the Senator or Congress person specific
questions to pin point more exactly how it will affect African
countries.
The cancellation
of debt owed by African countries to the US was one of our successes.
Besides our own efforts, this was no doubt due to the fact that
it was an international effort, spearheaded by an extremely good
lobby organisation in UK (Jubilee 2000), and backed publicly by
the Pope in his 1999 New Year 'Urbi et Orbis' message.
My own collaboration
with AFJN has changed over the past year. I was re-assigned to
follow up the issues of Landmines and Child soldiers, as well
as traffic in small arms (which feeds the conflicts in Africa).
It involves attending meetings, reporting on progress, deciding
on what kind of collaboration we are able to give, and networking
through computer with the various organisations.
Besides the
monthly ADNA meetings, I sometimes attend the Great Lakes Policy
forum. This is not a lobbying group, but we share their concerns,
especially because of our own MSOLA presence in the region. Actually,
AFJN is lobbying to stop the flow of arms into that part of Africa.
This work
has been very interesting as it provides me with an ongoing contact
with Africa. I have also been learning a lot about how my own
government operates.
Sr. Beverly
Lacayo, (USA)
