Anglican Alliance seeks support for Exposed 2013 campaign to end corruption; Southern Africa completes adoption of Anglican Covenant; Alliance highlights scandal of migrants exploited by international recruitment agencies
Anglican Alliance seeks support for Exposed 2013 campaign to end corruption
The Anglican Alliance states – We’ve partnered with Micah Challenge and the EXPOSED2013 campaign to shine the light of justice and take action against corruption. Add your voice to the October 14th ‘Thunderclap’
Each year, over US$1 trillion goes missing from the global economy through bribes, dishonest deals and tax evasion.
And corruption kills. Illegal tax evasion has been calculated to be responsible for 5.6 million children dying in developing countries from 2000-2015. That’s 1000 children every single day.
Christians have built a worldwide coalition to fight the corruption which traps millions in poverty.
Sign up to the Thunderclap, created by EXPOSED2013, before October 14th, and join hundreds of Christians around the world speaking up for justice.
Scripture says, “My justice will be a light to all nations” (Isaiah 51:4). Micah Challenge is mobilising Christians around the world to shine a light on corruption and call governments to act with integrity. The Anglican Alliance is supporting the Micah Challenge campaign, and providing a link on this page so Anglicans can sign the global call.
Our aim with Micah Challenge is to get one million signatures to support the call for justice. Imagine what we could achieve! One million voices signed by October 2013 speaking together for God’s light to shine, exposing the hidden works of darkness and uniting to see the godly transformation of a world so desperately in need.
Our Christian call for transparency and honesty will be heard by leaders of the most powerful economies of the world at the next G20 meeting in November 2014. We can press for greater accountability, combatting bribery, erasing tax avoidance and increasing public service. We can ensure that US$1 trillion does not disappear every year but is given to the people that need it most. We can equip development ministers for effective service in their nations as they work for the world’s poorest communities.
Join us as we shine a light on corruption and sign the global call to all leaders for openness, honesty and justice.
See – http://www.exposed2013.com/
Southern Africa completes adoption of Anglican Covenant
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) has adopted the Anglican Communion Covenant.
Its Provincial Synod today unanimously voted to ratify the decision taken at its previous meeting in 2010 to adopt the Covenant. This completes the legal process.
The Archbishop of Cape Town, Dr Thabo Makgoba, proposed the motion. Addressing the Synod, meeting this week in Benoni, Johannesburg, he emphasised ACSA’s commitment to being at the heart of Anglican life, often acting as a bridge-builder, and drawing on its own experiences of living with considerable diversity and wrestling with difference.
Seconding the motion, the Dean of the Province, Bishop Rubin Philip of Natal, quoted from the Introduction to the Covenant:
… To covenant together is not intended to change the character of this Anglican expression of Christian faith. Rather, we recognise the importance of renewing in a solemn way our commitment to one another, and to the common understanding of faith and order we have received, so that the bonds of affection which hold us together may be re-affirmed and intensified. We do this in order to reflect, in our relations with one another, God’s own faithfulness and promises towards us in Christ (2 Cor 1.20-22).
With debate only addressing a minor wording amendment, the motion was passed without dissent.
Alliance highlights scandal of migrants exploited by international recruitment agencies
The scandal of millions of migrants tricked into lives of servitude by multinational gangmasters is the focus for an Anglican Alliance briefing published today.
The call for a crackdown on rogue recruitment agencies comes as part of the Alliance’s five point plan which will go to a high-level UN meeting on migration in New York next month.
It comes on the day that a UK newspaper exposed gross exploitation of migrant workers from Nepal working on prestige building projects for the football World Cup finals in Qatar. The exposé identified recruitment agencies as prime culprits in the scandal: the Alliance paper calls for global regulation of these agencies.
Action to stamp out wage exploitation, physical and sexual abuse and ensure migrants have proper legal status and access to services is also in the paper produced as a follow up to the Alliance forum meeting in Kuala Lumpur which brought together Anglicans from across east and south east Asia.
Over 200 million people work as migrants – the equivalent in numbers to the fifth biggest country in the world. The Alliance briefing notes that for many people migration is a voluntary and positive move to get higher wages and a better living standard.
“However, even voluntary migration can end in exploitation and the line between migration and trafficking is increasingly blurred,” the report says.
The five most pressing concerns for migrants identified in the briefing are:
• Recruitment: Unscrupulous and unregulated recruitment agents attract poor and vulnerable people, only to force them into hard labour and prostitution, charging them extortionate fees, keeping them in debt bondage.
• Abuse: Migrant workers risk verbal, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their employers.
• Pay: Migrant workers struggle to survive on very low pay, and face unfair deductions from their wages.
• Status: Migrant workers are largely undocumented and even those with permits lack many rights in their receiving country.
• Access to Services: Migrant workers are often unable to access legal, health and social services.
The Alliance also calls for tougher enforcement of international conventions already in place. The briefing follows discussions at the Regional Forum in Kuala Lumpur in June, where global representatives from the 88-million-strong Anglican Communion stressed migration and trafficking as the gravest concern in the region. The briefing also urges Anglicans to raise awareness of this issue in their locality.
The Anglican Communion will be represented at the high-level meeting by Rachel Chardon, Marnie Dawson Carr and the Revd Catherine Graham.