Invitation to a hunger strike
August 19 @ 8:00 am - December 31 @ 8:00 pm
Just Forests has asked UNICEF Ireland (a Dochas Network member) on a number of occasions over the past years to ask their Board Member/Ambassador Donnacha O’Callaghan to step down from his role as Texaco Support for Sport Ambassador. They have not responded.
Dochas has failed to take this issue seriously. Tom Roche of Just Forests will hold a one-day hunger strike at Barringtons Pier, Limerick, to raise the awareness of this serious conflict-of-interest.
“We seem trapped in a world where fossil fuel producers and financiers have humanity by the throat. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has invested heavily in pseudoscience and public relations – with a false narrative to minimise their responsibility for climate change and undermine ambitious climate policies.They exploited precisely the same scandalous tactics as big tobacco decades before. Like tobacco interests, fossil fuel interests and their financial accomplices must not escape responsibility.”
Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations – November 2022.
“ I appreciate the great humanitarian work Donnacha O’Callaghan does on behalf of UNICEF Ireland, but I urgently ask him to withdraw from any association with Texaco, a company with an appalling human rights record around the world. Chevron-Texaco is responsible for human rights and environmental abuses against indigenous communities in Nigeria, Ecuador, and other nations.”
Rex Weyler, Co-founder GREENPEACE International
We are in a climate crisis that is leading to a global human rights crisis of unprecedented proportions. Many communities on the front line of the climate crisis, particularly those in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where Dochas Network Organisations work, are already facing the devastating consequences of more frequent and intense droughts, floods, cyclones and rising sea levels, which have also now reached Europe. Analysis by the Climate Accountability Institute published by the Guardian newspaper has identified the top 20 most carbon dioxide polluting fossil fuel companies – those whose products have contributed the most emissions on a cumulative basis since 1965.
At the very top is Saudi Aramco (4.38% of the global total), followed by Chevron the owners of Texaco
I totally agree with your sentiments but would have to agree personally as I do not wield the power to agree as [name of organisation]. However, we will continue to alert teachers and students to critically think about corporate sponsorship and green washing. You’re right it’s exactly development education to question the contradiction of Donncha’s role. I think a bigger conversation at Dochas level is needed here as I doubt there is any member that is clean as a whistle in this regard taking sponsorship and donations from fossil fuel companies and companies who’s employment practices are highly questionable.
So rather than pointing the finger at one individual should we urge Dochas and IDEA to have a larger conversation about this so that perhaps at policy level organisations can work to change this.