Ending poverty through justice
![Justice and peace worker Mulima Akapelwa from Zambia [CAFOD]](/var/storage/images/get-involved/take-action/images/make-poverty-history-images/edinburgh/mulima/11127-2-eng-GB/mulima_medium.jpg)
Mulima Akapelwa of the Catholic Centre for Justice, Development and Peace campaigns tirelessly to ensure the Zambian government is properly held to account for their actions
She runs the Justice and Peace Department, part of the Catholic Bishops Conference, but previously she worked in the Economic Justice department for more than eight years.
“We focused on economic policy - how the national budget is decided, whether it is responsive to the needs of the poor; how debt and trade issues affect people in our countries,” Mulima explains.
Things should not continue being the way they are with huge numbers of people suffering whilst others are just enjoying themselves and are not bothered
“I would read up on government policies and go to meetings, write up and analyse what it meant for people on the ground, for people in the rural or urban areas who are poor and what it meant for us as a church organisation – what should we be saying.
"I would design training programmes to help people fight wrongs whether these took place within a community or in government offices.”
Promoting justice
In the Justice and Peace Department cultural issues are also important. “We look at cultural issues, for example the structures in society that impede or help to promote justice.
"We deal with legal issues – for example, if someone dies without making a will, what is the law, do people know the law… to prevent unjust treatment of widows, widowers or orphans.
"We really need to spread our understanding of Catholic Social Teaching and the need to promote justice.”
The centre also has a parliamentary liaison department, which explores the Zambian parliament’s relationship with ordinary men and women in communities.
“We’ve seen that once parliamentarians are elected they run off and forget about their electorate” says Mulima “so we want to bridge that gap, to help people exercise their rights and be heard by their representatives. We want to build accountability.”
“Our programmes try to educate people to know and exercise their rights as citizens, as people of God, as Christians, also to exercise their faith to create better relationships to hold government officials accountable and to end injustices in our communities.”
Now for the Justice and Peace Department she makes sure that staff are managing projects and using resources effectively.
“I also look to see if we are putting our message across as a Christian or Catholic organisation, whether that is coming through in the contributions that we are making to society,” she adds.
She is proud of what they’ve managed to achieve nationally and at the international level related to the debt campaign.
“Working with international organisations such as CAFOD or international networks such as Jubilee, we have managed to really make the debt issue important. We have contributed to giving it more attention and action from the world’s rich countries,” she says.
“We’ve managed to make our government listen to what we are saying in Zambia,” she says.
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