AND YOU, WHAT CAN YOU DO?
RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION
Recycle, Reduce and Reuse. Change your buying habits and build a fairer world.
Mercury pollution in the sea travels all the way to our plates in the fish we eat. Find out the details and eat it safely.
Conflict minerals, including gold, make up the electronic equipment that we use every day: mobile phones, laptop computers, cameras, tablets…
Use them responsibly, renewing them only when necessary, recycling them, and learn about the alternatives such as Fairphone, or the multinational corporations which use minerals from a responsible source through organisations such as Enough Project.
If you buy gold, in jewellery or gold bars, ask for the “real gold” certification so that you know it has been obtained responsibly with regards to the environment and miners.
TAKE PART
Do your bit for social justice.
Take part in the activities that we organise in relation to the documentary Gold Rush: cinema forums, presentations, festivals, conferences…
COLLABORATE WITH US
Say no to a health model based on the free market.
Collaborate with us to help us continue working for the right to universal, free public health care based on primary health care.
LEARN MORE AND SPREAD THE WORD
Act locally, think globally. Be the spokesperson in the fight for social justice.
Spread the word about the problems with mineral extraction (environmental, social, health) among your friends, family and acquaintances, using social networks to multiply the number of people who see the message. Follow us on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and the blog!
What does medicusmundi do in Mozambique?
medicusmundi has been working in Mozambique since 1994, in particular in the province of Cabo Delgado, aiming to improve the social factors which affect the population’s health, with one of those factors being the right to live in a healthy environment. Our work strategy is based on defending the right to health, with the conviction that the best way to achieve this is to address all of the social determining factors for health in an integrated manner, and to construct a health system based on the principles of Primary Health Care. Actively defending all of the rights of citizens, particularly environmental rights, is our priority: a better quality of life can be attained if the environment is respected, and if people are empowered to actively defend environmental rights.
In this direction, we work to empower the miner’s associations to give them a voice and broader their influence in the political decision making. Also we work to inform them about their rights as an association, the best extracting practices without negative health consequences and minimize the environmental damaging effects. We work with the miners themselves, but also with the local authorities in the region (such as the Ministry of Health, etc.)
A very relevant aspect of our work is communicating to the general population their right to health and about the socio-economic aspects that can endanger this right. That’s why we promote civic awareness campaigns to reach as many individuals as possible. Those campaigns are tailored to the realities of the population, rural or urban. We work with the communities, hand-in-hand with the population, but we also promote the use of culture and creative industries in a greater scale to enlarge the dissemination of our rights promotion message. In this sense, we organize the first cinema program in the country about health and human rights, with involvement of the civil population and international filmmakers.
Do you want to know more about our work in Mozambique? Please visit our specific website.
What does medicusmundi do in Catalonia?
In Catalonia, medicusmundi develops various lines of action with the objective to promote the knowledge of social and environmental problems, and of public health linked to the use mercury in gold mining. At the same time, we aim to foment responsible consumption and fair trade as an alternative, through certification systems for gold.
In the ambit of its educational strategy for social justice, coordinated with our activity in Mozambique, we currently work in two fields:
- the public and political advocacy, through the OR+JUST for Global Health campaign and
- The educational action, through the Learning and Service project “The Gold Fever: Mercury, from the mine to the plate”, with the support of Barcelona Municipality.
OR+ JUST CAMPAIGN FOR GLOBAL HEALTH
The OR+ JUST for Global Health campaign was created in 2019 in Barcelona to denounce situations of violation of human and environmental rights related to artisanal gold mining and to foment practices of responsible consumption,
responsible jewelry and socially-conscious public gold purchase. There are three axis of actions: research to develop new knowledge, political and business advocacy, and public awareness.
RESEARCH
Los impactos globales derivados de la minería artesanal de oro, la elevada presencia de este mineral en productos de uso cuotidiano como los aparatos electrónicos o en servicios públicos como el alumbrado, así como la existencia de oro certificado y de iniciativas de joyería responsable, son cuestiones aún muy desconocidas por parte de la ciudadanía. Favorecemos la creación de nuevo conocimiento en este sentido y con el fin de estimular la oferta, la demanda y el consumo de oro justo.
As a starting point of the campaign, we elaborated a study of the degree of knowledge and interest in Barcelona, amongst jewelers and the public, about the problems of gold extraction and the alternative of using certified gold. The study is available in Spanish here.
INCIDENCE
A large amount of the yearly consumption of gold is used to make jewels. Given the importance of this industry in the gold market, we work with the Jewelers Guild of to foment a change towards the use of certified gold; that is to say, purchasing gold with certifications that guarantee the respect of human and environmental rights, such as Fairmined or Fairtrade. We design and develop various actions, with the active participation of a group of jewelers who already work with fair-trade gold, and the collaboration of the Alliance for Responsible Mining.
The public administration also has an important responsibility and influence in the provision of services and the purchase of products with gold or other conflictive materials components, given its efficiency as conductor of heat and electricity. We foment the introduction of certified-gold as a prerequisite in the public procurement processes of the city of Barcelona.
AWARENESS
El consumo es también un acto político y una poderosa herramienta de transformación social. Organizamos y participamos en actividades dirigidas al conjunto de la ciudadanía con el fin de extender el conocimiento de las problemáticas sociales, ambientales y sobre la salud que abordamos y para estimular el consumo consciente de oro y de los productos que lo contienen, como los aparatos electrónicos que usamos a diario (móviles, ordenadores portátiles, televisores, calculadoras, etc.).
These activities take place in the form of debates, workshops or film forums, through the projection of the documentary film “The Gold Fever”, in various community and educational centers of the city. Consult our agenda and, if you are interested in organizing an activity in your center, do not hesitate to contact us!
FROM THE MINE TO THE PLATE PROJECT
A project of “education and service” directed to secondary school pupils focusing on the environment, global health and responsible consumerism.
For a while now we hear about the contamination of oceans and fish by mercury. But do we know the origin of such contamination? To discover it, we propose to the students a trip to Mozambique. We will understand how a practice carried out at the other end of the world affects our health and is conditioned by our consumption model. A local-global connection which is treated from the perspective of human rights, social determinants of health, responsible consumerism, the environment and global justice.
The project began in the school year 2017-2018 at the “IES XXV Olimpíada de Barcelona” school and can be rolled-out in other educational centers. We also make available a thorough pedagogical guide for teachers with proposals for courses contents. If you are interested in working on these themes in the classroom, get in touch with us.
What is hidden behind our consumption? Video made for students of 4th grade of “ESO” of the IES XXV Olimpíada de Barcelona school during the school year 2018-2019.
AND YOU, WHAT CAN YOU DO?
