Youth in vanguard of forging political will

On the marchThey are young, naive maybe, but more streetwise than previous generations of protesters.

"We know you can't change the world through donating money, but you can through changing awareness of issues," says Edel McCabe (15), a fourth-year student, holding a Make Poverty History banner in Parnell Square, Dublin.

"It's gradual, it won't happen overnight. It's better to make people aware, to spread the message and put pressure on politicians."

Twenty years ago Bob Geldof appealed to Live Aid watchers in siren tones that we needed more money. Today, the Make Poverty History campaign, and the broad base of campaigners it has attracted, recognise a solution is more complex.

The campaign, which focuses on trade justice, debt cancellation and better aid, sees the G8 summit as a major opportunity build the political momentum needed to secure progress on those issues.

Edel is one of thousands of young people who joined in yesterday's protest in what is one of the most unlikely of coalitions.

There are missionaries, communists, anarchists, environmentalists, students, capitalists, feminists, all of whom have signed up to support one of the broadest campaigns in modern political history.

Sr Máire Dillon (78), a Columban missionary on yesterday's march, is travelling to Edinburgh this weekend with her 13-year-old grandnephew.

Having worked in Alongapo in the Philippines, nicknamed "sin city" due to the widespread prostitution there, she says she became engaged in issues of global justice. "I started to see the root cause of poverty and the structures that cause global injustice . . . to me, justice has a basic Christian dimension. We're called on to love each other, and that includes the poorest of the poor."

Amid the heaps of white T-shirts, ID badges and posters at the campaign headquarters on Burgh Quay, Hans Zomer, of the development agency Dóchas, a long-time activist, says the campaign message is spreading.

"This is about awareness-raising, not fundraising. Tackling poverty isn't about donating a fiver, like with Live Aid. People are much more aware now that this is a political issue, and that what's required is political will.

"It's a structural issue. There are man-made choices which rich countries take that have an enormous impact on people across the world. The sense of global injustice is something young people feel particularly. They have an an acute sense of what's fair. They're not as open to justifying it, or saying it'll always be like that."

Make Poverty History has not been without its detractors. John O'Shea of Goal has angrily denounced aspects of the campaign, such as delivering more aid in the absence of dealing with corruption and military exports.

In the wider Irish Make Poverty History campaign, an alliance of more than 40 NGOs, groups have had to bite their tongues on some issues in the interests of consensus building.

Political parties may be banned officially from the campaign, but banners of parties such as Fine Gael, Labour, the Green, the Socialist Party appeared among the thousands of marchers yesterday.

Standing at Parnell Square holding a red banner, Eugene McCartan (50), a member of the Communist Party, acknowledges there might be difference on ideological issues like trade.

"But we have things that we share in common, like a belief that economic structures are responsible. We can come together in solidarity with those people who are trying to bring about their own liberation," says McCartan, whose two children, Almha (9) and Oisín, are carrying smaller banners. "When you have belief and passion, you can look to the horizon and to hope."

Nessa Ní Chasaide, one of the campaign co-ordinators involved in a range of NGOs over the last decade, agrees. "In terms of ideology or whatever, our manifesto clearly states what we want to achieve. We may have different backgrounds, but there is a coherence and unity in our aims," she said.

"We realise that progress on issues relating to poverty can be so slow, it can be difficult to see change. The Make Poverty History campaign is focusing on this problem, so we're coming together in a sense of global unity. We want to see concrete movement on aid, trade in debt in 2005."