[CLIP] 'Heartbreak Land’: Baroness Caroline Cox on Going Where Even the Red Cross Won’t Go

in the very early days way back in the 1980s I was appointed the House of Lords in 83 can't believe it 40 years ago anyway in the early decade I did a lot of work for Poland because Poland was in the very dark days of Martial law in those days and I did a lot of work the very good organization Medical Aid for Poland fund and we took Medical Aid in I went many times on the trucks speaking for the Polish people who were suffering at the hands of Communism and that emerged praise got into Freedom uh in '89 and then I did a lot of work in Russia uh with Soviet orphans who are having a horrific time and helped to establish programs for enabling children to be kept in care homes or homes for orphaned children and then I decided that I wanted to diversify so I founded heart stands for humanitarian Aid relief trust and heart is established to try to provide Aid and advocacy for people suffering persecution and oppression in areas not reached by other major Aid organizations either for political reasons or security reasons because the big organizations like the UN have great respect for them but they can only go with permission of a sovereign government if a sovereign government is victimizing a minority in its own borders doesn't allow them then they can't go so we do spend qu of our times going a bit unofficially we work with local partners and they're the heroes and heroins but on the security side most of them are in war zones or conflict zones of some kind and it's quite dangerous getting there and other Aid organizations quite rationally may be a little bit nervous about that and I can understand that for their staff and their whole we rais on Deb but we do go where may be Politically Incorrect and where it may be dangerous and so a lot of our partners are in Conflict zones in areas where they're not supported by their National governments and we do Pride Aid and advocacy and many Marly suffering violations of human rights do you have one sort of particular success you'd like to share with me from these years of doing this work H that's a good question well yes I mean I think we do um want to do the areas where we work in heart um we now no longer need to work there because when we first started there uh the population civilians suffered from the criteria which Hart tries to address and one of those was way back was in Northern Uganda and we went there in the dark days when the Lord's resistance Army was active and was attacking civilians and it was hell on Earth I can tell you and the first time I went there um I went with a good colleague and it was really dangerous getting there and dangerous when we were there but we ask local people what's your priority we always ask people their priority we don't tell them what we're going to do we ask them because they know their priorities and they said please help for Orphans there are so many orphans because the parents have been killed and have had to flee and so on and those little skeletons is all that they were to a long story short we managed to provide food Aid and other aid for those orphans and we also helped find them parental care and so on to care for those orphans in a holistic way and if you go there now I can't believe it but just one little vignette uh those kids are now teenagers and there was recently um a tournament in Africa football tournament a lot of African countries took part and uh little team from our orphan patonga uh program uh took part and they won the tournament and they were so talented that the United States uh chose one of those football players kids uh to go to the states here uh to develop a proper professional football program and Britain selected another so from being little orphans who were like little skeletons to being such competent football players in their teens that they were actually selected uh to represent their countries or to attend other countries for training is I think an example and we no longer need that orphan program now it has been successful all the orphans have been happily placed with families and that was a very happy outcome to a very tragic situation we get so caught up and thinking about the many big big issues that we have sometimes I have some very bad days but like little small winds for these kids this is all the difference and and and a sports team apparently thank you for sharing that you know the other thing I I know you do Advocate um for places where you can't go very easily to to inspect so to speak and I know that you were involved in the um uh coalition to investigate the persecution of Fallen gong in China um and you've actually taken your own government to task around the forced organ harvesting issue I mentioned Aid and advocacy and there obviously cly entwined but there are issues where I think we do need to defend freedom and fundamental values and that's part of Christian mandate and part of our mandate and maybe one of the areas where we border if you like between the controversial and the the fundamental principle is maybe Nigeria we do a lot of work in Middle Belt Nigeria with sort of draw P state to the north going down to Abuja the capital and the islamist fani I always make a distinction between Islam and islamism Islam is Muslims moderate Muslims friends so islamism are the islamist and they are the ones who carry out the brutal attacks and in Middle Nigeria they are attacking frequently the Christian Villages and townships in Middle Belt and that's gone on for some time and the attacks are ruus and they' been to the Villages that have suffered an attack from the islamist fani fani herdsman and their homes are still burning you seen the corpses before they're buried and it is a hell on Earth and I remember one occasion when I was there and they just recover me from an attack and I I met a young mother and she tried to flee with her little six-year-old daughter but the village had been surrounded by the islamis fani they couldn't escape they were caught um they slashed her across the shoulder with a machete and then they cut her little daughter's throat and She fainted with a with having been tapped by the machete and when she woke up her little six-year-old daughter was lying Dead next to her and inside the little daughter's mouth was her mother's finger they cut her mother's finger off and stuck it inside her mouth I mean heartbreak heartbreak land but that there's there's attacks on Christian villages in Middle Belt Nigeria are still going on and one of our Aid responses we always asked the local people and they said there 1 and a half million people displaced from these Villages and these little townships and their children are desperate for Education desperate so we have we call roads to Hope education bands and we take education supplies to those kids who are displaced and you could see the Joy on their faces on the kids faces when these education bands arrive with and they're not just books I me they're computers and all sorts of things which they need for proper education Here's Hope for the future and what a privilege to be able to do that and we're now just diversifying a little into also providing healthc care V for the displaced people in Middle Belt Nigeria don't forget to subscribe to our alerts newsletter and you'll never miss an episode