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CAFOD
UK - Young campaigners G7 beach protest

CAFOD campaigners at the 2021 G7 summit in Cornwall held world leaders to account and raised their voices for global justice and positive change.

Campaigning with CAFOD is powerful because we aim to tackle the root causes of poverty, injustice and climate change, not just their symptoms.

Thanks to the tens of thousands of you who’ve taken part in our campaigns over the years, we’ve witnessed some historic breakthroughs.

1. World Bank listens to calls to Fix the Food System

CAFOD’s Fix the Food System campaign, launched in 2022, aims to build a global food system that ensures everyone in the world can access the food they need to thrive, wherever in the world they live. CAFOD has specifically been campaigning to demand the World Bank ends their harmful policies that limit small holder farmers access to seeds.

In 2023, 70,000 Catholics stood in solidarity with a farmer called Salina in Bangladesh, calling for small-scale farmers to have their right to swap and share seeds protected. Following our campaign, the world bank has begun to listen! In our meetings with World Bank officials, they said that our policy document - Sowing the Seeds of Poverty - and direct actions had given rise to the most internal conversation about these policies. We are proud to say that this remains an ongoing conversation.

World Bank 80th birthday

See our birthday message to the World Bank

The World Bank is 80 this year. But with 2.4 billion people having no regular access to food, we have shared one single birthday wish.

2. Loss and damage fund 

When world leaders met in 2022 for their annual climate talks – known as the COP, or Conference of Parties - CAFOD supporters were ready to demand that governments most responsible for the climate emergency commit to adequate financial support for nations in the global south suffering the most from climate change.

This campaigning helped lead to a breakthrough agreement to set up a ‘loss and damage fund’ to provide financial assistance to those low-income countries feeling the brunt of the climate crisis, but details of how the fund would operate were left to be decided. In 2023 at COP28 CAFOD supporters built on their existing calls for the detail of the fund to be sufficient to respond to the needs of the global south. Sadly the USD 700 million pledged covers less than the 0.2 percent needed. We will continue to call for sufficient funding arrangements for the new Loss and Damage Fund.

3. Ending government support for fossil fuels overseas

At the end of 2020, the UK government announced that it would end its support for fossi l fuels overseas. This was a significant step forward, as greenhouse gas emissions – which are released from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas – are warming the earth and causing the climate emergency.

This was the result of years of work with thousands of CAFOD volunteers and supporters throughout England and Wales campaigning for the government to end support for fossil fuels overseas, including by signing petitions and lobbying MPs. In addition our partners and advocacy team led groundbreaking research which aided this decision making.

4. Net Zero


In 2019, we saw a historic breakthrough when the UK became the first major economy in the world to commit to ending its contribution to climate change, by setting in law a by-2050 net zero emissions target.

We have been campaigning together on climate for many years – from Renewing the Earth, to One Climate One World, Power to be and now Our Common Home. The commitment to was aided by over 34,000 people taking action with CAFOD to demand that the government urgently tackle the climate crisis.

Thousands of supporters gathered in Westminster for ‘The Time is Now’ mass lobby of Parliament. 12,000 people, including thousands of CAFOD supporters, lobbied their MPs on Parliament Square. Over 380 MPs were lobbied, making it one of the largest of any mass lobby of Parliament.