February 12, 2018

Assuring affordable, accessible and quality Public Services for all: Tool for leveling inequality, mobilizing for transformative change!
Manila, 13-15 February 2018

February 11, 2018

PROGRAMME

*** NOTE

At 2.00 to 4.30pm on February 15, a RoundTable Dialogue with Legislators will be held, and this will be covered by the Media. Academics and CSO Representatives will also participate.

On February 16, RoundTable Discussions on Advocacy Strategies with key Campaigners are being planned.

On Feb. 12 at 10:00 AM a Press Conference will be conducted regarding the event, the venue is at the Marina Seafood’s Restaurant, Mother Ignacia cor. Scout Reyes Street, Quezon City.

Feb.12, 2018 – 2 PM – visit to a community of informal settlers

Feb. 15, 2018 – 2:00-4:30 PM – Roundtable Dialogue with Parliamentarians and Academics (with media coverage, UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies, Bahay ng Alumni, UP Diliman, Quezon City

Feb.16 2018 – University Hotel Cafeteria, UP Diliman, Quezon City

Small Group Discussions on specific issues (water, housing, education, health and transport) with Resource Person:

1. On Health (with Vittorio Agnole)
2. Water (with Miriam Planas)FDC
3. Housing (with Meena Menon) IPD and KM
4. Transport (with Mladen Domazet)
5. PPPs and Privatization (David Hall)

July 4, 2017

THE ELEVENTH ASIA-EUROPE PEOPLE’S FORUM
Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia
4-6 July, 2016

The Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) is a biennial people’s forum parallel to the Asia-Europe Summit (ASEM) which persistently pushes for the integration of the social dimension – such as human rights, equitable development, democratization, social justice, ecological sustainability – into the ASEM processes and in the policies and practices being promoted by its member-countries at the national and inter-regional levels.

AEPF11 was organized in Ulaan Baatar, the Capital City of Mongolia’s from 4-6 July 2016 under the theme: “Building New Solidarities: Working for Inclusive, Just and Equal Alternatives for Asia and Europe”.

GENERAL OBJECTIVES

• Strengthen network building at national and regional levels in order to undertake cross-regional initiatives and campaigns;
• Analyse issues of common interest such as security, development and neo-liberal globalisation and their impact on peoples in each region in order to come up with visions and strategies for alternative futures;
• Provide people’s organisations/civil society organisations and networks with a channel for critical engagement with the institutions and policies of ASEM-member countries.

PARTICIPANTS

AEPF brought together as many as 750 scholars and activists, representing social movements, people’s organisations/ civil society organisations and citizens from 42 countries across Asia and Europe, representatives of the European Union, the European Economic and Social Committee and Mongolian government. President of Mongolia, His Excellency Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj also attended the Opening session and delivered his welcome remarks.

CONTENT OF THE AEPF

• Opening
• Five plenaries, focused on:
• AEPF at 20 – Reflections and Moving Forward
• Building solidarities for inclusive, Just, and Equal Alternatives in Asia
• and Europe;
• Briefing on structure, events, activities for AEPF11 and on logistics;
• Reflections and Recommendations from Thematic Groups
• Final Declaration presentation, debate and approval

21 workshops within the framework of seven thematic clusters, each of which had three phases:

(i) Context analysis;
(ii) Lesson learned: Successes and Failure;
(iii) Strategies for People’s Visions and Future

Perspectives:

• Resource Justice, Land Rights, Equal Access to Water, and Participation
• Going beyond Extractivisms;
• Food Sovereignty/Food Security – Beyond Zero Hunger;
• Climate Justice and Transformation of Energy Systems;
• Socially Just Trade, Production and Investment;
• Social Justice – Alternatives to Debt and Austerity, Social protection,
• Decent Work, and Sustainable Livelihoods;
• Peace Building and Human Security – Responses to Migration,
• Fundamentalism and Terrorism;
• Participatory Democracy, Gender Equality and Minority Rights
• 17 Open Space sessions, during which people have in-depth discussion on specific issues.
• Ulaan Baatar night, which discussed Brexit and its impacts on people in the two continents.
• Closing

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE

September 18, 2016

August 4, 2016

By Tina Ebro, on behalf of AEPF11, member of AEPF International Organising Committee (IOC)

Your Excellencies,

For 20 years, the Asia-Europe People’s Forum, has been a strategic gathering of Asian and European civil society networks pursuing democratisation, human rights, and social, economic and climate justice. AEPF11 held on 4th to 6th July in Ulaanbaatar was honoured by the full support and presence of the President of Mongolia and Chair of ASEM who stressed at the opening session, the importance of people’s participation in realizing inclusive and sustainable development. Under the main theme “Building New Solidarities: Working for Inclusive, Just and Equal Alternatives in Asiaand Europe,” 750 citizens from civil society, trade unions, academics and some parliamentarians from 42 countries engaged in constructive exchanges, and adopted the AEPF11 Final Declaration that we respectfully submit to the 11th ASEM Summit. We share four main points.

Firstly, we raise urgent concerns that human rights defenders and citizens face in countries where democratic space is shrinking like Kam Ley in Cambodia and Gloria Kapitan in the Philippines.

One, the enforced disappearance, almost 4 years ago, of AEPF9 main organiser Sombath Somphone. We urge the Lao PDR Government to complete its investigation, make public the result, and take forward appropriate legal actions against those responsible for his disappearance. Please return Sombath safely to his friends and family.

Two, we ask ASEM members to exert significant pressure on the military regime in Thailand to restore human rights including freedom of speech and assembly the right to campaign on the constitutional referendum, and to return democracy to the people.

Secondly, what has been presented as a ‘financial crisis’ is actually multi-faceted and interlinked crises – food, energy climate, social and human security, and ecological destruction – that are devastating the lives of millions across Asia and Europe.

We met at a time of growing inequalities, injustices and turmoil world-wide. There was a strong consensus at AEPF11 that the dominant development approach over the last decades – based around deregulation of markets, trade liberalisation, the privatisation of essential services and resources – has failed to meet peoples’ needs and rights, and contributed to climate change with its catastrophic consequences. This development approach has caused massive joblessness, exploitation and informalisation of labour, hunger, lack of basic services and social security, and the plunder of natural commons for the benefit of an extreme minority. These give rise to exclusion, polarisation, racism, xenophobia, terrorism, armed conflicts, and people’s displacement and migration.

Transnational corporations and multilateral institutions have become even more powerful, gaining significant control over our lives, leading to a hollowing out of democratic accountability and contributing to making the financial system so unregulated and unaccountable. Corporations must therefore adopt democratic mechanisms and respect human rights.

This development approach needs to be transformed – to go beyond endless growth and relentless capital accumulation – so that peoples can live freely in peace and dignity, restore their relationship with nature, and renew solidarity amongst peoples and nations. The need for change is urgent and fundamental.

Thirdly, we urge governments to heed the People’s Visions and urgent demands including:

• Implement universal and comprehensive social protection guaranteeing decent work, food, essential services and adequate income to vulnerable groups. Reverse the privatisation of essential services especially healthcare, education, and water, and implement just fiscal policies including financial transaction tax, closure of tax havens,and the cancelation of illegitimate debts.
• Stop land grabbing, implement Agrarian Reform and support small farmers.
• Halt all negotiations based on current trade and investment protection frameworks until an alternative, inclusive and sustainable model is established. Withdraw the inclusion of the extremely dangerous element of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism.
• Stop dirty energy, and develop alternative renewable energy sources and other concrete short and
  medium term plans for appropriate emissions reduction to achieve the 1.50C limit.
• Welcome Mongolia’s nuclear-weapons-free status and expand the nuclear-weapon free zone. Cut military spending by at least ten per cent in the next five years. Settle disputes and conflicts by peaceful means in areas such as Ukraine, Korean Peninsula, and in the South and East China Sea.
• Respect the rights of migrants and refugees, and adopt legal and political frameworks which allow them safe movement. Share responsibility to cope with present humanitarian crisis.
• Support civil society organizations, and citizen-led democratic processes including mechanisms for direct democracy, gender equality and participation of youth, women, LGBTI and differently abled people, as well as ethnic, religious and other minorities.

Finally, at this critical juncture, States with political will, to put people’s welfare at the center of policy-making are a must.ASEM in its 20th year has an historic opportunity to encourage governments to take bold steps and work together with civil society in realizing peoples’ alternatives towards a multi-polar world that is inclusive, just, equal, and ecologically sustainable world. Please, seize this opportunity.

July 28, 2016

by Niels Jongerius and Matthijs Peters (TNI), 28 July 2016

Between 4 and 6 July, over 750 activists, academics, social movements and civil society representatives from all over Asia and Europe gathered in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to share national and international struggles, exchange ideas and build new alliances during the Asia-Europe People’s Forum(AEPF).

The event, organised ahead of the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting for heads of states (ASEM), offered a valuable space for activists from both regions to share experiences and develop proposals for common coordination and actions. For TNI, which was co-initiator of the very first 1996 AEPF in Bangkok and has had a presence at the event ever since, the meetings in Ulaanbaatar provided a valuable opportunity to continue building convergences on shared struggles and connect with likeminded movements.

For 20 years, the AEPF has provided a unique and dynamic platform for dialogue and exchange between European and Asian people’s movements. Its first edition was organised by social movements to create a counter voice to the first ASEM meeting in 1996 in Bangkok and to stress the importance of a people’s voice during such summits. Since then, the AEPF has become a recurring bi-annual event preceding the ASEM meetings, which is organised alternatingly in Asia and Europe. Its network has expanded over the years, with new movements and organisations being mobilized with each meeting. The aims of the AEPF are to strengthen activists’ networks across Europe and Asia, analyse issues of common interest and provide people’s networks with a channel for critical engagement.

This year’s AEPF was kicked off by an opening ceremony in Mongolia’s presidential palace on Genghis Khan Square, the heart of the country’s capital city. Speeches by the Mongolian president, representatives from the national and international organising committees and other activists highlighted the importance of the forum for giving a voice to thousands of people across the two continents. The ceremony included a strong declaration on behalf of Ng Shui Meng, the wife of Sombath Somphone who coordinated the 2012 AEPF in Laos and whose forced disappearance remains a great concern to activists from both Asia and Europe. Somphone’s disappearance exemplified the fierce repression and criminalization that many activists are dealing with in their struggles today. His wife’s declaration therefore signified a symbolic start towards three days of exchanges and network building aimed at strengthening those struggles and countering such repressions in the future.

Over the course of three days, more than 500 Mongolians from all over the country, together with 250 international guests were active in a large number of workshops and meetings. The workshops were organized around seven thematic clusters that encompassed current global struggles such as climate justice; land and resource grabbing cases and peace and security issues. Moreover, space was also provided to discuss more recent developments such as China’s growing influence both in Asia and globally, or the ‘Brexit’ vote and its implications for progressives across the world. These issues led to vigorous, and at times heated discussions between both Asian and European participants. Especially the active participation by Mongolian civil society members and academics, whose engagement and critical approach to national and international policies was inspiring, made for lively debates and interesting exchanges of experiences and further proposals. Many of the discussions during the workshops also showed how Mongolia’s socio-economic and political governance issues related to major concerns in both Asian and European countries.

Since the 1990’s, Mongolia’s economy has been the subject of a widespread liberalization programme aimed at opening up the country’s markets and allowing in foreign investment. Like many other countries, Mongolia’s transition to a market-economy in the past decades has led to increasing wealth inequalities along with increasing corporate influence. Due to the country’s abundant natural resources, foreign direct investment has been focused almost exclusively on the extraction industries, with coal, gold and rare earth minerals much sought after. Minerals represent about 80% of the total value of the country’s exports. In the past years, transnational corporations from mostly Western countries have become a dominant player in the country’s mining sector, thereby extracting the country’s wealth while grabbing land and resources and causing environmental degradation and social conflicts. Mongolian governments have made attempts in the past years to regulate the mining sector. However, a new study from TNI that was launched during the AEPF shows how foreign companies have answered these attempts with investment claims at international arbitration courts.

Mongolia’s struggles share a familiar pattern in both Asian and European countries, where the increasing neoliberalisation of policies and society has marked a preference of the market over the interests of people and the environment. In this context, the contributions by Mongolian participants gave rise to interesting discussions on how to work together to counteract these developments in both regions and support affected people at local level. The struggle of Mongolian social movements against investment claims and trade and investment deals brought local struggles in convergence with for instance the European battles against TTIP and CETA, and the joint resistance against EU-Asian countries agreements and TPP, the trade and investment agreement between Pacific countries and the United States.

With a special focus on the mining industry, there was an interesting dialogue between mainly Asian countries resisting the extractive industries. These discussions focused on the vulnerability of countries to protect their territories from Transnational Corporations and the struggles of communities to prevent companies from taking their lands and livelihoods or causing environmental damages. Mongolian, Philippine and Kyrgyzstani together with German, Romanian and British activists discussed how to better prevent destructive mining, reject the myth of responsible mining and develop common campaign strategies against mining giants operating in their respective countries, which are the same in most of the cases. Participants also identified the threat of trade and investment agreements to their struggles, through the possibility for TNCs to sue states and undermine peoples’ resistances.

The common challenges to tackle the climate crisis and move towards a sustainable energy model were discussed among organizations from both regions, who exchanged experiences of their local strategies and planned some common proposals to stop false solutions, promote real solutions and demand urgent action from governments.

In order to better understand the struggles and promote exchange with anti-mining activists, but also to reflect upon the activities of small-scale miners in Mongolia, TNI members and other European activists also had the chance to travel to Mongolia’s rural areas in the days following the AEPF, to engage with and learn from both sides. The trip included meetings with artisan and cooperative miners as well as social and environmental activists resisting the damaging operations of transnational mining corporations.

After three days of intense but refreshing discussions, a Final Declaration was presented, which reflected the ideas and outcomes of the forum. Some notable issues drawn up in the statement included a call to ASEM countries to put pressure on the Lao government in order to ensure that Somphone and his family receive the justice they deserve and to put pressure on the military regime in Thailand to return to a democratic and just state respectful of human rights. Another key issue included in the declaration was a strong call upon the ASEM governments to support the campaign for a treaty to stop corporate impunity. The Final Declaration was ultimately presented during the opening ceremony of the ASEM11 on 15 July 2016.

TNI

July 19, 2016

The ‘Ulaanbaatar Final Declaration and Action Plans’ of AEPF 11, which has been presented to ASEM summit on July 15, 2016 by representatives of the International Organising Committee of AEPF and the Mongolian National Organising Committee of AEPF11, is now online.

AEPF11 Ulaanbaatar Final Declaration and Action Plans.