G-CAP Asia to flag off a caravan

The Asia Pacific Meeting for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (G-CAP) held in Bangkok on April 5-6 has decided to flag off a caravan of 100 people, which will travel around the region, to urge people to join hands to fight against poverty.

Written by Rajiv Tikoo Bangkok, April 7th 2005 - The anti-poverty campaign is shifting into top gear in Asia. The Asia Pacific Meeting for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (G-CAP) held in Bangkok on April 5-6 has decided to flag off a caravan of 100 people, which will travel around the region, to urge people to join hands to fight against poverty. Plans were also unveiled to hold demonstrations and protest rallies at the time of the G8 meeting in the first week of July, Millennium+5 Summit during September 14-16, and WTO Ministerial in December, 2005. Said Salil Shetty, director, Millennium Campaign, "The focus is on mobilization around three international white band days." Of course, he added, one can have more such days the way Africa has added the Africa Day and the African Day of the Child. Besides, the Bangkok meeting witnessed sharing of country specific experiences, campaign tools, techniques and material, plans of action and deliberations on common regional campaign strategies from 17 countries. Hamid Jalil from Sanayee Development Foundation, Afghanistan, focused on the need to have peace and security in order to pursue development. His colleague Mari Wida added that if there is no peace, there will be no development. Agreeing with them, Netra Timsina from ForestAction, Bhola Bhattarai from Federation of Community Forestry Users and Gokul Gautam from NGO Federation of Nepal also said that peace and democracy are necessary to achieve development and respect for human rights. Deshapriya S Wijetunge from United Nations Friendship Organisation, Sri Lanka, added that it also means that there is need to particularly focus on casualties of conflict like 50,000 war widows in his country. Besides, there was unanimity on the need to localize global campaigns. David Dzebisashvili from Oxfam GB, who is active in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States, emphasized that there is need to link up local priorities with global goals. M Shahidul Islam from Campaign for Popular Education and Golam R Hiru from Bangladesh Education and Research Network said that it can be achieved by setting up national development goals keeping in view the local needs and context. In fact, civil society is already doing it in quite a few countries. Anil K Singh from South Asian Network for Social & Agricultural Development explained that they are already doing it by relating Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to national development goals and the ruling government's Common Minimum Programme. Others are planning it. Chin Mardy from Cambodian Youth Development said that they are localizing the G-CAP campaign by planning events during water festival. Similarly, Avi Mahaningtyas from GEF Small Grants Programme, Indonesia, added that they are working with faith groups as one of the White Band days falls on Friday (July 1). Other talked about more pressing issues locally. Moosa Manik from Ecocare, Maldives, focused on gender parity, and Phan Van Ngos from ActionAid International, Vietnam, talked about environmental sustainability. While Mabel Au from Hong Kong People's Alliance on WTO focused on WTO Ministerial, Takumo Yamada from Oxfam Japan expressed concern about both the quantity as well as quality of aid. Farah Malik from Insan Foundation-Pakistan put it all in perspective by emphasizing that the vision should be think Asia and have a pan- Asian strategy. Sounding a cautionary note, John Samuel, international director of ActionAid International, said, "But the idea should be not only to broaden the campaign, but also to deepen it."

Read the original story