Building New Solidarities: Working for Inclusive, Just, and Equal Alternatives in Asia and Europe
On 15-16 July 2016, the 11th Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM11) will take place in Ulaanbaatar hosted by Mongolia. Heads of State and Government from across Asia and Europe will meet to discuss their future priorities and plans.
Prior to ASEM11, the Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) will hold its 11th biennial People’s Forum on 4-6 July 2016 under the title Building New Solidarities: Working for Inclusive, Just, and Equal Alternatives in Asia and Europe. AEPF11 will tackle strategies on major themes or People’s Visions, representing the hopes of citizens of the two regions. These are:
• Resource Justice, Land Rights, Equal Access to Water, and Participation - Going Beyond Extractivism
• Food Sovereignty/Food Security – Beyond zero hunger
• Climate Justice - Towards Sustainable Energy Production and Use, and Zero Waste
• Socially Just Trade Production and Investment
• Social Justice – Social Protection for All, Decent Work and Sustainable Livelihoods, Tax Justice and other egalitarian Alternatives to Debt and Austerity
• Peace Building and Human Security - Responses to Migration and Fundamentalism and Terrorism.
• Participatory Democracy, Gender Equality and Minority Rights
Progress towards realising these People’s Visions is key to solving the multiple crises facing people, states, and institutions. The security, ecological, debt, financial, energy, and food crises are caused and compounded by policies and practices of many governments in both rich and poor countries, particularly in their approaches to regulating business. These interlocking crises have caused increasing social polarisation between peoples and states. In Asia, they are exacerbating poverty and inequality, already widespread before the present crises. In Europe, they are creating indebtedness, joblessness, and insecurity. We are increasingly experiencing “corporate capture”, whereby multinational and national corporations structure and determine our lives and livelihoods. We are facing violent responses and break down of inter-community relations and a decline in the public culture of debate and discussion. Citizens’ responses are often confined at local and national levels; to complement these, AEPF seeks to encourage and strengthen cooperation and solidarity of people’s networks regionally, inter-regionally, and globally.
This is a call to come and join us to be part of AEPF11, which is open, dynamic, and inclusive and focuses on meaningful and practical discussions and linkages for change.
AEPF11 will be an exciting, fruitful series of interlinked dialogues, workshops, actions, policy debates, and open spaces. You can be part of this in many ways: you can actively participate in building People’s Visions, co-organise an event, and/or contribute human and financial resources. There will be a call for expressions of interest to organise workshops and events soon.
Please save the date and begin discussing in your organisations and movements on
how you can be a part of AEPF11. This is your forum!
Watch out for announcements on AEPF11 activities and on how to register as participant or co-organiser of events at the AEPF website www.aepf.info
For further information, you may contact:
for MONGOLIA - Urantsooj Gombosuren gurantsooj rocketmail.com
for EUROPE - Conny van Heemstra conny.van_heemstra asienhaus.de,
for ASIA - Maris Dela Cruz aepf.secretariat gmail.com