About SAAPE

Background:

South Asia, home to almost 23 percent of the world's 6.6 billion people; with a wide diversity of cultures, languages, religions and social structures, is severely affected by poverty. Poverty in South Asia is coupled with socio-political tensions, armed insurgencies, gender discrimination and violence against women, worst forms of child labour and appalling inequalities of all forms.

Against the backdrop of rising poverty and escalating human rights abuses, various civil society actors from across the region, together with representatives of civil society organisations from Europe convened a consultation in 2000 in Manesar, India to discuss the problems facing the region and to come up with possible solutions. About 200 participants, comprising journalists, academics, trade unionists, human rights activists, NGOs and other civil society actors agreed to form an alliance to fight against poverty and injustice in South Asia. This led to the creation of the South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE). It was formalized later at the South Asia Civil Society Network meeting on poverty eradication in Kathmandu in December 2001.

Priority Themes:

SAAPE's main focus is poverty eradication through policy research, advocacy, lobbying and campaign works on five key themes, which are priority concerns for civil society in all countries of the region. The major thematic areas are:

• Food sovereignty, livelihood and employment,
  
• Peace, justice and demilitarization,
  
• Gender,
  
• Labour rights, and
  
• Just and democratic governance.

SAAPE members include:

• Major groups and alliances working on poverty eradication, food sovereignty, human rights protection and promotion, women's empowerment, labour rights, community mobilisation, governance, peace and justice in the region.
  
• Mass-based organisations and networks of grassroots communities, enabling the alliance to bring the concerns of rural and marginalised communities directly to its work.
  

Vision:

SAAPE envisions just societies and esteemed individuals fully enjoying all human rights for a dignified living.

Mission:

To bring together like minded civil society groups from South Asia to jointly strategise and take actions to contribute towards poverty eradication and achieve effective changes in the economic and socio-political arena to combat the harmful economic policies of globalisation, privatisation and neo-liberalisation

Strategies:

• Build solidarity and a shared civil society vision for the region,
  
• Strengthen and support national level organisations working on key issues; bringing a regional perspective and thereby increasing the profile and effectiveness of key campaigns,
  
• Enable groups of poor people to identify their own solutions locally and bringing them to the regional level,
  
• Facilitate people's genuine participation in decision making processes at all levels to contribute towards poverty eradication, and
  
• Promote effective alternatives to eradicate poverty and empower marginalised people.
  

SAAPE's analysis is based on the vast experiences of its members. The rationale for SAAPE's work at the regional level is rooted in the concerns of the rural poor and marginalised groups.

SAAPE's has a two pronged approach, i.e.,

• Develop research to support advocacy and lobbying activities aimed at regional and national level decision-makers of the South highlighting the concerns and perspectives of marginalised groups and advocate pro-poor policies. And consolidate their struggles and experiences to influence the international players, particularly of the North.
  
• Build capacity and understanding amongst members' constituencies to empower them to participate in development processes on their own terms and implement their own solutions
  

SAAPE is the only network focusing on poverty eradication in a holistic way in the region. It brings together existing like minded networks to strengthen and build on their work; to make explicit the links between different issues that impact on poverty; and to link and bring a regional understanding to national level campaigns.

Minimum Common Principles (MCPs) for SAAPE Membership:

All members of SAAPE-

• Share the same general principles of strengthening secular and democratic processes in civil society; simultaneously fighting against communal and ethnic politics, which mobilise people according to religious and ethnic divisions for political power.
  
• Believe in strengthening gender equality and women's empowerment, and oppose all forms of exploitation of women and children.
  
• Believe in and pursue with practice, community driven development and people's empowerment on the basis of poverty eradication, equality, social justice and economic progress.
  
• Work towards ensuring poor people's access to all basic services, i.e., education, health, food, water and sanitation, and work to take down all barriers to access.
  
• Fight against all forms of discriminations including caste, ethnicity, gender, religion, culture, origin, etc.
  
• Ameliorate erosion of civil and political rights and weakening of the democratic order.
  
• Work for a North - South alliance based on building and consolidating sub-regional and third world based alliances.
  
• Oppose war, militarisation and nuclearisation of societies and nation states.
  
• Oppose involuntary displacement in any pretexts.
  
• Fight for lifting all travel restrictions within the region.
  
• Promote peaceful transition process to a new socio-economic order and denounce violence in principle.
  

The membership of SAAPE is open to all the organisations and individuals that subscribe the above MCPs.