Press Release

29 July, 2007

Poverty Eradication by Strengthening Struggles for Peace, Justice and Food Sovereignty in South Asia

SAAPE Annual General Meeting and Conference Kicked off

The South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE) started its two-day conference on 29 July 2007 embracing the theme of "Poverty Eradication by Strengthening Struggles for Peace, Justice and Food Sovereignty in South Asia" in the context of SAAPE's Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2007. It was attended by over 170 likeminded civil society members from grassroots social Mass-based movements comprising women's movements, trade unions, human rights organizations, peasants' organizations, academia and NGOs covering all the SAARC countries including partners from the North namely Eurostep and the Europe External Policy Advisors (EEPA) based in Brussels, Belgium.

The event was inaugurated by Honorable Ms. Sahana Pradhan, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nepal who focused and stressed on the role of the civil society in partnership with governments towards achieving the goal of poverty eradication in the region. "Regional civic society organizations like SAAPE could play an immense role in vital areas of common interests", she said.

The opening of the AGM shared the experiences of people's struggles and successes taking place in respective countries and societies along the conference theme of peace, justice and food sovereignty contributing to poverty eradication in South Asia. The existing and strongly emerging anti-people trends of neo-liberalism, corporate globalization, exclusion, militarization, fundamentalism, gender injustice, armed conflict, erosion of democracy, labour exploitation, unjust access to natural resources and feminization of poverty as opposed to pro-poor and people-friendly development policies lacking in the South Asian governments were the major common issues shared by the participants. It was underscored by all present that the current development model centred on robust economic growth by South Asian governments which only marginalizes and excludes the poor from the whole development process is not the solution to poverty eradication.

Babu Mathew from the labour rights movement in India said, "India is currently shining with the robust economic growth of 8.5 per cent annually on one hand while on the other, it has brought about unprecedented exclusion leading to the growing invisibility of the poor in the country".

Dr Mathura Prasad Shrestha, senior human rights activist of Nepal mentioned, "The struggle to eradicate poverty is to be people's struggle for democracy with sovereignty of people including the full exercise of their political, social, cultural and economic rights without discrimination by gender, ethnicity, social economic status and regional category."

Horia Mosadiq from a human rights consortium in Afghanistan highlighted the subordinate position of Afghani women and shared that "citizens are considered men" in her country.

The two-day deliberations aim to explore the means and way forward towards a people-oriented and people-led development agenda by consolidating and strengthening existing people's struggles for peace, justice and food sovereignty contributing towards poverty eradication in South Asia. The SAAPE AGM would conclude with a people's declaration asserting the people's development agenda for poverty eradication based on SAAPE identified cross-cutting themes of food sovereignty, livelihood and employment; gender; labour rights; just and democratic governance and peace, justice and demilitarization.