09-06-2010 Fair Politics goes Senegal

On May the 18th and 19th  Fair Politics was represented at a conference in Dakar, Senegal. Suzan Cornelissen, policy officer Fair Politics of the Evert Vermeer Foundation delivered a speech during the first panel discussion, concerning Policy Coherence for Development in the light of the crises.

The conference was organized by the Gabriel Peri Fondation of France in cooperation with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung of Germany, on the theme; The Global Crisis in Africa: what are the changes? Tuesday morning on the 18th, the conference was opened by Amath Dansokho, General Secretary of PIT-Senegal.

Developing countries are not the root or the cause of the financial crisis, yet the effects of it have shown to be devastating for poorer countries. It has become an economic, social, developmental, environmental and humanitarian crisis. Every field of activity has been effected. Trade levels and prices of raw materials have dropped, causing unemployment levels to increase. This in turn has led to more migration flows. Furthermore the EU has increased its trade restrictions to protect its own market and to make all matters worse, has cut back on development spending. Therefore in the time of this financial crisis, Policy Coherence for Development, to which the European Union has committed itself is ever more important.

One of the commitments towards PCD made by the European Union concerns article 12 of Cotonou. This article allows ACP countries to request a dialogue with the European Commission in the framework of Policy Coherence for Development:

“Where necessary, a request for information may also take place on the initiative of the ACP States. At their request, consultations shall be held promptly so that account may be taken of their concerns as to the impact of those measures before any final decision is made. After such consultations have taken place, the ACP States may, in addition, transmit their concerns in writing to the Community as soon as possible and submit suggestions for amendments indicating the way their concerns should be met.”

This article has only been used once so far, namely in February 2009 at a meeting of the Joint ACP-EU Subcommittee on Trade Cooperation at the request of the Mauritius on five Commission initiatives dealing with the use of pesticides, nickels substances, fisheries cold chain requirements, the renewable energy directive and the FLEGT licensing system.

Fair Politics would like to see this article used more often by ACP states, and therefore urged the African civil society organisations present at the conference to make their respective governments aware of this opportunity. If the EU wants to listen carefully to the voice of the South and would like to make PCD more evidence based then the use of this article should be promoted. Not only did we want to raise awareness around this article, we explained the relevance of PCD and the various commitments made by the EU towards PCD. We also looked for ways to cooperate more with civil society organisations from West Africa, so that in the future they could provide us with impact studies and evidence of European policies having an effect on development in Africa.

We received many positive reactions after our speech and many participants were interested in Policy Coherence for Development. We hope therefore that civil society and politicians in the South will become more aware of PCD and its relevance.

Other interesting speeches were delivered by various researchers, activists and politicians on topics all related to the global crises and the situation in Africa.

Please see the programme of the conference here
And the full speech and PowerPoint presentation.