GREAT project

According to the very old saying, attributed to Lao Tseu [1], „If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime“. But what if this man, or actually this woman, is simply prevented access to the pond or river?

All those who go to vote today and tomorrow will help decide many important matters facing the country in the near future. And yet, there is a set of serious questions that will remain virtually untouched by the elections. These include critical international problems and many issues for which there is a consensus on the political scene.

The article insists on the importance of participation of farmer organizations from developing countries in the definition of European aid to agriculture. It describes the action lead by a European group of NGOS in asking Eva Joly, chair of the European Parliament´s Development Committee for increased dialogue with Southern civil society.

The representatives of 193 countries that negotiated for two weeks in Copenhagen on climate change did not produce good news for the rest of the world. 

Governments are therefore sounding the alarms. Twenty Member States are even coming to the Council with a joint declaration on an approach to the fight against the milk crisis.

Numerous foreign commentators have rated the recently concluded Czech presidency of the Council of the European Union as not overly successful. Tony Barber from the Financial Times wrote that the Czech presidency will soon be forgotten.

Climate change represents a significant risk to the global economy. Published this year in May, the Human Impact Report uses available facts and expert projections to claim that climate change is responsible each year for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people; furthermore, hundreds of millions more inhabitants of the planet are seriously threatened, and annual economic losses amount to 125 billion dollars.[1]

One of the main priorities of the Czech presidency was the financial crisis and the pursuit of effective solutions. The economic and financial department of Glopolis focused efforts on making sure that the economic priorities of the Czech presidency took the needs of developing countries into greater account.

On a Sunday morning of June, a couple hundred of people walked the streets of Prague against child hunger, in solidarity with other 330,000 people across the planet. Dying of hunger in the 21st century, which is the case of a young child every six seconds, is no less than a violation of human rights.

In his article „A summit to help steady the EU“ Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer outlined indicators of success for the European Council meeting last week. However, while that meeting somewhat salvaged the dented image of the Czech Presidency, it did little to deliver on the demands that Glopolis has made in favour of the world’s poor.

In January 2009 ActionAid and its partners Glopolis and Peuples Solidaires braved the cold streets of Europe to ask passers-by „Why vote in the European elections“?

The Italian Province of Treviso will be hosting this week the first G8 Agriculture Ministers' Meeting in the history. Ministers will discuss concrete proposals for strengthening world food security.

On 7th April 2009 organized Glopolis in cooperation with two other European NGOs: SOS Faim Belgium and CFSI France and their 4 African partners: Bassiaka Dao (CPF-Burkina Faso), Abdou Hima (PFPN-Niger), Souleymane Keita (CNOP-Mali), Nadjirou Sall (FONGS-Sénégal) a lunch debate as a side event of the official EU ACP JPA, in the premises of the JPA.  

Article based on the keynote speech of Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, to the conference “The food crisis, one year on. How to achieve food security for all?” organized by Glopolis and Heinrich Boll Stiftung on March 4th, 2009.