Campaigns & Programmes

We see Alternative Regionalism as one of the ways to break down hegemonic economic and political control globally, to monitor and seek solutions to the problems of the world for which globalisation has proved to fail to provide solutions, resulting instead in catastrophic crises that we have seen the world reeling under of late.

The program looks at current regional formations like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), among others, and assess their effectiveness in creating regional centres of economic and political power based on complementarity. Do they help build alternatives to neo-liberal globalisation that give heavy emphasis on free trade?

The sub-programme also looks at experiences in other part so the world where there have been experiments and experiences in different kinds of regional cooperation. The emphasis is not just on governments but on peoples and on people-to-people alliance building and problem solving.

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Focus contributes to the movement for climate justice by linking the climate debates – both inside and outside the framework of the UNFCCC -- with our ongoing work on trade, the commons, land and agrarian reform, finance, development and economic globalisation and by helping to build a broad-based global movement with the strong involvement of social movements from the Global South, and especially women, farmers, fishers, Indigenous Peoples, forest communities and workers.

Through our work, we aim to
• Replace the current market-based response to climate change as exemplified by the Kyoto protocol with genuine alternatives based on ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities’ to achieve social, economic, gender and ecological justice
• Build local, national and international climate justice coalitions
• Influence government responses to the climate and energy crises

Download the Climate Justice Programme Work Plan for 2010 here

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This June, the flotilla sails again on another humanitarian mission sans pressures and threats. On board once more one of the ships is Mr. Houdeville. Here he gives us first person accounts of what's happening. In May 2010, six ships with 600 passengers sailed to Israel on a mission to carry humanitarian aid bound for Gaza. The convoy was called Freedom Flotilla. Before the ships could even reach their destination, the Israeli army assaulted the convoy, killing more than 10 people and hurting dozens more passengers, that included a Nobel laureate and several European legislators, and Focus on the Global South's very own staff member, Thomas Sommer-Houdeville. The violence committed against the civilians were condemned all over the world

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