Everyone deserves an affordable, healthy, and nutritious diet. Achieving this requires just, sustainable, and resilient food systems rooted in food sovereignty and planetary boundaries. The dominance of a corporate and industrial globalized food model hinders the potential of family-based, small-scale, diversified food systems that feed most people, especially in Africa.

Climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and conflicts highlight the globalized system’s oligopolistic nature, unsustainability, and inequalities. Small-scale producers, local systems, and indigenous knowledge offer the roadmap to end hunger, poverty, achieve food sovereignty, climate resilience, restore the environment, and improve social justice.

The current global food system, driven by economic interests and speculation, perpetuates food crises. The EU should address global food insecurity through its policies, programs, AU-EU Partnership, and influence in international forums.

Inequalities are not just numbers. They take different forms and compound each other. But mainly, inequalities have a human face.

Europe can and must make a difference by funding projects that follow four key principles.

During our travels in Paraguay and South Africa we have asked to participants and leaders of projects funded by the EU and EU Member States how can EU’s international partnerships become a gateway for equality. All the testimonies and lessons learnt are collected in the report What makes the difference for equality?

Watch the video to find out more!

Inequalities persist at high levels throughout the world and they affect individuals in a wide range of ways. Europe has a particular responsibility with respect to inequalities, but the increasing recognition of inequalities as a key global challenge by the European Union (EU) and many EU Member States shows that different partnerships, focused on equality, are possible and feasible.

This report looks at case studies in South Africa, Paraguay and Bangladesh which show how Europe can engage constructively with communities and marginalised groups and support their struggle for equality.

The present report identifies a number of key ingredients for equality, with the hope to stimulate political debate among European policy-makers to
fully mainstream inequality reduction in policies, programmes and projects.

We have also collected the testimonies of the participants and leaders of projects funded by the EU and EU Member States in a video that  highlights the four key principles that programmes need to follow.

 

The new partnership agreement between the European Union and the members of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States marks the formal conclusion of their negotiations of the Post-Cotonou Agreement, and sets the framework for political, economic and sectoral cooperation for the next twenty years.

The role of civil society in the dialogue and in the implementation of the Post-Cotonou Agreement is clearly outlined in the text. However, the procedures and conditions for ensuring structured and effective participation of CSOs still remain unclear. Like the previous agreement, it offers a promising framework for participation by civil society actors, but it does not create mechanisms for translating this aspiration into practice.

In order to engage in transformative partnerships in EU-OACP relations, the Agreement must go beyond promising frameworks with concrete mechanisms for effective participation of civil society to ensure transparent, inclusive and participatory implementation.

This guide, addressed to CSOs in the EU and in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, pinpoints the crucial sections in the negotiated text of the Post-Cotonou Agreement. Particularly focusing on the role of civil society, the Insider’s Guide aims to show why CSOs must engage with the Agreement and what they can do in terms of advocacy to influence its implementation.