A brainstorming was organised on Wednesday 17 October by the Portuguese Presidency, the European Commission and the Council Secretariat with Brussels based Non State Actors that have been following the joint EU-Africa Strategy process on how to materialise the people to people partnership approach. BOND had made sure that some its African partners could participate in the meeting, which also illustrates the daily work between African and European CSOs and the efforts made by European CSOs to provide their African partners with a stronger voice in the European arena.
Some of the key points made on how to develop an operational people-centred partnership include:
- There needs to be a clear policy space and will to take CS input onboard
- For effective monitoring there needs to be a possibility to hold officials and governments responsible
- There is a need to learn from past experiences of involving CSOs
- Measurable objectives were asked for in the Action Plan
- Reporting should take place on a regular basis in order to facilitate the involvement of grass-root organisations
- Financial support is needed to enable efficient monitoring both to individual grass-roots organisations as well as to bigger networks who would play a facilitating role.
Download the ECDPM report of the meeting – doc ; pdf
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