AsiaDHRRA together with members of the Solidarity for Asian People’s Advocacy (SAPA) Working Group on ASEAN organized the 2nd ASEAN Civil Society conference (ACSC2) in Cebu City, Philippines on December 10-12 2006. The ACSC2 was attended by more than 300 participants from various community-based organizations, civil society groups, NGOs, social movements, people’s organizations and trade unions that work on critical social, political and economic issues in the ASEAN region.

Representatives from ASEAN DHRRAs including DHRRA Malaysia, VietDHRRA, CamboDHRRA, ThaiDHRRA actively participated in conference. PhilDHRRA anchored an panel workshop with the Anti Mina Campaign (ATM) group and brought a big delegation of IP partners.

The ACSC II is a continuation of the 1st ACSC held in Shah Alam, Malaysia on 7-9 December 2005 whose outcome was officially presented to the ASEAN Heads of State, and the culmination of the series of national civil society consultation meetings initiated by the SAPA Working Group on ASEAN in cooperation with the Southeast Asia Committee for Advocacy (SEACA) for Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The ACSC II also consolidated the inputs and proposals to the ASEAN processes including the ASEAN Charter process.

During the ACSC, AsiaDHRRA, in partnership with the Asian Farmers Association (AFA), jointly anchored a well attended panel on “ASEAN Regional Integration in Agriculture: What It Is, How It Should Be”.

In the forum synthesis and call to action, the forum participants agreed that under a free trade framework dominated by TNCs, rural people will hardly benefit from regional integration in agriculture. Among the challenges identified were: (1) to understand more the regional integration framework of ASEAN; (2) to formulate an alternative framework – challenge ASEAN to institutionalize participation of small farmers and promote food security and sovereignty that is gender-sensitive; (3) to develop an integrated approach from input to market; (4) to firm-up common grounds in agriculture; (5) to get away from chemical farming; and, (5) to campaign against GMO!.

During the panel session, Dean Rene Ofreneo, Executive Director of Fair Trade Alliance in the Philippines, talked about “ASEAN Regional Integration in Agriculture: What It Is.” Neth Dano of the Third World Network presented the “Synthesis of Five Cases on Pro-Small Farmer Trading Systems.” Also, Maureen dos Santos from the executive committee of the Brazilian network for Integration of Peoples (HEBRIP) and the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HAS) shared the experiences of Brazilian Farmers’ Organizations in engaging MERCOSUR, a regional trade agreement founded in 1991 that promotes free movement of goods and currency.

AsiaDHRRA’s successful participation in the Cebu ACSC was also made possible with the kind logistical assistance of PhilDHRRA Visayas.