Background
document
Civil Society and ASEM
51. In addition to the Labour conference, there will be a people's summit on the eve of ASEM3. At ASEM1 in Bangkok, there was a parallel NGO conference, which strove to replace the narrow economic focus with social and human-centred development issues. Some embassies of member countries were present at the NGO conference as observers and some delegations requested briefings from participant NGO's. The conference statement contained very strong support of workers' rights and of union activities. The conference was a success from a networking point of view, and produced interest and momentum enough to increase the integration between NGO's of the two regions. As a result, there was a People's Forum conference held on the eve of ASEM2 in London, entitled ASEM and Crisis: Peoples Realities and Peoples Responses.
52. This Conference again voiced grave concern that issues of democracy and human rights had been essentially left out of ASEM discussions, and that ASEM was wrong to consider that economic growth and progress could be achieved without a concentrated effort to secure democracy and human rights. The NGO's maintained that environmental and social issues were not given enough attention in either the TFAP or IPAP, and that ASEM should take note of the strong contribution that NGO's and the international trade union movement could make to the ASEM process.
© Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung I October 2000
Draft
statement
to
ASEM 3