Annual Report 2013

Following a successful restructuring process in 2011- 2012, Focus on the Global South continued to provide a powerful critical analysis of inequality and corporate capture in South and Southeast Asia during 2013. Under the ongoing programme, “Whose New Asia?”, we engaged with social movements, NGOs and other types of allies at national, regional and international levels in our three thematic programme areas: Defending the Commons, Climate and Environmental Justice, and Trade and Investment.

Despite the challenge of limited resources, Focus produced informed analyses of trends, developed campaigns together with our allies, and advanced much-needed alternatives to neoliberalism and other economic growth-based paradigms. Our key activities during the year included strengthening grassroots, justice-oriented approaches to the climate change crisis through platforms like the Climate Space at the World Social Forum, resisting the free trade agenda in countries in the region and at the Ninth Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization in Bali, supporting land reform initiatives, and helping build international frameworks to regulate corporate investments in agriculture through the Committee on World Food Security of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.