News from FoRS-Czech Forum for Development Cooperation

FoRS present at and preparing for the Addis Ababa, New York and Paris summits
As a preparation for the Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa, FoRS-Czech Forum for Development Cooperation together with its member organisation Glopolis, launched a media brief at a breakfast for journalists on July 8th, presenting the main issues and putting them in the national context. The brief criticises the lack of the participation of a Czech government´s representative (especially the absence of a representative of Ministry of Finance in the delegation) in Addis Ababa, as well as the insufficient amount of Czech ODA (0,11 % GDP, i. e. one third of its commitments). FoRS was represented in the official national delegation to Addis by its Executive Board President from Glopolis, who contributed to the final Czech position, which recognised importance of domestic resource mobilisation for sustainable development and encouraged the international community to elaborate more on the international tax reforms at the global level. FoRS also supported the participation of a journalist writing for a national renowned weekly magazine contributing thus to raise awareness of the Czech public on global development issues. FoRS is now preparing for the UN summit in New York. Here, the platform will be represented in the official national delegation led by the vice-prime minister and will send another participant in side-events. FoRS will also provide an input for the Czech vision on SDGs to the Czech government, especially on the topics related to the development cooperation. In addition, since last year, FoRS has been engaged in a dialogue of development, environmental, social, educational, NGOs working with migrants and other Czech NGOs about a joint vision and requirements for the Czech Republic implementation of the Agenda 2030. As to the December climate summit in Paris, FoRS cooperates with the association of environmental NGOs, Green Circle.

FoRS discussed the refugee crisis 
Current critical refugee crisis and its insufficient and inadequate attention at the national level woken up a huge interest from FoRS members to discuss the situation and to search for ways of joint action. This debate took place on August 26th and the participants –members of FoRS-Czech Forum for Development Cooperation as well as NGOs specialised on migration in the Czech Republic- shared their experiences, opinions and good practices. They identified several concrete topics of concern and of interest in cooperating, e. g. to work on proposals for more system solutions addressed to national policy and decision-makers, to improve ways of communication with haters and the media, to exchange experiences with the discussion about migration in schools, to include foreigners living in the Czech Republic in policy and decision-making processes and to make proposals on how to address migration in the framework of development cooperation.

Photo by Michaela Lenc, FoRS: debate on refugee crisis

Information provided by Marie Zázvorková, FoRS Liaison Officer