European Platform for Conflict Prevention and Transformation

[Assopace nazionale <assopace.nazionale at romacivica.net>]

Carissimi,
Vi informiamo che non avendo potuto predisporre un budget per partecipare al
meeting di Soesterberg del 12-14 Maggio, la Piattaforma italiana non sarà
rappresentata.
Tuttavia, la European Platform for Conflict Prevention and Transformation,
con la quale siamo in contatto, sta elaborando un documento politico
concernente la prevenzione dei conflitti da presentare al Summit del G-8 di
luglio p.v..

La bozza di tale documento politico sarà presentata nel corso della riunione
e la Piattaforma Italiana intende dare il suo contributo all'elaborazione
del documento da presentare a Tokyo, favorendo un dibattito ampio tra le
organizzazioni italiane.

Chi è interessato a lavorare sul documento può intervenire alla riunione
convocata per Lunedì 29/05/00 alle ore 15.00 presso la sede dell'
Associazione per la Pace in Via Salaria 89 Roma.

Per richiedere la bozza del documento Vi preghiamo di contattare Francesca
Giovannini presso la Segreteria dalla prossima settimana.


Utrecht 10 April 2000

From:  European Platform for Conflict Prevention and Transformation
Deliver to: National Platforms

Dear friends,
The G-8 countries will hold a meeting in July in Japan on Conflict
Prevention. There will be two preparatory meetings, one for NGOs, in June in
Japan.
We think it is important to present there a policy-document from the
Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding community. We ask your help on
commenting on a draft-document and get support from as many as possible NGOs
and institutes.

Aims
The aims of this activity are:

- to present and profile ourselves as Conflict Resolution and
Peacebuilding
community on a G-8 meeting; this is exceptional: especially the Conflict
Resolution community hasn't presented themselves internationally.

- to present a policy paper with some concrete proposals on some
key-issues;
too much lip-service is paid to conflict prevention, without concrete
implementation. We should formulate a short, concrete, comprehensive
programme.

- making such a document by international co-operation, we make an
instrument for national advocacy and lobby work as well. All governments
should implement such a document and till now a concrete and comprehensive
action programme is lacking. Such a document will be very helpful for our
own lobby work at our own parliament.

Because of these three aims, it is of great importance to formulate such a
document, to present it in Japan and to use it in as many as possible
countries for advocacy and lobby work.

Approach

The document will be prepared and published by the European Platform for
Conflict Prevention and Transformation. A small working group, led by the
secretariat of the Platform and International Alert and Saferworld, is
seeking support and contributions in the content from leading
NGOs/institutes in all G-8 countries and other countries and networks.
The key-issues will be mailed to you soon.
We ask key NGOs in the G-8 countries to organise in their country the
support or signatories for this document, and to comment on drafts of the
document.
We have asked in each G-8 country some key-contacts to do so, and as
secretariat of the Platform we will ask support from the other NGOs and
networks from non-G-8 countries.

Time table

The G-8 summit is in July. Two preparatory meetings will be held the
beginning of June in Tokyo, one for NGOs and one for academic people. A
draft-document will be discussed at the meeting of the European Platform in
the Netherlands, May 12-14 th. The signatories should be collected in
advance. The document will be printed before the meeting in Tokyo in June,
with hopefully at least some 200 signatories. Hopefully you can cooperate
with us on this challenging activity.