Poverty, security, and trade in focus

MS Denmark has chosen the organisations core issues for the next two years

By Mai Rasmussen, Information Officer

The world is poor, unjust, and unsafe. That’s the setting in which MS has chosen to focus specifically on three operational areas - aiming at creating a more fair and equal world by targeting the specific areas of poverty and marginalisation, security and conflict, and trade.

For all of the three focus areas policy advocacy is emphasised according to MS’ new more policy oriented policy paper, ‘Partnership against Poverty’.

Poverty and marginalisation are concepts already well known to all MS in the South country programmes. What’s new is a clearer focus on the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs regarding activities both in the north and in the south, meaning that also local organisations in the programmes could work for reaching - and making their governments reach - for example first MDG goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.

In the Ugandan context the choice of security and conflict as another core issue will most probably be welcomed. The issue is, however, interpreted broadly. It encourages country programmes to engage in specific conflict resolution and in promoting human rights. But it also stresses the need for policy guaranties for the fight against terror being fought without violating people’s rights. An outstanding part of this focus area is MS’ new engagement in the Middle East which is being funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affair’s anti-terror budget.

Street vendors and market bargaining are everyday perspectives on trade. At another level, trade is regulated by the World Trade Organisation, WTO and to a great extend through the European Union’s quota systems and agricultural subsidies. With it’s focus on trade, MS seeks to show and address the connection between the locally experienced trade and the international and north-dominated regimes. The primary view point is that in many ways EU’s agriculture policies undermine the development assistance that the member countries grant the south.

MS Uganda’s Policy Advisory Board (PAB) in its July meeting discussed the trade focus specifically and came to the conclusion that at this point in time it is not an issue that the country programme will give emphasis.
The focus areas will guide MS’ activities till the end of 2006, both in terms of policy decisions and application for funds.