Asia Europe Peoples Forum

AEPF is an interregional network of progressive civil society organizations across Asia and Europe. Since 1996, the AEPF has remained the only continuing network linking Asian and European NGOs and social movements. It has assumed the unique function of fostering people’s solidarity across the two regions and has become a vehicle for advancing the people’s voice within Asia-Europe relations.

Since its beginning, AEPF has provided a space for social actors in each region to:

  • Strengthen network building at the national and regional levels in order to undertake cross-regional initiatives and campaigns;
  • Analyse issues of common interest such as security, development and neo-liberal globalization and their impact on peoples in each region and develop and take forward visions and strategies for alternative futures for a more just, equal and inclusive Asia and Europe;
  • Provide people’s organizations and networks with a channel for constructive engagement with the institutions and policies of ASEM-member countries.

It has organised 13 Peoples Forums that involved coalitions of farmers, urban poor and women’s organisations, trade unions, regional campaign networks and NGOs, and progressive think-tanks and scholars, parliamentarians and journalists.

From 17 – 24 May 2021, AEPF organised its 13th biennial conference under the title “Asia Europe People’s Forum for a Just, Peaceful and Sustainable World”.

AEPF13 was organised as a virtual event and offered an exciting series of interlinked dialogues, workshops, actions, policy debates and plenary sessions. Recordings of all sessions are available on this website.

More than 600 people from social movements, frontline communities, campaigning networks, progressive NGOs, academics & parliamentarians from over 45 countries across Asia and Europe were part of the AEPF13 Forum.

During the AEPF 13, an Open Space on the Migrant and Refugee Peoples in Europe and Asia: Rights and Realities – Reflections and Strategies was being co-organised by: Mrinal Gore Interactive Center for Social Justice & Peace in South Asia, SENTRO Trade Union-Philippines in South East Asia (transnational migrant domestic workers organising in HongKong, Qatar etc); Waling-Waling Justice 4 All Migrants, Migreurop, Transnational Migrant Platform-Europe (TMP-E) and the Transnational Institute (TNI).

The Rights of Migrant and Refugee Peoples is an important cross-cutting and core political agenda in both regions. In both Asia and Europe, there are sites of mass forced displacement caused by impoverishment, climate change and war, as well as by the global re-structuring of labor. The mass violations of the rights of migrants and refugees are well documented as well as their struggle to re-claim their rights.

In this Open Space, we shared the main developments that are impacting on the working and living conditions of migrants and refugees in each region, as well as the strategies that are shaping the migrant and refugee response.