COACH, EMPOWER AND ADVOCATE!
Acting on and influencing policy making and political debate has become a common and often successful approach in Europe, but has yet to gain traction on the trans-national level in the Southern neighbourhood and between the two shores of the Mediterranean basin. While civil society organisations (CSOs) get engaged in regional advocacy efforts, these efforts are still limited in their scope and rarely crossing borders and matching CSOs from both shores.
In response to that, the Med Dialogue Programme for Rights and Equality coaches and supports CSOs in developing advocacy campaigns across the Mashreq and Maghreb and through the Euro-Med region for effective ways to strengthen advocacy efforts in the Mediterranean. Med Dialogue facilitates strategizing and cooperation between the Southern Neighbourhood countries on one hand, and between the North and South shores on the other, in addition to encouraging groupings and networks formation. The Programme team provides the beneficiaries with technical support and resources to meet the needs of the planned campaign and entities involved.
Coached and supported campaigns shall meet specific objectives, explore possible methodologies, based on connecting research, networking and political influence.
Three advocacy campaigns to be implemented during the period of 2021 2022:
Campaign 01 : ACCESS TO PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION
This first advocacy campaign, launched in February 2021, has been designed as an online campaign, considering the current context of COVID-19 emergency, where physical activities and meetings have been restricted. The campaign emphasizes the obligation of national governments to protect free flow of information while implementing health measures and sensitizing journalists to report on accountability issues related to health rights. Its main message is ensuring free circulation of accurate public health information is essential to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and to keeping governments accountable for their citizens’ rights to health.
Campaign 2: “OUR MEDITERRANEAN”
The campaign’s goal is to establish a space for dialogue and action on the notion of the Mediterranean as the common destiny of the peoples of the region, with citizens and grassroots CSOs, focusing on shared efforts, human (hi)stories and common solutions, and involving at least one major regional institution and local actors from at least 3 northern and 3 southern Mediterranean countries, by the end of November 2021. Its mission is to advocate countering the narrative of division and standing for the multiple facets of our Mediterranean common roots, by ensuring that issues of communal interest are brought up to the regional and institutional agenda, and a roadmap toward a united, free, socio-politically, and economically integrated Mediterranean space is developed.
Campaign 3: Humanizing Migration
The mapping study on civil society’s regional networks in the southern Mediterranean and Euro-Med space undertaken by the Med Dialogue Programme, showed that democratisation, human rights and migration topped the interests of most of these organisations.
Migration is the second thematic respondents focused on when asked to suggest campaigns to be organised with support from Med Dialogue. Therefore, the third advocacy campaign conducted by two advocacy organizations (1) the Forum Alternatives Maroc(Morocco) and (2) Amel Association International (Lebanon) advocated towards a human-centred approach to migration by recognizing migration as a historical phenomenon rooted in Mediterranean exchanges, and mobility as a human right. The (3) organization, the European Policy Center think-tank(Brussels), joined the campaign providing analyses and organising a policy dialogue event in Brussels.
