Asia - Pacific Program
For more than two decades, PWRDF has supported people in the Asia - Pacific region who are building peace, justice and development in an inter-faith context.
Asia and the Pacific region are extremely diverse in terms of political systems,economic development, culture and religion, even within the borders of a single country. However, the key factors that affect the development agendas of civil society organizations in the region are: 1) the pervasive poverty gap or income gap, 2) influences by regional & global superpowers and their impact on socio-economic policies, 3) on-going tension and endemic conflicts, 4) the ‘war on terror’ and the new security agenda and 5) democratic development.
PWRDF Partnerships
- Bangladesh - partner profiles
- Thai-Burma Border
- Philippines - partner profiles
- Sri Lanka
- Solomon Islands
- Regional partners - Hong Kong profile
Overview of Regional Strategy
Weaving a Culture of Peace with Justice and Building a Moral Economy
PWRDF began its involvement in Asia-Pacific in the mid-1970s when concern grew over extraction of resources from the Tiruray tribal community lands in the southern Philippines. The community was displaced and experienced violent ethnic strife. The Philippine Episcopal Church initiated a co-operative movement for the betterment of the rural population and invited PWRDF to join them as partners.
In Asia-Pacific PWRDF supports the work of marginal farmers, fisher folk communities and small producers, as they struggle to obtain a fair share of their produce and gain ownership of land and resources. We support the aspirations of indigenous people to reclaim their heritage, and gain access to ancestral lands and resources. We work with civil society organizations on the Thai-Burma border to free all ethnic groups in Burma from the yoke of oppression under the Military Government. We support partners fighting large-scale poverty in Bangladesh. We promote racial and ethnic harmony and peace in Sri Lanka and the Solomon Islands. Support also goes to much needed legal services and counseling of migrant workers in the region who leave their homes and families in search of income, mostly in menial and dangerous jobs abroad. Behind all these initiatives lie the underlying objectives of the Fund to build a moral political economy so that everyone has enough, so that peace with justice can prevail.
PWRDF works both within specific countries and at a cross-border and regional level.
For example, the Fund partners with Jubilee South, and Asia-Pacific Research Network, a regional group of 39 member organizations from 17 countries. Both these networks are involved in action research, training and response to advocacy needs in Asia. They provide people with good information on fair-trade, debt-free, green and indigenous alternatives to corporate globalization. UBINIG, the Policy Research and Development Alternatives in Bangladesh, and Gami Seva Sevana in Sri Lanka, effectively campaign against genetically modified food and its disastrous effects on food sovereignty, health and the environment. To support initiatives in the protection of migrant labourers' rights, PWRDF supports the Asia-Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) and the Mission for Migrant Filipino Workers in Hong Kong.
In the Philippines, PWRDF works with local communities of farmers, sugar cane plant workers, fisher folk and indigenous people. They all seek to defend their lives, land and resources that are threatened by their own government's collaboration with foreign business houses. In Sri Lanka, reconciliation between communities remains a challenge to the Sri Lankan peace process, so The Primate's Fund supports partners who are involved in ongoing programs of study, dialogue and action for peace in Sri Lanka.
In Burma, reports suggest that mass forced labour, forced relocations,arbitrary detention, torture, rape, summary execution, looting, extortion, systematic destruction of village economy and ethnic culture, and religious persecution are routine. The Fund supports various civil society groups in the Thai-Burma border who document, research, and take action on these social justice issues.
A Victoria, BC, group called Pacific Peoples Partnership (PPP), supports initiatives in the Solomon Islands to facilitate the formation of civil society groups who enable communities to recover from the ethnic strife of the late 1990s. PWRDF, along with other ecumenical agencies in Canada, has agreed to support PPP at a time when most funding agencies are pulling out of the Solomon Islands because of the disruptions caused by ethnic violence.
All PWRDF partners' work is geared toward building gender-sensitive, sustainable models. The EKOTA women's project of the Church of Bangladesh Social Development Programme organizes women in community savings groups and provides micro-credit facilities. Likewise, the Narigrantha Prabartana (Feminist Publishing House) of UBINIG publishes and distributes writing on issues that affect the lives and livelihoods of women.
