We believe in a human rights-based approach to people’s development and governance. Development should be owned and shaped by the people.
Participation, inclusivity, transparency, accountability, love of country and equity are essential principles of democratic governance – and people’s governance is an embodiment of people’s democracy.
Who are we
We were established at our first national conference on September 26, 2006.
We are a national network of 60 non-government organizations and people’s organizations working for development effectiveness and democratic governance.
Our members are active nationwide in:
- Research and education
- Capacity building
- Policy advocacy
- Implementing projects
- Building partnerships
- Humanitarian response
- Collective bargaining
- Social dialogues
Our concerns include:
- poverty and inequality
- environmental protection and preservation
- land rights and food sovereignty
- Bangsamoro people’s and indigenous people’s rights
- climate justice and just transition
- democratic and corruption-free governance
- gender equality and empowerment of women
- children’s rights and welfare
- community-based disaster risk reduction
- human rights and peace
- consumer rights
- decent jobs and livelihood
- development effectiveness
Our Vision
We envision a society where peoples right to development is upheld, and development is owned and shaped by the people.
Our Mission
We shall work towards enabling the poor and the marginalized to genuinely participate in all aspects of public policy, programs and projects towards ensuring full realization of their right to development.
What do we do?
- Advocate for greater civil society space and voice in governance.
- Work for civil society participation in making development policies and programs (particularly ensuring the involvement of women, farmers and farm workers, rural families, workers, fisherfolks, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, children and youth, senior citizens, and urban slum dwellers).
- Strengthen the organizational capacity of CSOs to participate in development processes.
- Coordinate civil society efforts for greater impact and more efficient use of resources.
- Establish wide solidarity relations with regional and international CSOs to help strengthen civil society voice and participation worldwide.
- Link local, national, regional and international CSOs for mutual learning and to share resources, expertise, and information.
CPDG members engage national government agencies and development partners, private sector, business groups, consumer groups and foundations through multi-stakeholder dialogues. We also work closely with many local government units (LGUs) and local government agencies.
CPDG is a member of the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE), a global network of CSOs advocating effective development cooperation. CPDE works in seven (7) regions worldwide and has activities in 83 countries. It is also a member of the Reality of Aid-Asia Pacific, one of the regional arm of the Reality of Aid Network (ROA), the only major North/South international non-government initiative focusing exclusively on analysis and advocacy for poverty eradication policies and practices in the international aid regime. CPDG is also part of the Asia Pacific Regional CSO Engagement Mechanism or APRCEM, a civil society platform aimed to enable stronger cross constituency coordination and ensure that voices of all sub-regions of Asia Pacific are heard in intergovernmental processes at the regional and global level. The platform is initiated, owned and driven by the CSOs, and seeks to engage with UN agencies and Member States on the Post-2015 as well as other development related issues/processes.
CPDG is hosted by IBON International with secretariat office at IBON Foundation.
Our basis of unity
CPDG members commit to pursue the Istanbul principles:
- Respect and promote human rights and social justice.
- Embody gender equality and equity while promoting women and girls rights.
- Focus on people’s empowerment, democratic ownership and participation.
- Promote environmental sustainability.
- Practice transparency and accountability.
- Pursue equitable partnerships and solidarity.
- Create and sharing knowledge and commit to mutual learning.
- Commit to realize positive sustainable change in our development work.
We are committed to ensuring effective development cooperation towards
- Promotion of human rights and social justice.
- Poverty reduction that focuses on uplifting the living condition of the majority of the peasant poor through agrarian reforms that addresses landlessness and tenancy issues; elimination of precarious working conditions; decent work and living wages for all; and a nationally owned and democratically adopted comprehensive national economic development policies and plans that will truly benefit the people.
- Protection of rights of indigenous peoples to ancestral domain and self-determination.
- Recognition of the right to self-determination and genuine autonomy of the Bangsamoro people.
- Food security through farmer-led agroecology and food sovereignty
- Gender equality and women’s empowerment
- Environmental sustainability with focus on exacting climate justice, just transitions and community resilience.
Strategic goals
- The poor and marginalized are able to engage government in the formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of government’s development policies and programs.
- Experiences and lessons learned in CSO development effectiveness are documented, analyzed, synthesized and propagated.
- Political and legal enabling environment for CSOs to exist (e.g., CSO formation, registration and operation, resources and funding opportunities, etc.) and participate in governance (e.g., freedom of information, capacity building/training opportunities, CSO-managed processes in governance, etc.) are fully recognized and enjoyed by CSOs.
- Linkages among CSOs from local to global are developed for sharing of resources, expertise, information and mutual learning
- CSO are able to better coordinate their initiatives, responses, efforts and programs toward greater impact and efficient use of resources.