WHAT WE DO  
     
 
Participatory Research

Through research we aim to build an understanding of how global politics impacts on food security and to strengthen capability buiding initiatives. So far, we have initiated three major research undertakings.

Rice trade in Southeast Asia
Rice is the main staple food in this region. Its production and distribution are central in ensuring freedom from hunger. These issues are explored in our present "Food Security and Markets in Southeast Asia: State and private sector interaction in rice trade". Our findings will form the basis of policies forwarded to national and regional bodies to promote the development of sustainable and dynamic producing sectors.

The food crisis in Indonesia
In 1999, we organised a fact-finding mission to Indonesia to investigate claims of a food emergency. The mission, comprising experts and activist in the field of food security, discovered that this was due to the bad development policies of the government. A food crisis had been manufactured for political reasons. Instead of food aid, the country needed economic recovery so that its people had jobs and therefore, purchasing power to buy food produced by the rural farmers in Indonesia.

Women and food security
Women's role in ensuring food security is often ignored and unvalued. Our report, "No Shortcut to Food Security: From a women's perspective", corrects this distortion. It shows how women are connected to the production and distribution of food. It also identifies the obstacles they face, including gender-biased policies. Based on secondary data from Malaysia, Philipines, Thailand and Laos, the recommendations of this study have been compiled into a regional policy networking paper.
 
     
  Advocacy  
     
  We carry out advocacy at many levels, from lobbying national governments and regional institutions, to working directly with civil society actors in food security and fair trade matters. Our past projects include the WTO-Agreement on Agriculture Campaign and a conference in 1999 titled "People's Response to the Food Security Crisis in Southeast Asia" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We have also held national meetings to popularise the Balay Declaration, and actively taken part in other gatherings where we have contributed to the debates on food security and fair trade.

The World Trade Organisation Agreement on Agriculture Campaign
The WTO Agreement on Agriculture aims to liberalise agricultural trade. However, it is heavily biased and unequally distributes benefits between the world's players. Typically, rural and small farmers and local livelihoods in developing nations have been marginalised, thus jeopardising food security in these countries. Through education workshops with NGOs ang goverment officials, we have started a campaign to highlight the negative effects of these negative impacts.		  
     
  Networking  
     
  We facilitate processes whereby non governmental and people's organisations can share and learn from one another. Through these processes, we encourage joint actions to influence national and regional policies impacting on food security. In this manner, we are supporting people centred development, i.e the meaningful participation of people in development.  
     
 
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The Southeast Asian Council for Food Security and Fair Trade