TUDCN General Meeting 2017

The General Meeting of the Trade Union Development Cooperation Network (TUDCN) took place in Lomé, Togo on 19-21 April 2017. It brought together over 40 representatives of trade unions and solidarity support organisations from around the world. The annual event allows TUDCN members to take stock of progress and jointly lay out the priorities of the network for the coming year.

ITUC-Africa hosted the meeting, which featured external presentations by representatives of the ILO, UNECA and the EU. The meeting was opened by Kwasi Adu-Amankwah, General Secretary of ITUC-Africa, and Wellington Chibebe, Deputy General Secretary of the ITUC. The global secretariat of the TUDCN was joined by the three regional secretariats of ITUC-Africa, TUCA and ITUC-AP, as well as by the ETUC, in coordinating the different sessions.

Participants reviewed the progress of the TUDCN’s work over the past year at the global, regional and national level. Advocacy work engaging institutional actors such as the UN, the ILO, the OECD, the GPEDC, the EU, and national governments was reviewed. The progress report also included a review of the network’s work on the role of social dialogue in development, on trade union partnerships for development and on communication and outreach.

Trade union engagement on the 2030 Agenda featured prominently in the progress report, at all three levels (global, regional and national). It notably featured the trade union delegation to the 2016 High Level Policy Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development, the publishing of the introductory trade union pamphlet on the Sustainable Development Goals and the engagement of regional and national institutions responsible for its implementation. In continuation of this work, a significant part of the general meeting was dedicated to jointly outlining the TUDCN’s engagement plan on the 2030 Agenda for the coming twelve months.

During the three-day meeting, participants then focussed on outlining a common trade union approach to the ILO’s work on effective development cooperation, to the 5th EU-Africa Summit and provided an overall evaluation of the TUDCN’s work over the previous period (2013-2017). Lastly, TUDCN global and regional work plans for 2017-2018 were presented and endorsed by the General Meeting.

The meeting documents are available here. The meeting conclusions are available here. A report will be circulated soon.