TUDCN General Meeting – Florence, 12-14 December 2011

In the beautiful setting of the Centro Studi CISL, sitting on a hill near Florence, Trade Union Development Cooperation Network held their bi-annual General Meeting to discuss recent developments and plans for the future. Key elements of the agenda included debriefing of the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness and an overview of the other current development policy processes. The meeting was attended by over forty trade union representatives from all around the world.

After a round of introductions and opening words by the recently appointed ITUC Deputy Secretary General, Wellington Chibebe, the report from the last TUDCN General Meeting as well as the TUDCN activity report from the last 6 months were approved.

The meeting continued with Paola Simonetti (TUDCN – ITUC) presenting the Trade Union Development Effectiveness Profile – a tool developed over the last year by the Working Group on Trade Union Development Effectiveness. The presentation was supported by the members of the Working Group who shared their experiences with trying out the tool in their organizations. The tool, aiming at improving the effectiveness of the development cooperation activities of trade unions, will be officially published and promoted in early 2012.

Later, Simonetti presented also the outcomes of the EU Structured Dialogue process that kept the EU Working Group busy over the last year. The European topics were completed by the speech of Jose Maria Zufiaur from the European Economic and Social Committee, who presented the EESC Exploratory opinion on CSOs role in development.

The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to the news from development cooperation and policy work of the affiliated trade unions, Solidarity Support Organizations and Global Union Federations.

On the second day the participants focused on the outcomes of the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4). After the introduction of Jan Dereymaeker (TUDCN – ITUC) and a panel with Paolo Venier (Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Iacopo Viciani (ActionAid), Kjeld Jacobsen (TUCA) and Henrik Als (LO-FTF) who presented their perspectives on the process and outcomes of the HLF4, participants split into groups where they worked on the trade union reaction to the Busan Partnership – the outcome document of the conference. The discussions resulted in elaborating, the following day, the Trade union reaction to the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation.

To have the full picture of the current development policy processes, the Hubert de Milly (OECD), Matt Simonds (TUAC) and Jan Dereymaeker (TUDCN – ITUC) presented respectively the new OECD/DAC development framework, the current work of the UN Development Cooperation Forum and development policy of G20. After the panel, participants, again divided in working groups, discussed their priorities in these political processes.

Meeting’s third day started with Huib Huyse from the Research Institute for Work and Society of the University of Leuven joining the meeting through a video connection to present the first outcomes of the survey on the trade union support modalities. The survey will be published the summer of 2012 and will feed into a seminar, organized in the fall this year.

The rest of the meeting was dedicated to finalizing the reaction to the Busan Partnership as well as to the elaboration of the Network’s priorities and action plan for 2012 and evaluation of the meeting.

A detailed report of the General Meeting will soon be published on the TUDCN website.