Tuesday 25 August 2015

BAAG bombarding policy-makers! July-August update

The BAAG team has been making sure British (and European) policy makers and politicians are fully aware of development and humanitarian needs.  
On 27th July we sent briefing papers to the members of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Afghanistan.  This group is formed of MPs who have an interest in Afghanistan - from a development, security, human rights or humanitarian perspective.  We organise 4 discussions for them a year, to highlight issues and concerns in these various themes and to provide the members with direct access to Afghan and international expert speakers.  With a new British government in place since May, we briefed the past and new APPG members on the priority development, rights and humanitarian needs as decided by BAAG and our 28 NGO member agencies.  
These papers can be viewed on our website.
We sent them to the 16 APPG Afghanistan members, and also to the Secretaries of State for International Development, Foreign Affairs, and Defence, and to the 4 Ministers of these three ministries. 
Copies were also emailed Linda McAvan, MEP and Chair of the European Parliament's International Development Committee. 

In addition to our own papers, we contributed to a briefing by Bond, the consortium of British NGOs.  Their State of the World's Emergencies report, for which we wrote the Afghanistan section, was sent to 50 MPs and Ministers in the week starting 20th July.
In addition to the policy makers, Bond used the report to highlight ongoing humanitarian crises to the public.  In the run up to World Humanitarian Day, Bond and various members including BAAG, engaged the public via social media, blogs and live chats.  BAAG participated in a live Tweet Chat on 18th August, discussing 7 key issues regarding humanitarian crises and responses across the globe.  An edit of the conversation can be viewed on Storify, and the complete discussion is available on Twitter. 


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