Foreword

Dear ADA Members/Partners, Colleagues, and Friends,
Greetings of Solidarity and Peace !!
I am pleased to share ADA’s annual report for 2018-2019. This report showcases the many ways in which we engage and support our missions at the national, regional and global level to realize the aims of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by working closely with our civil society members, partners, member states, UN institutions by linking development and human rights.
During the last 12 months, ADA accomplished many activities through outreach, research and advocacy and capacity development related to SDGs implementation, monitoring mechanisms and voluntary national reviews.
In our continued efforts to support the civil society in Asia, we have been organizing Gl-ocal Advocacy Leadership Academy (GALA) since 2013 and in 2018, two GALAs focused on ‘Peace and Human Rights in the CSO engagement with SDGs in Asia ‘were organized, one in Sri Lanka and another later in Central Asia, in Almaty Kazakhstan in our efforts to mainstream the central Asian civil society.  This way ADA has also become truly Asia.
ADA has also been very active in voicing concerns of its members in various advocacy missions like Business of Human Rights conference in Geneva, Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development organized by UN ESCAP , while many members had opportunities to share their concerns and voices in the organized side event with the UNDP (Asia), High-level Political Forum (HLPF), UNGA UN High-level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace, and other related events.
ADA worked with its members by successfully engaging in national outreach SDGs campaigns in (the VNR countries for 2018) in Sri Lanka, Lao PDR, and Vietnam, Singapore and Bhutan. ADA helped the CSO in engaging with the government in the VNR process and capacitated them on CSO reporting in the process. CSOs in Vietnam, Lao PDR, and Sri Lanka were able to prepare their own report and presented them during the side event organized by ADA during High-Level Political Forum, New York, in 2018.
One of the important outcomes of the outreach and training program is that the participants got more clear ideas on Sustainable development goals especially goal 16 and 17 and they were able to create some national level indicators on SDG 16. Another important outcome has been the creation and finalization of guidelines on CSOs engagement on VNR issues and SDGs mapping (CSO-government engagement) from these countries. The national level advocacy missions /support has been able to generate more awareness on sustainable development goals, and their implementation and review mechanisms, engagements with the government and UN institutions, knowledge on participation in various regional and global mechanism and furthermore avenues for ADA’s membership. ADA has also been able to corroborate national-level data on CSO-government engagement in the SDGs ahead of preparing the position paper on the subject.
In our continued efforts to realize our mission, we are very grateful to our donor and partners, European Union, Forus International, Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) for supporting us not only in understanding and in achieving our mission throughout Asia but helping us at every stage apart from actively engaging our activities. We are also very thankful to Code-NGO for being our financial agency and providing us necessary support tirelessly. I also acknowledge the Steering Committee of ADA, our senior advisors, and secretariat for their continuous support, guidance, and execute to achieve ADA’s mission and vision. More than anything, I would like to acknowledge the support of our members and partners in 26 countries and continued support from the AP-RCEM, UN ESCAP, UNDP Regional hub at the regional level and TAP Network, CIVICUS, AGNA, A4SD, Transparency International, Innovation for Change (I4C) at the global level. We are truly humbled for your trust in us as a regional platform in Asia and we hope to receive the same trust in support in the future.
 
Thanking you.
Sincerely,
 
Saroeun SOEUNG
On behalf of ADA Steering Committee
Executive Director of Cooperation Committee for Cambodia (CCC)